Nintendo’s most embarrassing failure is now available to play via the Switch and Switch 2, but are these obscure, stereoscopic oddities worth your time and money?

The Nintendo Switch Online service is becoming an increasingly comprehensive collection of Nintendo’s retro history, with all their major consoles, from the NES to the GameCube now covered. Some formats have more titles than others but the only absence, unless you count the Pokémon Mini, has been the Virtual Boy.

You may well never have heard of it but that’s no surprise as it was such a complete flop it was never released in Europe. It launched in 1995 and was discontinued that same year, after Nintendo realised that nobody wanted to play stereoscopic 3D games by peering awkwardly into what looked like a VR helmet and putting up with solely red and black graphics.

Nevertheless, we’ve been playing the initial batch of games all this week and while some of them are interesting, and the 3D effect is very good, sitting with your head pushed inside the headset is a deeply uncomfortable way to spend your time. At the time there was a lot of talk of the console causing nausea when you played it; we didn’t experience any of that but unless you have it at exactly the right height it kills your neck.

Nintendo did return to the concept of stereoscopic 3D with the 3DS, but while that involved finding and keeping to a ‘sweet spot’ on the screen, the Virtual Boy works perfectly all the time. Although the console can push a small amount of polygons, most of them are purely wireframe and the majority of games use only 2D sprites. The effect still works great though, from the enemies leaping into the screen at you in Wario Land to the quasi-realistic courses of the unadventurously named Golf.

There were only ever 22 games, from Nintendo and various third parties, but currently there are only plans to release 16 (17 in Japan) on the original Switch and Switch 2. The seven below were made available at launch, with Nintendo confirming another nine for some time after: Mario’s Tennis, Jack Bros., Vertical Force, Mario Clash, Virtual Bowling, Space Invaders Virtual Collection, V-Tetris, D-Hopper, and Zero Racers.

The inclusion of D-Hopper (aka Dragon Hopper), by Fire Emblem developer Intelligent Systems, and F-Zero spin-off Zero Racers is particularly interesting because while the games were finished they were never released commercially, because by that point the Virtual Boy was already dead at retail.

Virtual Boy Wario Land

Developer: Nintendo R&D1

This is the crown jewel in the Virtual Boy library, made by what was at the time one of Nintendo’s key studios (now merged with Nintendo EAD) and the closest thing to a Mario platformer on the system. This was only the second Wario Land game, after Super Mario Land 3 in 1994, but works in the same general manner as the rest of the series, with Wario able to pick and up throw stunned enemies but also barge into them with a dash attack, if he’s powered up by eating a garlic bulb (his equivalent of a mushroom).

In most respects it’s a standard 2D platformer but where objects and enemies regularly move from the background to the foreground, which always looks impressive. There’s also a lot of sections where there’s a whole separate platform layout in the background, which you have to use pipes or jump pads to access – a concept that Nintendo has reused for many modern 2D platformers.

It’s all a bit slow-paced, and losing your power-up drastically reduces the options available, but there’s a good variety in terms of the range of different power-up imbuing hats and things like swimming levels. It is very short though, which was no doubt an irritation upon its original release, and the 3D effect doesn’t really come across as much more than a gimmick.

Score: 4/5

Galactic Pinball

Developer: Intelligent Systems

We’re scoring these games on a one time only five-point scale, to make it clear they’re not compatible with our regular reviews, but in some cases there’s really not much to say. Galactic Pinball is exactly what it says on the tin, with four tables that benefit from the pin sharp 3D, in that you can fit the whole thing on screen at once, with no scrolling.

The tables are reasonably well designed, and there’s a Metroid reference in one of them, but they do feel a bit empty a lot of the time, with little in the way of interesting gimmicks. Pinball games live and die on their ball physics and in that regard Galactic Pinball is… okay. It’s not actually a ball though, but a puck, which we suspect is intended as a built-in excuse for it not always moving exactly as you’d expect.

