Review: Endless Ocean: Luminous (Switch) – A Meditative Marine Milieu, But Incredibly Shallow

Endless, unfortunately.

There are a whole bunch of, well, let’s say ‘Wii-centric’ video games from the history vaults that, in theory, seem like they might be a bit of fun to revisit on Nintendo Switch. You know the sort of thing, usually pairing some new-fangled/novelty control scheme with an activity you’d never tried in a game before; making cakes, driving a quad bike…eh…bobsleighing with the Jamaican Olympic team? The Endless Ocean series fits right into this mould and, as it turns out, revisiting its chillaxed dives — even with up to 30 other players in tow — wasn’t a very good idea.

Now, before we get into the negative stuff, let’s start by pointing out that if you’re looking for an incredibly low-energy, low-effort sort of gaming experience where all of the focus is on simply scanning marine life and then reading a tiny informational excerpt about each of them in order to expand your underwater knowledge, this is 100% the game for you. In fact, you’ll likely never find another game more suited to your very specific needs. Please enjoy. For the rest of us, as much as learning about all the amazing creatures that live under the sea is a captivating pursuit, we’re not sure we can justify the price tag given that there is precious little else to do here.

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New Shiren The Wanderer Free Content Update Adds Extra Dungeons, Challenges And More

Dive back in.

Spike Chunsoft’s catchily-titled roguelike RPG Shiren the Wanderer: The Mystery Dungeon of Serpentcoil Island has today landed a new free content update. Yes, it’s available right now.

One of the headline additions this time around is the new Sacred Tree Dungeons, where you will be able to blast through a series of tough dungeons each with its own ruleset (get out as quickly as you can, use as few moves as possible etc.). This can now be found in the Shukuba Beach starting area, for those after a challenge.

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Mortal Kombat 1 Teases DLC Character Homelander And Next Kameo Fighter

A lot more is on the way.

NetherRealm Studios has been busy rolling out new DLC updates for Mortal Kombat 1 and to add to this, Ed Boon has now locked in a release date for the upcoming Kameo character Mavado.

He’ll be arriving next week on 7th May 2024 and was previously teased alongside the DLC fighter Ermac, who was added to the game earlier this month. In addition to this, the co-creator of the Mortal Kombat series has also shared a first in-game look at Homelander from ‘The Boys’:

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Disney Dreamlight Valley’s Free ‘Thrills & Frills Update’ Is Out This Week, Here Are The Patch Notes

More free content & Act II of ‘A Rift in Time’ arrive.

Last week, the team at Gameloft announced Daisy Duck would be joining Disney Dreamlight Valley in the new free content update ‘Thrills and Frills’ on 1st May 2024.

Now, ahead of this update’s arrival, the official patch notes have been detailed. This update also includes Act II of the Disney Dreamlight Valley: A Rift in Time expansion pass. In addition to this are a wide range of bug fixes and optimisations. Here’s the full rundown:

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Upcoming Pixel Art RPG ‘Beyond Galaxyland’ Oozes Ambition And Personality

Launching later this year.

If you’re a fan of sci-fi and RPGs, then you’ll want to keep an eye out for Beyond Galaxyland later this year, because it looks like a doozy.

Created by Chicago-based developer and music producer, Sam Enright, you play as highschooler Doug as he’s whisked off to discover an artificial solar system known as ‘Galaxyland’. You’ll be planet-hopping alonside your adorable gun-toting guinea pig pet Boom Boom and sentient robot Martybot while meeting a plethora of interesting and unique characters.

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Bayonetta Origins Director Empathises With Paper Mario Dev, Suggests Reasons For 30FPS

“I promise you, it was not a decision made lightly”.

We are still a little way off the release of Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door on Switch on 23rd May, but thanks to last week’s hands-on previews, we now have confirmation of the game’s frame rate. Nintendo’s latest remake will run at 30FPS (down from 60FPS on the GameCube original), but this is not a decision that the developers will have made lightly, suggests Bayonetta Origins: Cereza and the Lost Demon director, Abebe Tinari (thanks, My Nintendo News).

The director recently took to Twitter to state that they “can empathise” with the Paper Mario devs, drawing from their personal experience on Bayonetta Origins to explain why the game might not run at the higher frame rate that many were expecting.

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Soapbox: 20 Years On, Pikmin 2’s Waterwraith Remains Nintendo’s Scariest Moment

H2Oh no.

Soapbox features enable our individual writers and contributors to voice their opinions on hot topics and random stuff they’ve been chewing over. Today, Jim is reliving a childhood trauma to mark Pikmin 2‘s 20th anniversary…


To the casual observer, Pikmin must seem like a pretty relaxed experience. Everything is colourful. The characters are cute. There’s even a little dog guy in the latest one. All told, it must just be delightful.

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Microid’s ‘Smurfs – Dreams’ Looks To Serve Some “Serious Super Mario Vibes”

Looks very 3D World-inspired.

When a publisher reveals that its upcoming game gives off ‘Super Mario vibes’ or ‘Legend of Zelda vibes’, we often can’t help but chuckle under our breath, mutter “okay, we’ll see about that”, before scrutinising the trailer and coming up with any excuse as to why that’s not the case.

With Microid’s The Smurfs – Dreams, which the publisher outright states is “serving up some serious Super Mario vibes”, we did the exact same thing. But you know what? Yeah, we can see it. Now, we’re not going to sit here and say that it’s going to be a genre-defining platforming and stand toe-to-toe with some of Nintendo’s best, but it definitely looks like it’s heavily inspired by the likes of Super Mario 3D Land and Super Mario 3D World.

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