 In case you're new around here, let me explain something to you. There's a couple things that just give me, oh, a big ol' kick out of life, one is coffee, can't live without it, and the other is diving into the Nintendo Switch eShop and finding little hidden gems or just fantastic games that don't get physical releases and might otherwise be overlooked unless you're checking the eShop every single day like I do and saying, hey, this game is good, this is what it's all about, and buy it maybe. I've done 13 of these videos so far, this is number 14, bringing the tally of Switch eShop games I've reviewed on this channel to a hundred and forty... I don't know how to feel about that. Without further ado though, this is a big list for some of the coolest games I've talked about so far on the channel. I have a lot to say, let me just shut up and get started with the first one. Oh, and now subscribe and stuff if you're new around here and like the video and share it around, maybe. If there's someone in your life that needs less money in their wallet and they have a Switch. Okay, I have to start with Cuphead, the game's been out for like a month at this point, I've had the game on my Switch for a couple of months, I've been dying to talk about it, and I've been waiting until just this moment, I can't wait no longer, Cuphead. Okay, I'ma be honest with you guys here, I have quite a few games on this list that I want to blab about in detail, you know, really flesh out those experiences on the Switch. I don't want a 30 minute video so I'm just gonna keep this part about Cuphead really short. I mean, let's be honest, what do you want me to say that hasn't been said about this game a billion times anyway? To keep it brief, it looks and plays perfectly on the Switch, I'm a huge fan of the game for obvious reasons. The old school cartoon visuals get me every time I play it, the fact that they hand drew all of this is unbelievable and I appreciate it so much. The three hour long soundtrack of Jazzy Barbershop Big Band Songs is a perfect complement to those visuals and the game is so bloody difficult that it almost ruins it for me, but somehow it makes it better. I initially played through the game with Kim and we had a blast as much as we were yelling at the screen during most sessions. It's Cuphead, you get it, can we start the actual list now? Okay, moving on. The next game on this list is one that I already finished and uninstalled to make room for other games and it's right here if you can see it hidden, Claybook. I put off trying Claybook for the longest time, it just didn't look like the kind of game for me. But when I finally did try it, I regretted not playing it sooner so that I could have recommended it to some of you. The game gives me heavy catamari vibes, while you don't roll around picking up objects, the gameplay feels very similar with familiar controls. Everything in the game world is made up of Clay. You yourself control lumps of the stuff, rolling around environments and interacting with the clay in unique ways and it's really cool the way everything interacts with each other. Like this stuff really does look like clay. As you roll across it, you leave soft dents behind you, taking out small chunks of the world as coloured clay molds into your own. It evokes a strange calming feeling in me and it takes me back to my preschool days playing with Play-Doh. Remember that weird, clampy thing that you'd shove Play-Doh into and then you'd squeeze it out the other side and it'd be like a really long shape? Good times. Anyway, Claybook is a platformer of sorts, which in every level you have to solve some kind of puzzle in a load of different unique ways. Like in an early level, I had to fill a pool of liquid that was being contained behind some walls made of clay. I think there was a few different ways I could have solved this, but my 8 brain just took chunks of the wall out and then made chunks in the floor to create a path for the liquid to flow. Honestly, it felt kind of cool making that work and it's moments like that that took me back to being a kid and playing with Play-Doh. Wow, don't abbreviate Play-Doh ever. While playing, you can morph into other shapes like a square or a sphere depending on your situation. Something that's really weird but cool as heck is you can reverse time if you screw up or whatever but in doing so it leaves your clay shape stamped behind you in the position you started the time travel and you can do this as many times as you want. I use this to my advantage often, creating paths made up purely of my own clay body. This is probably a fantastic game for young growing minds, but even my old ass 28 year old 8 brain had a lot of fun solving puzzles and messing around with the different ways to interact with the environment. Next, Shakedown Hawaii. Wow, talk about a game that slipped past me and hit the eShop very unexpectedly, Shakedown Hawaii. I've been waiting for this game for like over a year, then one day there it was. I don't know how I missed that. Anyway, if y'all haven't heard of this game, it's the sequel to the game you must have heard of at some point, Retro City Rampage. Imagine everything you love about GDA style games but crammed into a 16 bit style that has oh so much detail. On top of that awesomeness, the devs threw in endless pop culture references like Doc Choc and his time traveling vehicle. I wonder what that was referencing. I don't know. Well, yeah, anyway, that game was fantastic and it's on Switch. But now we have a sequel, Shakedown Hawaii. Oh and no surprise, it's just as awesome. Yet again, we have a top down open world 16 bit beautiful game with over 200 buildings you can enter and explore, destructible environments, cars, guns, explosions, character customization. What else do you want? I did all that