Score: 3/5

Red Alarm

Developer: T&E Soft

We have played a real Virtual Boy before this time but only a smaller selection of its games and never before this fascinating 3D on-rails shooter, that could easily have been repurposed as a Star Fox game. It’s rendered entirely with wireframe graphics, which makes it seem like something from the mid-80s, but if you can cope with that it’s a fun little shooter, with good pacing and plenty of enemy variety.

Not only is there an optional first person view, and an isometric one that makes it look like Zaxxon, but there are some very interesting effects, like the contoured faces that pop out of the screen towards you. Although level progression is on-rails you have a fair amount of freedom of movement within that space, including speeding up and down, and unlike most wireframe games the frame rate is pretty smooth.

Score: 4/5

Teleroboxer

Developer: Nintendo R&D1

If Red Alarm is Star Fox by any other name, then Teleroboxer is clearly just Punch-Out!! with a different hat on. The 3D effect here is excellent, as your fists, your opponents, and their head and body are all on different planes that give a great sense of depth. The problem is, though, that the game is very easy and once you’ve figured out the trick to beating each of the eight opponents the charm quickly disappears.

It’s a quintessential example of a tech demo masquerading as a launch title, which is a problem as old as gaming itself. The benefit of being on Nintendo Switch Online is that you can try it out at no extra cost, be impressed by the visuals, and then never touch it again when you get bored of the gameplay.

Score: 2/5

Golf

Developer: T&E Soft

Nintendo put out a lot of golf games before getting the idea to turn them into Mario themed party games and this is one of the last examples of that more staid strain of sports sim. This is a very sober recreation of the sport but with some very impressive 3D graphics. Even if it does look like it’s been raining blood the whole time.

It’s essentially flip screen, when it needs to change the camera angle, but it’s above the technical standards of SNES games of the era (the Virtual Boy was considered a 32-bit console). The control system is a minor variation on the norm, as you not only have to set the power on a meter but also try and stop a cursor moving about on an image of a golf ball at the exact place you want to hit it.

It’s fine but there’s little in the way of ancillary options, with no multiplayer, too few courses, and it doesn’t even save your score when you turn it off (most Virtual Boy games still relied on passwords instead of saving).

Score: 2/5

The Mansion Of Innsmouth

Developer: Be Top

There are many problems with the Virtual Boy as a concept but the main issue with the games is that they all feel so old-fashioned. The original PlayStation had already come out the previous year and yet The Mansion Of Innsmouth is an old school dungeon crawler, with no polygonal graphics and where you instead move around the grid-based maps in discreet steps, like Dungeon Master.

There’s plenty of retro charm to that concept but if you’re trying to sell your new console as a cutting edge piece of hardware then the games do not help. The Mansion Of Innsmouth is interesting though, as it’s based very squarely on Lovecraftian mythos, and is essentially a survival horror – complete with the same, cheap, jump scare technique as Alan Wake 2, where demonic faces suddenly appear on screen with no warning.

Unfortunately, the game isn’t much fun, as the level layout is very basic and it’s extremely difficult, with death coming quickly and if ammo runs out there’s literally nothing you can do but die or run out of time.

Score: 1/5

3-D Tetris

Developer: T&E Soft

An argument could be made that this is the most technically advanced of the initial line-up of games, even though most of it is wireframe. It’s similar to Welltris but not the same, as you drop tetriminos down a rectangular hole and try to match them up at the bottom as solid 3D objects, rather than flat 2D shapes. The controls take a few moments to get used to, and the way the camera moves around on its own is initially disconcerting, but it’s actually quite a fun variant of the grandfather of puzzle games.

There’s another Tetris game on the system, called V-Tetris, but that’s just the original flat version of the game. 3D-Tetris is more interesting because it actually tries to use the idea of a 3D effect to make something new, with a couple of additional game modes where you’re arranging tetriminos around a central square or trying to make a specific shape in puzzle mode.
3D-Tetris is not so good that we’re dying for a modern remake but it’s an engaging novelty and one of the few Virtual Boy games with a modicum of lastability.

