Nintendolife

This review was originally published in May 2014. We’re updating and republishing it to mark the game’s arrival in the Nintendo Switch Online + Expansion Pack GBA library.

Although Wario’s core platforming series has been overshadowed for years by the surrealist microgames of WarioWare, his excellent platformers have the sort of devoted following that inspires 600-page eBooks. It’s easy to see why: Wario Land 4 takes the basic 2D platforming concepts of Mario and turns them on their head in an irreverent, boisterous adventure unafraid to take risks.

It’s hard not to compare Wario Land 4 to the first game in the WarioWare series, WarioWare, Inc.: Mega Microgame$!. Both were created by Nintendo R&D1 with largely the same development team; Wario Land 4 launched shortly after the Game Boy Advance hit stores in 2001, while WarioWare followed two years later. Aesthetically they’re two peas in a pod, with much of WarioWare’s trippy visual approach and outlandish musical style first pioneere..

Update #2 [Tue 18th Feb 2025, 6am]: Following the news EVO 2025 would be running an “extended lineup” of tournaments featuring various other fighting games, the final roster for this has now been confirmed.

Joining the existing five games will be Samurai Shodown, Guilty Gear Xrd Rev 2, and Capcom vs. SNK 2. The event will take place between 1st – 3rd August this year.

This follows Capcom’s news earlier this month – confirming Capcom Fighting Collection 2 (featuring Capcom vs. SNK 2) would be arriving on Switch and multiple other platforms this May.

Captured on Nintendo Switch (Docked)If you ever thought monasteries were just devoted to worship, feasting abbots, and choral chants of Ave Maria, The Stone of Madness is set on proving you dead wrong.

This is The Game Kitchen’s first foray into the stealth-tactics genre (a distinctly Spanish obsession we discussed with the devs last year) after the team’s stellar work with the Blasphemous Metroidvanias. Two separate campaigns take place in an imposing 1800s Pyrenees monastery, which doubles as an insane asylum. This mountaintop prison offers no redemption, nor escape from earthly woes, for five luckless inmates aiming to escape, or destroy, their captors.

The hospitality of these cruel nuns and friars may feel as cold and stony as the slabs making up the monastery’s walls, but we still marvelled at this sordid Jesuit asylum that drips with the Spanish Inquisition’s cruelty and sorrow. A magnificent stealth sandbox, hand painted in rich gothic atmosphere and Catholic pageantry, creat..

Captured on Nintendo Switch (Handheld/Undocked)In a market inundated with Metroidvanias, Laika: Aged Through Blood does something remarkable: it actually tries something new. That’s not to say that recent examples haven’t had a good crack at standing out amongst the crowd — Animal Well is certainly testament to that — but many largely stick to the same rulebook. Laika tears it apart and chucks it into the fires of Mount Doom.

So what makes this one so different? Well, it’s all about the traversal: Laika expertly blends motocross gameplay with more traditional Metroidvania mechanics, doing away with segmented rooms and corridors in favour of sprawling, interconnected landscapes. You’re specifically encouraged to travel at high speeds, launch yourself into the air, and pull off badass flips that will have Trials fans giddy.

Unlike other Metroidvanias, where the environment begins to fade into the background as you familiarise yourself with its layout, Laika demands that you continue to..

Captured on Nintendo Switch (Docked)A few years ago, a little tabletop-RPG-inspired visual novel called Citizen Sleeper arrived on the eShop, expertly crafting an experience that tied together dice-rolling mechanics with a player-driven science fiction narrative. It quickly gained a cult following, leading to a short series of free DLC chapters and the announcement of a sequel. Now that Citizen Sleeper 2: Starward Vector is finally here, we’re pleased to report that one-person team Gareth Damian Martin of Jump Over The Age hasn’t lost a step—this new release is everything that the first game was and then some.

Citizen Sleeper 2 cold opens with your conveniently amnesiac character waking up in the clutches of a gangster boss named Laine giving you an angry speech about his claim of ownership over your synthetic body. Before he can literally pull the plug on you and bring about a very swift Game Over, a mysterious ally spirits you away in a small, stolen starship. Your saviour claims to..

Hello Kitty Island Adventure released on Apple Arcade in July 2023 to generally positive reviews. A year and a half later, the Switch release brings a charming cast of Sanrio characters and their island resort to a wider audience—an audience ultimately in for a good time.

Hello Kitty Island Adventure opens on a plane en route to a mysterious resort with lots of familiar faces from the Sanrio franchise on board. After creating an animal avatar of our own (a moody purple bunny), we soon found ourselves jumping out of the plane and gliding to the ground with a handful of balloons. We get our first major quest shortly after touching down: find everyone who was scattered across the island during the descent.

Captured on Nintendo Switch (Docked)
Despite having a big quest to start us off, the game gave us a refreshing amount of free reign to begin exploring and building relationships right off the bat. Within the first hour of gameplay, we’d only tracked down a couple of lost characters bu..

Captured on Nintendo Switch (Handheld/Undocked)A few years ago, developers Adglobe and Live Wire (which, fun fact, also developed Harvestella) released a Metroidvania called Ender Lilies: Quietus of the Knights to high praise. Combining a heavy atmosphere with tough, Soulslike combat in a dark fantasy world, it stood out as a notably quality addition to a genre that feels like it gets at least one new entry every week. The sequel, Ender Magnolia: Bloom in the mist, is a strong iteration on its predecessor’s formula. It’s everything a Metroidvania should be and, even if it’s not exactly revolutionary, it executes its vision well.

Ender Magnolia is set a number of years after Ender Lilies, placing you in the role of Lilac, a young girl who awakens from a long slumber in a strange and decaying world. What’s left of society is occupied by two different races: humans and the creepy machines called Homunculi. Some Homunculi could easily pass as human while others have much more monstrous or..

Captured on Nintendo Switch (Handheld/Undocked)The problem with the term ‘Metroidvania’ is that it’s a far broader genre classification than some give it credit for. Depending on where they fall on the spectrum between the exploration-heavy Metroid series and the combat-centric Castlevania series, it’s possible for two games to both be considered Metroidvanias while playing, looking, and sounding nothing alike. Neither extreme is more valid than the other. What’s important is understanding which portions of the genre a given title is committed to, and whether it’s successful.

It’s not enough to simply call Blade Chimera a great Metroidvania and leave it at that. What Team Ladybug (Record of Lodoss War: Deedlit in Wonder Labyrinth, Drainus) has cooked up here is a game that is impressively clear-eyed in identifying its priorities — which just so happen to mirror many of the tenets of Konami’s legendary vampire hunting series — and executing on them to incredible effect. It doesn’t do e..