in one breath. It almost ran out. This game also introduces the ability to gain revenue streams by buying out buildings and businesses. Everything in this game is really well fleshed out for what it is and it adds to the overall meat of the gameplay. Also, it has this guy in it. So... Okay, if you're familiar with my channel, if you've been around here a while, you've probably heard me go on and on and on about point and click. Namely the heavyweights that not only got me into the genre but got me into gaming in general at an early age. Games like Maniac Mansion, Monkey Island, Sam & Max, Grim Fandango, Need I Continue... But something I don't really talk about all that much is that for the longest time, probably a decade or more, I actually really didn't play that many new point and clicks. The genre seemed to just fade away as action adventure games were all the new craze. But I swear, sometime around 2010 point and click started making a comeback big time. And I got back into them big time. And the two that really drew me in? Daponia and Whispered World, both of which were created by the brilliant Diedalic Entertainment. And as of last month, we finally have Daponia on the Switch. I think that's how you pronounce Diedalic. I mean, I wouldn't hold me to it. Just like in most point and clicks, you need to solve a variety of puzzles, picking up objects throughout the world and figuring out what to do with them or what to combine them with to make new items. But Daponia has a very unique story and setting with a beautiful hand-drawn art style and wonderfully animated cutscenes. Oh, and the characters have great depth to them and the voice acting is on point. All around, it's one of the best games in the genre hands down and it's in my personal top five. However, and this is kind of a hot take, I suppose. Um, I don't actually recommend buying it on the Switch. Let me explain that. In fact, I actually want to use this video, this platform, as a chance to call out Diedalic on something that a lot of publishers are guilty of on the Switch. I'll start by saying I absolutely do recommend buying the Daponia collection on PlayStation 4, as all the games are really incredible, all of them, and it's only 40 bucks for all four on PlayStation 4. The, uh, the Switch version, however, yeah, that's just the first game. Not all four of them, and that'll set you back a big old 40 bucks as well. Why? I honestly don't know. I personally believe this game is worth 40 bucks physical. I mean, I would buy that, but it's 10 bucks on Steam digitally. And again, all the games are 40 on PlayStation 4. So Diedalic, if that is how you pronounce your real name, please don't buy into this whole Switch tax bull crap that we've been dealing with. I get that Nintendo definitely takes a bigger cut of the sales than the platform like Steam probably does, but $30 more? I don't, I don't think so. So wait for this one to go on sale. If you can get it for 20 bucks or under, I'd say that's a good deal for the game on Switch. Don't pay 40. I doubt anyone is paying 40, but if you do, it's, it's still worth it. I hope you get what I'm saying. It's worth it, but it's not, that's not what it costs everywhere else. What's the next game? You want to introduce it? The next game is called The Way. I don't know why he would sound like that. Yeah, the next game is The Way Remastered, as my cat just elaborated on. The Way Remastered is a 2D puzzle platformer game inspired by other games like Another World, Heart of Darkness, and Flashback. The start of the game is, um, brutal, as it has you carrying your wife who has just passed away. And that's the, um, just the start of the game. The rest of the story is also delivered extremely well. Most of it is told by the adventure itself as it unfolds and doesn't rely on written dialogue. Visually, this remastered version looks a hundred times better than the original. It keeps the exact pixel art goodness it had intact, but it's so much clearer and brighter. The gameplay is, well, it's pretty slow, but that's by design, and that really works for this title. There's some stealth elements here and there, as well as some intense chase scenes and just a hack of a lot of platforming. But the fun in this game, it comes purely from the adventure you go on. You really feel like you are this almost useless guy lost and alone on a strange world with no idea how to escape the insanity that's unfolding around you. Oh, and, usually it's $15, but right now it's $1, so I was hoping I could recommend it while it's on sale. Hopefully it's still on sale. Um, so I'm not super well-versed in the universe of Steam World games. I know that the series has tackled several different genres up until this point, but I've only played the action-adventure platformer games that are Steam World Dig 1 and 2. Now, we have Steam World Quest, but, you know, I love a good card game as much as the next guy, and I love me some turn-based RPG combat. I was down to believe in the heart of the cards. The story in Steam World Quest is, um, fine. I wasn't really invested in it much at all, but thankfully I wasn't here for the story. As you stroll around the world, you'll find enemies that you can harass and trigger a battle sequence, much like in Persona 5. Actually, so much so like Persona 5, that you even get a preemptive strike bonus if you hit them first. There's a bunch of different cards, and they're all broken down into three categories. Strike, skill, and upgrade cards. And there's a pretty cool system in place throughout the battles where you power up a bar by using the cards, and then you use the points you store up to do stronger attacks. Of course, as it's a card-based gameplay style, there are loads of other details and things to consider while battling. From elemental damage, chain attacks, or