Score: 4/5

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After becoming a cult classic on PC, strategy game Death Howl mixes elements of Soulslikes with turn-based battles, in this demanding but rewarding new console release.

Polish developer and publisher 11 bit studios make fascinating choices in the games they design and publish. From Frostpunk and its sequel’s austere politics, where there are no right answers and plenty of unintended consequences that spring from trying to find them to The Alters, an offbeat sci-fi base builder in which your operation is staffed by increasing numbers of subtly divergent clones; their output is thoughtful, often tactically demanding, and always hard to predict.

Their latest is Death Howl, which is described as a Soulslike deck builder. Inevitably there’s quite a lot more to it than that, most notably that along with deploying cards from your slowly expanding deck, turn-based battles take place on a square grid, your positioning and movement on it having a powerful effect on the outcomes of attacks and defences. You’ll need to line-up shots and plan for areas of effect, while stabbing foes in the back proves more effective than frontal assaults.

The son of protagonist Ro dies in the opening scene, forcing her to confront the spirits of the underworld in an attempt to win him back. To do that you’ll need to work your way through the distinctive pixel art biomes – each of which comes with its own enemies, cards, and beasts to fight – in search of a way to free him. You’re assisted by your spirit animal, whose guidance is just as elliptical and mysterious as the environments you wander.

Like the Souls games, Death Howl refuses to spell anything out for you, and that includes how to play. First impressions are that it’s literally impossible, Ro dying quickly in only her second encounter with the magical creatures of the forest. What it doesn’t explain, but you soon learn, is that you can return to sacred groves, all of which are marked on your map, to heal after battle.

They behave like FromSoftware’s bonfires, returning hit points and letting you acquire new skills. They also resurrect every nearby enemy you’ve killed. That’s actually extremely useful because when they die, enemies drop crafting materials that you use to create new cards to add to your deck, making Ro incrementally more powerful in battle.

It’s a peculiar game to play, and we certainly spent the first few hours thinking we must be missing something significant. There are few games that force you to grind before you’ve even really figured out their systems, but Death Howl does just that. In the opening hours, the only way we found to make ourselves viable in battle, was to repeat the first few encounters multiple times, returning to a sacred grove to recuperate before heading back out to fight, gather loot and craft cards.

Combat has something in common with Into The Breach. Although that had a sci-fi setting, and a far smaller selection of units, both sides’ attacks had specific patterns to their firepower as it spread across its grid, along with after effects like knockback, or setting things on fire. Death Howl’s cards are similarly complex, with some working at range and others requiring you to make sacrifices. In your starter deck, that includes surrendering some of your shield capability for an instant boost to defence or disposing of a card from your current turn’s selection in return for a ranged hit.

It means every time you craft a new card, its synergies and demands need to be tested and understood before it becomes useful. Cards also interact with totems, which give Ro extra perks, up to four of which can be equipped simultaneously once you’ve unlocked all their slots. It’s a system that offers an expansive depth and range of potential approaches in any given encounter.

Enemies respawn in exactly the same places and configurations after each trip to a sacred grove, which lets you refine your strategies against them, as you gain new cards and learn how best to use them. Since battles are turn-based, there’s no need to hurry any part of the process, yet despite that lack of pressure there are many moments where you kick yourself for hastily making a play, realising just afterwards that there was a better option.

As well as providing inspiringly different looking backdrops to your exploration, the biomes that make up Death Howl’s world bring their own modifiers, providing cover or slowing down enemies in marshes. You’ll also find the game’s plot unfolding as you search. Unlike Hades and its sequel, which kept story beats safely fenced off from their roguelite gameplay, conversations and discoveries abound as you travel and fight.

It’s a dark place, both literally and metaphorically, the map boiling out of the blackness as the screen follows your motion. Its, also Soulslike in the way its lore is revealed to you in tiny pieces, each of which makes little sense on its own, but that gradually start to reveal a pointillist picture of what’s happening, and Ro’s situation within it.

