The Bridge
Puzzle
1/5
The MC Escher artstyle brew me in, but the basic controls, shoddy physics, and temperamental fall damage detection turned me off almost immediately. I was utterly bored after the first set of levels and actually deleted this off my Switch because I knew I wasn't coming back to it.
Frederic and Frederic 2
Rhythm
3/5
I'm lumping these two together because I have basically the same thing to say about both of them: they're okay.
In both games you play as Chopin fighting to bring the true spirit of music back to the world. The story attempts to be over-the-top and silly, but mostly had be rolling my eyes. The neatest part about the game is how the half half of the Switch screen becomes a piano keyboard. The remixed Chopin music covers a variety of genres and makes for a good soundtrack. Both games are short with little replay value, but they are also available incredibly cheaply, so that feels fair.
Oxenfree
Narrative game
4/5
The atmosphere of Oxenfree is excellent, largely because of its audio, both sound design and voice-acting. The art is rather bland, but the actors put it all into the characters and really sell their personalities. It is a bit disappointing that for all the choices you make in the game there are only 2-3 different endings, although you can change the details of these endings somewhat. Even so, all of the choices open new conversational paths and they certainly feel like they matter in the moment. The dialogue system is conversationally based and you have 5-10 seconds to choose a reply or they fade away and you remain silent instead. The game encourages replay with it's story and mechanics and it's interesting to see it remember what you did on previous playthroughs.
Yooka-Laylee
3D Platformer
2/5
Lazy is the best word to describe this game. I actually heard much of the bad press before getting it and most of it just seemed to say 'it's just more Banjo-Kazooie, they didn't improve anything'. That didn't bother me as I still enjoy both Banjo games and I felt fine getting more of the same. The problem is that Yooka-Laylee isn't as good as though despite being made twenty years later. The main characters and big bad have their quirks and do a good job investing me, but every other character (except Trowser who's great) is a lazy 'copy-paste' in each level instead of creating unique characters to give each level a feel of being alive and its own place. Similarly, there are only two, maybe three, types of enemy. These enemies give you nothing but health [which you only lose by fighting them], they don't chase you very far, and they don't actually prevent you from gain access to anything so there is no point to fight them. For 90% of the game I just avoided them. The art, jokes, and boss battles (except the final boss) also feel lackluster at best. The minecart and arcade mini-games are pure trash. It's frustrating, because I beat the entire game but couldn't help feeling that this was a weak effort and that if only they had put more love and effort into it that this game could've been something great.