cycling through cards you don't want, I'm not gonna go into all the nitty-gritty details because I don't have time, and what am I, an actual good game reviewer? No, I do the bare minimum. I skate by on this channel. I love finding new cards throughout the game, because the more you add to your deck, the more it shakes up the battles with new moves and stronger abilities. I don't, like, love the visuals or the character animations. The character designs are great, especially some of the enemies. For me, this game was just all about the gameplay, which I really enjoyed. If you're a fan of the Steam World games, you really can't go wrong with any of them. Whatever genre they tackle, they tackle it pretty damn well. Looking to add a slightly cheaper game to this list, Overwhelm, just like he got overwhelmed, comes in at $10, and for the price, I was very impressed with this title. He left cat hair on me. Considering how barebones basic this game is in almost every aspect, it still manages to be frustratingly fun to play, meaning it's frickin' difficult, man, but it's really fun. There really isn't any kind of story, you just gotta kill stuff. It's a metroidvania in the sense that it allows you to tackle the world and its bosses in whatever order you want, but don't think for a second that you're gonna find any power-ups throughout the world to help you out. Nah, this game gives no fricks. It arms you with a gun and a massive uppercut and expects you to figure out everything else around that. You do have three lives, which is generous of them, and they melt away at any moment, especially during those before-mentioned boss fights. And at that point, you have to start the entire game again, because this game is its permadeath. Of course it is, that's the frustrating part. This game might give you some horrific flashbacks to using a Virtual Boy for the first time, due to its simple red and black visuals. There really isn't much going on in the world at all, but that just makes the already detailed boss characters look even better, which I think might have been the point. Every one of them has a really unique and badass sprite, and I like it. If you manage to beat one, you do get your three lives back, assuming you lost any lives, and that helps you with trying to defeat the next one. And I mean, that's also assuming that you don't run out of bullets before then, and you probably will, since you only have 99 of them. Seriously, this game does not care about your feelings whatsoever. You can make it easier by going into the settings and giving yourself unlimited lives and bullets, but at that point, are you even really playing the game? Team 17 have been CRUSHING the Switch releases recently. Games like Overcooked, Worms, The Escapist, Ukulele, Yoku's Island Express, and on September 4th of last year, they released Planet Alpha, and I guess no one told me about it? Also, I've made like three of these list videos since then, which entail me going through the eShop, trying to find games like this, and even I missed it. So if even I didn't know about it, imagine how many great games there are on the Switch you don't know about. That is why you should probably subscribe and hit that bell to be notified of these videos. Planet Alpha is absolutely stunning, and I'm almost willing to say, screw the gameplay, screw the story, screw audio, just get this game to marvel at the set pieces and the little details just like you would on a trip to an art gallery. Except art galleries are boring as heck, and this game is actually fun, so maybe that's a bad example. However, thankfully, this game does do just about everything right, so you don't need to sacrifice all those other elements that make a good video game. Like, just look at this very first area in the game and tell me you're not impressed. And as you start platforming across the world, the visuals tell a story as you play and progress through each level. There is some light puzzle solving and stealth elements, but the focus here is on the at times pretty challenging platforming. There's a cool mechanic where you can switch between night and day as you play, which will cause the environments to shift and change around you, opening new paths for you to progress. Honestly, if you're not sold on the game just by looking at what I'm showing you right now, then you might be a lost cause on this one. And that's perfectly fine. But if you're anything like me, you probably already have that switch in your hands going through the eShop trying to find Planet Alpha. So I'm gonna leave Planet Alpha at that and move on with the list. I'm also gonna stop saying the words Planet Alpha. In case it's like a Beetlejuice thing and if I say it three times in a row, an actual Planet of Alpha Omega sins will just appear somewhere in the universe. And I don't think anyone needs that many Alpha Omega sins. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Okay, first, you have to be extremely careful of something like that because if we're gonna talk about summoning needs similar to how Beetlejuice is, then we gotta consider I'd be coming in and providing some kind of a copyright claim with a Banana Boat song because that's one of the most messed up scenes in the entire movie. Oh, hey, there you are, man. Actually, I was getting worried about ya. Did you, like, lose or break your camera or something? It's been a minute. playing an alpha would actually be fantastic because I'd like to think that it'd probably be something like large goth amazonian women and it's always death by snoo snoo but I'm just gonna keep they got like two games left if you don't mind katana zero is everything you look for in a switch game namely it's a dicting fast paced gameplay that can be broken down into shortish missions that are easily digestible in small