Death Howl is no place for dabblers. Its complexity and refusal to reveal anything without extracting a high price for it, along with multiple interacting systems that jointly affect the outcomes of its turn-based battles, demand concentration and experience. Nothing comes easily, which makes victories all the sweeter in this strange and wonderfully idiosyncratic game.

Formats: PlayStation 5 (reviewed), Nintendo Switch, Xbox Series X/S, and PC
Price: £17.99
Publisher: 11 bit studios
Developer: The Outer Zone
Release Date: 19th February 2026
Age Rating: 12

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Square Enix’s retro-inspired role-playing game series gets a prequel but does this new HD-2D title justify its lengthy running time?

Octopath Traveler 0 is an odd contradiction as a video game. On one hand, it’s intriguingly novel as, in Square Enix’s own words, it ‘is inspired by story elements and gameplay ideas’ from ongoing mobile prequel Champions Of The Continent, with all the free-to-play elements stripped out in favour of a more traditional, premium experience.

On the other hand, though, it is a disappointingly safe follow-up to the original Octopath Traveler from 2018 and its 2023 sequel, seemingly intent to stick to what it knows, with very few new ideas or innovations to make it truly stand out.

This highlights a problem when it comes to critiquing video game sequels that rigidly adhere to the formula of their predecessor. If it’s more or less the exact same game, but that previous game was good to begin with, is it fair to condemn it for its lack of originality when by all accounts it’s still fun to play?

As we explored in our preview, Octopath Traveler 0 will feel like returning home for established fans; where everything’s exactly as you remember it, except there’s a new air fryer and some of the sofa cushions have been replaced.

The turn-based battles work identically, as you break enemies’ shields by targeting their weaknesses and spend boost points to increase the damage of your attacks. We’ve always praised the battle system for how tactical it is, and the amount of freedom offered in how you build your party, which is only accentuated by the fact that you now have up to eight characters at once in a fight.

They’re divided between a front and back row, with only those in the front able to perform actions, but they can be swapped with whoever’s placed behind them where they’re safe from enemy attacks. This means positioning is just as important as who’s in the party and when combined with the more than 30 characters available to recruit, there’s a lot of room for experimentation.

We wondered if eight-man parties would make battles too overwhelming, but since each party member has their own distinct role, it’s easy to memorise who can do what. Even those that share job classes are built in different ways. For example, Phenn and Delitia are both hunters, but whereas Phenn is a tank who draws enemy aggro, Delitia focuses on attacks that lower the target’s stats.

There’s no multiclassing this time, but the game makes up for that by letting you acquire extra equippable skills, allowing party members to use attacks or passive abilities they can’t learn otherwise, to cover blind spots in your strategy.

It is immensely satisfying seeing your efforts pay off during boss battles. The random enemy encounters should rarely give you trouble as long as you’re sufficiently levelled, but boss fights are consistently tough, with each having their own strategies to contend with, like changing their weaknesses or inflicting status ailments that can only be removed by breaking their defences. They also hit like a stampeding rhino, so having eight party members instead of four doesn’t give you the advantage you might imagine.

However, this is all par for the course for this series. Even the story structure is the same, with multiple story routes to pursue that are all seemingly unrelated but start to come together by the end. Instead of playing as one of eight protagonists with their own storylines, though, you control only a single, customisable character.

The pixel art graphics mean character customisation isn’t super deep visually, when compared to something like Elden Ring, but it’s a neat novelty all the same, that almost makes us yearn for a dedicated Octopath tabletop game. No options are gender locked and you get to give them a little backstory that determines their starting skills and even their favourite food. And while you can go the whole adventure with only one of the available eight job classes, you can eventually unlock the remaining seven.

Unfortunately, in cut scenes, your character is completely mute, which means they’re devoid of personality and require other characters to explain how they’re feeling in any given situation. Ironically, despite being the fabled chosen one, they often feel like a glorified extra in other peoples’ stories, even when chasing after the villains responsible for their hometown’s destruction.

Speaking of, Octopath Traveler 0’s most distinguishing gimmick is getting to rebuild the town from scratch, which serves as its own storyline. You’re initially very limited in what you can build and where, but it’s quite layered since you can add plenty of cosmetic flourishes and even alter the terrain.

It’s well worth spending time on, since not only do your options drastically open up over time, you can invite villagers from other towns who, when housed, will regularly supply items or money. Plus, you can build facilities such as a ranch for gathering ingredients to cook stat boosting meals and a training ground to keep your benched party members levelled up. The game is also kind enough to tell you where you can gather the specific resources needed when you want to build something, which is quite the time saver.

That said, Octopath Traveler 0 is still a huge time sink. Between the different storylines, rebuilding the village, and multiple side quests, it will take hours (over 100 according to Square Enix) to see everything. This is a double-edged sword, since even after 60 hours we were growing exhausted, as so much of the story follows the exact same structure.

Nearly every chapter involves simply going through a small dungeon and fighting a boss at the end, with a visit to a new town thrown in occasionally, which is precisely what the last two games did as well. Twice we thought we had approached the end, only for the game to throw another story quest at us.

It doesn’t help that none of the storylines are particularly compelling. They have their moments, but we struggled to be invested in any of them when they’re filled to the brim with age old cliches, overwrought voice-acting, and nuance-free villains. There’s nothing necessarily wrong with one-note bad guys who are fun to hate, but the game goes to such extreme lengths to highlight how evil they are, it becomes more comical than horrific.

Anyone who just wants more Octopath Traveler will be plenty satisfied with Octopath Traveler 0 since, at its core, its functionally identical to what came before. But after three games with barely any innovation or meaningful changes to the formula, the series already feels like it’s running on fumes and is either incapable of evolving beyond one-game gimmicks or stubbornly refuses to step out of its comfort zone.

Even the HD-2D graphics, while still pretty (the sprite work for bosses is a highlight), have long lost their novelty now that Square Enix has made so many other games with the same engine. What was once a delightful nostalgic throwback has ironically become old hat.

It wouldn’t be a bad thing if Octopath Traveler 0 led to more mobile games being reimagined as traditional console/PC releases, devoid of microtransactions and gacha mechanics, particularly ones that have since shut down like NieR: Reincarnation. However, it’s just as likely that any success Octopath Traveler 0 sees will only encourage Square Enix to pump out another safe sequel.

Octopath Traveler 0 is by no means a bad game, and retains everything we like about the series, but apart from the lack of innovation it’s very repetitive and unnecessarily bloated. If the series is committed to staying in the past then we fear it’s only a matter of time before even the most avid fans start to tire of playing the same game over and over again.

Formats: Nintendo Switch 2 (reviewed), PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch, Xbox Series X/S, PlayStation 5, and PC
Price: £49.99
Publisher: Square Enix
Developer: Square Enix and DokiDoki Groove Works
Release Date: 4th December 2025
Age Rating: 12

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After a wait of 18 years there’s finally a new Metroid Prime game on Nintendo Switch, but will it live up to the hopes and expectations of its fans?

We feel certain that Metroid Prime 4 is going to make a lot of people very angry. It is not a great game, but it is certainly not a terrible one either and while at times it barely resembles a Metroidvania at all, we did have a lot of fun with it. However, it may be party to some of the most baffling design decisions we’ve ever seen in a Nintendo game, and we’re not just talking about Myles MacKenzie.

What makes this belated sequel so peculiar is that the most controversial elements are so very obviously not what long-time fans would want, such that their presence almost feels like a form of trolling. Many will, not unreasonably, accuse the game of being dumbed down but it still doesn’t seem like something that is likely to attract a mainstream audience, in what should’ve been a clear-cut case of giving fans what they want or just not making the game at all.