increments or you know you can be like me and finish it in like two sessions because you loved it I was excited to play this game as soon as I saw revealed in that direct and let me tell you it lived up to its hype big time the setting of the game is this great cyberpunk neo noir style and the visuals are incredibly pleasing to my eyeballs oh and that's all backed by a kick ass synthwave soundtrack I love that at the start of each mission before our katana wielding assassin starts his killing rampage he throws on a pair of headphones and boots up whatever awesome track is going to be pumping throughout the chaos oh and if you're playing this game primarily in handheld mode I recommend you bringing along your own headphones as well because believe me you're going to want to hear this brilliant mess in katana zero you have no health bar one hit will result in an instant death that forces you to keep moving and moving fast deflecting bullets with a well time slash sending them screaming back towards the enemy or dodge the attack all together with a roll and move in for the quick kill mercifully the game features an ability to manipulate time thanks to a drug called cronos that your psychiatrist slash boss I'm not really sure administers between each mission speaking of those parts of the game or any part of the game that has dialogue it's done really interestingly it's a real-time conversation system that you're able to interrupt if you just don't feel like talking to that person although if you do decide to engage you'll be given a bunch of dialogue options before I realized that fact there was this one mission where an innocent lobby host got killed because I was too impatient I felt so bad I actually reloaded that entire mission and showed a little more discretion the next time around katana zero is jam packed with both little and big details in every aspect of the game and there is a ton of replayability here not just in the dialogue pairs but even the level designs there are loads of hidden secrets and paths and way to kill the marks and the enemies in ways I didn't even find out about until after I finished the game katana zero is worth it it's worth way more than zero however getting it for free without that would be nice it'd be ideal but that's not how the world works I kind of got it for free because I got a review code but it's worth whatever it costs moving on speaking of a game that you need headphones to play and also a game that I deleted from my switch to free up space because oh boy I need a bigger SD card in this thing hellblade is worth it let's talk about it oh and I'm gonna throw this one on the list before limited run games or super rare games come along and give it a physical release which you know is gonna happen because it's an easy money maker I actually recently played through this and loved it on my xbox one when I heard it was coming to switch my reaction was how this game is gorgeous and no offense to the switch but you know how but they did a really fantastic job on the port like panic button levels of quality it's interesting watching the visual gears turn as you play all the cutscenes or any part of the game that doesn't actually have you playing it it'll seamlessly switch into crisp clean visuals then as the gameplay kicks in it'll switch back to that well a little more rough look it's not bad at all it just has that classic artifacting and pixelated looking edges to the character models that we've pretty much grown accustomed to in these switch ports the gameplay is solid though at a very steady 30 frames just like on the playstation again overall this port is just very impressive the game itself is not a child friendly adventure as the title would suggest you find yourself in helheim armed with only a blade taking control of the warrior senua she tries to save the soul of her dead lover dillian the story is mind-bending and messed with my head a lot in between sessions I found myself set up at night trying to figure out the meaning behind everything that was happening in the game and as I said the visuals are gorgeous but at times they're also really disturbing I played most of this game on edge worried confused and nervous the voices inside senua's head definitely didn't help with that as they constantly try to discourage her with whispers of negativity and wearing headphones it sounds like those voices are in your head and it aims to make you feel like you're the one going crazy the voices beg you to stop progressing through the world and turn back to where it's safe the combat is brutal and uncompromising you can block dodge and strike there are moments where you can also bend time to your will but you need to build up that ability by successfully parrying at the right moment and landing attacks you can be easily overwhelmed by enemies or taken down by the intense boss fights and not only will those deaths hurt your video game pride but they will also hurt senua you see this game is roughly an eight hour single player story driven herma death game every time you die the rot works its way up senua's arm more and more if you die too much it'll reach her head and then your game is done for me hellblade is a piece of artwork come to life with a brilliant story and rewarding combat if you decide to give this game a shot for yourself I recommend not listening to those voices that will be in your head don't turn back that's another 10 games on the e-shop worth buying you're probably sick of hearing my voice by now so I'm just going to say please like this video if you enjoyed it if all over that subscribe button I'd really appreciate it share this video with a friend that needs to buy more switch games click a type on this video right here and with all that said nerds nerds and gamers game the are you kidding me I can't say