We’ll discuss Beyond on its own merits – which are many and interesting – but we’ll warn you now that if you’re a veteran Metroid Prime fan this is not the game you were hoping it would be.

Although it’s been a long time since a new Metroid Prime, there has been the more recent Metroid Dread, which is an excellent example of the original 2D style of the franchise. There was also Metroid Prime Remastered in 2023, which was so good it almost felt like a full remake – which is no less than it deserves, as Metroid Prime 1 is one of the few games we’d consider almost literally perfect (Super Metroid on the SNES is another).

The genre name of Metroidvania is a portmanteau of Metroid and Castlevania, although that’s always flattered Castlevania’s input. Metroid is the true root of the concept, of an action platformer where progress is regularly blocked until you have a specific tool or weapon. This often necessitates a lot of backtracking and careful exploration, as you learn to use your increasing range of abilities in unusual ways.

Apart from being first person, the Metroid Prime games have all worked in that same way and at first it seems as if Beyond will as well. After a brief introductory level, the first main area of the game is very reminiscent of the forest section at the start of Metroid Prime 1. At that point we began to assume that Beyond would follow the pattern of many other belated sequels and simply rehash the first game.

To a degree that is what happens, as there are very few genuinely new ideas or gimmicks here. You gain psychic powers early on, but this really doesn’t amount to anything other than having the word ‘psychic’ before traditional abilities like psychic grapple or psychic spider ball (for crawling up surfaces when you transform into a morph ball).

You can detect otherwise invisible platforms and perform very limited telekinesis with motes that power machinery, but these moments are rare and involve no skill or problem-solving. In fact, there’s very little in the way of substantial puzzles at all. There are obstacles but they never stretch or test you in the way the older games did. The only thing that comes close is the new control beam, whose projectiles you can control remotely, but after being introduced early on it’s barely ever required again.

Beyond’s troubled development is well documented, with the game having restarted development from scratch in 2019, but the final product gives every impression of having been patched together from multiple different versions. There’s nothing to suggest that’s actually what has happened, but it’s what it feels like.

Once you get out of the nostalgia heavy first area you then emerge into an open world desert which is filled with… almost nothing at all. There’s a (very small) handful of temples to power up your elemental beam weapons, and some ruins you have to explore before the final battle, but most of the desert is completely empty, with only a few listless enemies putting in an occasional appearance and who often disappear before you can finish them off – as if they find the area boring too.

This is a shame because the motorcycle you use to traverse the desert is a lot of fun to ride, with wonderfully bouncy suspension, but there’s nothing to do with it but drive in a straight line to where you’re going next. And while at first it seems like you can progress through the game in a non-linear fashion your options are far more limited than they first appear, as you explore each area more or less in turn.

If this is all starting to sound bad, we haven’t even got to the most controversial aspects yet. Metroid has never had much in the way of complex plots, but this one is especially simple. Basically, you’re stranded on an alien planet and you need to get five keys to get home. And that’s it.

Sylux, who Nintendo has been hyping up for years as a deadly rival to series protagonist Samus Aran, barely appears in the game under normal circumstances, just a little at the beginning and the end, and says maybe three sentences in total, none of which explain who he is or what he wants. If only everyone else in the game was as laconic though, as throughout the game – basically one per area – you meet a new ally who absolutely will not stop talking.

Myles MacKenzie, who proved so controversial in the previews, is the first and most annoying but one of the others is a pair of soldiers who escort you through almost the entirety of one of the areas, leaving no doubt as to where exactly you have to go. That’s nothing compared to the final full level though, which is completely linear, with almost no Metroidvania elements, and has the whole crew following you along for most of it.

For those not familiar with Metroid, one of the key appeals is its melancholic atmosphere and sense of isolation (the original was heavily influenced by the film Alien – to the point where one of the main bosses was called Ridley), which Beyond purposefully takes a hatchet too. If you sat down and timed it, you are on your own for the majority of the time but it doesn’t feel like it, especially when Myles, who remains your main contact, is making unwanted suggestions about what to do next on the radio.

And yet that penultimate level is actually very entertaining. It begins to take on an almost horror movie tone, as you’re pursued by hordes of monsters and the game seems to be trying to channel the film The Descent, of all things. It never comes close to exceeding its 12 age rating but it’s neatly handled and there’s some interesting plot developments that, predictably, the game undoes immediately, but which do hint at the more serious narrative it could’ve been.

One of the greatest frustrations is that the game could’ve worked with the set-up it has, except one of the primary problems is that the script and voice-acting is so basic, almost like an 80s children’s cartoon. It’s so unsophisticated you never for one moment think of the characters as actual people.

That includes Samus, who is kept mute the entire time. This seems to be in imitation of Link, but it doesn’t make sense in context. Link does talk in the Zelda games, you just don’t hear him: all the characters talk as if he’s just replied to them and it’s left to you to imagine what he said. Samus just nodding at people, or outright ignoring them, in Beyond makes her look incredibly rude or as if she physically can’t speak.

Beyond is such a muddle of good and bad ideas that even now we’re not sure what to make of it. It has some great boss battles but while there’s technically dozens of creatures in the game only one is persistently aggressive and is used so often, with minor variations, it feels like the only enemy.

The simplified exploration and puzzle-solving is so strange, given that not only did Metroid Dread not pull its punches but it was the most successful entry in the franchise so far. Beyond gives the impression of being purposefully dumbed down to reach a wider audience and yet the game has virtually no checkpointing – so you can easily lose 30 minutes of progress if you get caught out – and there’s no fast travel at all.

Retreading your steps in the opening area was beginning to turn us nuts so we can only imagine how newcomers are going to respond to it. They may be drawn in by the graphics at least, which considering this is a Switch 1 game at heart are exceptional. The Switch 2 version looks great and while the mouse aiming controls are purely optional, they do frequently come in handy, especially in some of the trickier boss fights.

When the game works it works well and Beyond makes a convincing argument for a more action-orientated spin-off series, with enjoyable action, well-designed levels, and impressive visuals. The problem is that this isn’t a spin-off, it’s a numbered sequel to one of the most critically acclaimed games of all time.

Why Nintendo is purposefully trying to rile up fans, of what has always been a relatively niche franchise, we do not know. It’s been a long wait for Metroid Prime 4 and while the end result is fairly entertaining the fallout from its release is likely to be anything but.

Formats: Nintendo Switch 2 (reviewed) and Nintendo Switch
Price: £49.99/£58.99
Publisher: Nintendo
Developer: Retro Studios
Release Date: 4th December 2025
Age Rating: 12

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The publisher behind Streets Of Rage 4 and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge returns with the greatest Marvel beat ‘em-up ever made.

Video games don’t need to be complicated to be fun or worthwhile. There’s equal artistry at play in making a good game out of a concept with only limited interactivity, as you can plainly see when comparing arcade lightgun games, 2D shooters, or the currently en vogue scrolling beat ‘em-up.

Thanks to indie developers, the idea of strolling left to right across a 2D level, punching and kicking everyone in your way, has never entirely disappeared from the video game landscape, especially as it’s never really had any kind of modern 3D equivalent. Although the genre’s current popularity is almost entirely down to one company: French publisher Dotemu.

They were behind the excellent Streets Of Rage 4 and the slightly disappointing Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge. The developer of the latter is also making this, but while their previous work was shallow even by the standards of the genre, Marvel Cosmic Invasion is about as complex as the concept can really get, without overcomplicating things. And it’s a ton of fun whether you care about superheroes or not.

They’re not usually clearly delineated but Marvel (and DC) has different levels of superhero intrigue, from fighting bank robbers with street level characters to sci-fi adventures in space and battling godlike beings in the cosmic side of the universe. This game primarily deals with the sci-fi middle ground, with the main villain being the insect-themed Annihilus. His incursions on Earth and other planets leads to a team-up of many different Marvel heroes, with up to four people playing at once.

We wouldn’t claim to be Marvel Comics experts, but the line-up does seem slightly odd, as there’s a lot of characters we wouldn’t associate with cosmic Marvel at all, like Wolverine and Iron Man, but it’s completely missing any of the Fantastic Four, Inhumans or Eternals. The Guardians of the Galaxy representation is also very limited, and while technically there is a Captain Marvel, in the form of Phyla-Vell, there’s no Carol Danvers. In comic books everyone goes into space at some point, but this does seem a borderline random selection of playable characters.

What’s great about the line-up is that all the characters are impressively varied, with some that can fly and all of which have different types of dodge or block moves. Their standard punches and kicks are all different, but there’s also a character specific hero attack (which can usually be charged) and a special move that can only be activated when you have enough focus.

So, for example, Captain America’s shield works great at blocking and countering, but is also super fun to ping between multiple enemies at once. Rocket Raccoon’s hero attack is an increasingly large gun, depending on how long you hold down the button, while She-Hulk has a wide area of attack for her various wrestling moves. Meanwhile, Phoenix can telekinetically draw enemies towards her, before she gets her punches in, and Beta Ray Bill (Thor’s alien pal) is the tank-like bruiser of the group.

Compared to a one-on-one fighting game it’s still simple stuff but for a beat ‘em-up it’s surprisingly involved and enough so that you’ll be picking characters based on their abilities, and not just what they look like. You actually choose two characters whenever you start and can tag team between them at any point, either to give them a chance to heal a recoverable portion of health or to unleash team-up attacks.

The game is very obviously inspired by the early Marvel Vs. Capcom games, with a similar 2D art style and as many cheeky nods as it can get away with. Although various other classic beat ‘em-ups also get references, such as beating up goblin-like enemies with a sack over their shoulder to get power-ups, just like Golden Axe.

Each level has three Achievement-like objectives to complete, such as making use of a specific character’s move or navigating a section of the level without getting hit, that both adds an extra challenge and helps to teach you the nuances of each character’s abilities.

The graphics are fantastic throughout: even better than Shredder’s Revenge and all the more impressive for the constantly changing settings, from the high-tech streets of Wakanda to a very welcome trip to the dinosaur-filled Savage Land or a planet being ravaged by Galactus.

In terms of Marvel sightseeing, it’s near perfect and while the storytelling is extremely basic there’s some occasionally funny dialogue, such as when She-Hulk – who in the comics was breaking the fourth wall long before Deadpool – quips about all the monster cameos in one level.

Most of the enemies are bug-related, which threatens to get monotonous but is still much better than Shredder’s Revenge in that regard. What’s also different is that Cosmic Invasion can be fairly tricky. You need to keep your wits about you at all times, but the boss battles in particular are often quite hard.

This becomes a problem when playing on your own because there’s no checkpoints and since you probably won’t struggle with the normal scrolling sections the second or third time, it becomes a bit of a chore to wade through those only to get beaten by the boss again. That’s more a consequence of playing on your own than anything else, because if you’ve got co-op friends with you then you can divvy up the responsibilities, instead of having to do everything yourself.

Marvel Cosmic Invasion seems about as complicated as a scrolling beat ‘em-up can get without becoming something completely different (something like Absolum, in fact, which is also published by Dotemu but is more of a roguelike, with light role-playing elements). In terms of taking the original concept of a beat ‘em-up as far as it can go, this gets almost everything right.

It has lots of variety, a modicum of depth, and it can be picked up and played by anyone, no matter their gaming experience, within seconds. If Marvel Cosmic Invasion had been an actual arcade game, back in the 90s, we would’ve spent a silly amount of money on it. And there’s no greater compliment you can give a beat ‘em-up than that.

Formats: PlayStation 5 (reviewed), PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch, Xbox Series X/S, Nintendo Switch 2, and PC
Price: £26.99
Publisher: Dotemu
Developer: Tribute Games
Release Date: 1st December 2025
Age Rating: 12

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