The Best Nintendo Switch Lite Games for 2024

PUBG kicked off the battle royale craze, and Fortnite took the genre’s popularity to new heights, but Apex Legends might be the best of the bunch when it comes to raw gameplay. As the developer behind Titanfall, Respawn knows how to make guns that feel great to shoot. The colorful cast of characters and their unique abilities open up wonderful strategic possibilities. Even better, smartly designed communication tools let you coordinate with your team without saying a word. On a Switch Lite, you can enjoy the novelty of portable Apex, and let the small screen hide some of the visual shortcomings.

I’ve always felt that the difference in quality between the maligned Assassin’s Creed III and its pirate party prequel Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag wasn’t quite as ocean-vast as others claimed. But Black Flag is a better game, brilliantly centering the open-world experience on navigating the high seas. The islands! Sea shanties! The anarchy! Simply on a technical level, performance is improved on Switch compared to part three’s port. As far as the bonus games go, Assassin’s Creed Rogue is a fun flip on the franchise’s usual morality, but the real standpoint is the anti-slavery mini epic Freedom Cry DLC.

Atari has every right to feel pride in its video game legacy. The company practically invented gaming as we know it. Atari 50: The Anniversary Celebration is a remarkable piece of games preservation. Not only can you play lovingly remastered versions of more than 100 classic Atari games across multiple consoles, but you can also learn more about the history behind them by listening to interviews and watching behind-the-scenes footage. Truly, this belongs in a museum.

Bayonetta Origins: Cereza and the Lost Demon isn’t a hard-hitting, nonstop action game like the titles in the mainline Bayonetta trilogy. Instead, this is a relatively relaxed adventure game full of puzzles and gorgeous storybook visuals. Young witch Cereza teams up with a young demon, Cheshire, to tackle challenges neither could complete alone. Although the combat isn’t quite as complex as other Bayo releases, there’s still plenty of flair to the faerie fights. On Switch Lite, the cozy storybook vibes feel even more intimate.

BioShock: The Collection brings together three of the most striking and politically charged single-player shooters of the last generation. The internet is crawling with thinkpieces with how these games explore extreme philosophies in otherworldly retro sci-fi locations. Take on lumbering Big Daddies in the libertarian underwater dystopia of Rapture in BioShock 1 and BioShock 2. Shoot crows from your hands as you escape the floating hypernationalist nightmare city of Columbia in BioShock: Infinite. This collection also includes all the DLC chapters, which are arguably better than the full games.

Bloodroots is another top-down, lightning-fast murder spree clearly descended from Hotline Miami. Instead of the glitzy grime of urban Florida, your carnage takes place across rustic, vaguely medieval fantasy/Weird West landscapes. Your weapons are more primitive, too. In fact, they usually break after just a few hits, and the combat rhythm revolves around quickly finding a replacement. Fortunately, you use not just just axes and swords, but wagon wheels and harpoon guns, too. Each weapon has its own unique finisher. Using different weapons in different platforming situations forces you to think about more than just killing.

Before Destiny, Borderlands had the novel idea of combining action-packed first-person shooting with the long-term role-playing mechanics of a Diablo-esque game. After all, guns make for great loot. So, this lengthy collection of last-gen games plays especially great on a system you can enjoy in many short bursts over an extended period. The cel-shaded art style also holds up nicely a decade later. The shooting itself isn’t quite as satisfying as I expected, but gyro aiming on Switch helps a lot. Play this before Eli Roth makes his inexplicable Borderlands movie.

Many games let you kill with a sword, but in Boyfriend Dungeon you can kiss your sword. One part roguelite dungeon crawler, one part dating sim/visual novel, Boyfriend Dungeon skillfully blends both genres to deliver action-packed combat alongside emotional character-driven storytelling. Just be aware that physical violence isn’t the only way to hurt someone.

Indie games can find great success delivering spiritual successors to classic games forgotten by their original makers. Nintendo still releases Paper Mario games, but the spin-off franchise barely resembles its initial role-playing game self. You can argue whether or not that’s good or bad, but now classic Paper Mario fans can just play Bug Fables: The Everlasting Sapling. It has everything they want: a cute cut-out art style, a charming and well-written story, and unique insect companions with clever turn-based battle attacks. Fighting massive spider bosses with bee boomerangs, beetle horn thrusts, and ant ice blasts is the A Bug’s Life meets Final Fantasy we never knew we needed.

First of all, Duke Nukem being in this game for no reason whatsoever is the best crossover of its kind since Star Fox in Starlink: Battle for Atlas. It helps, too, that Bulletstorm is an exponentially better game than, say, Duke Nukem Forever. After crash landing on a planet full of crazed feral space tourists the game just gets right to the point and tells you to slaughter them all. There’s even an in-game explanation for the points you earn to unlock new skills. The shooting itself is tight, but the combat’s real creativity comes from the push-pull action of reeling in enemies with your whip and brutally Sparta kicking them away. The world is a canvas of carnage, and a good-looking one that at.

If you want no-nonsense cowboy shootout action that’s a little less boring than Red Dead Redemption 2, here’s Call of Juarez: Gunslinger. If anything, my biggest complaint is that the inherent limitations of old guns (limited ammo capacity, questionable accuracy and range, and weirdly drawn out duels) restrict the otherwise frantic and fun shootouts. Fortunately, accumulated experience opens up upgrades for more seamless slaughter by shotgun. The subtle cel-shaded look and flashback framing device adds a nice layer of saucy spaghetti western style.

Pokémon doesn’t have a monopoly on monster catching. Cassette Beasts is a stylish, indie RPG that puts its own spin on collecting creatures and pitting them against each other in combat. The open world has many quests, the fighting mechanics have the extra depth that experienced players crave, and the story veers off in cool, surreal directions. Most importantly, there are some great monster designs, like ghostly sheep and living bullets. Playing on Switch Lite brings back even more Game Boy memories.

Castlevania Advance Collection combines several games from the vampire-hunting franchise’s handheld history. It lets you replay Aria of Sorrow, Circle of the Moon, Harmony of Dissonance, and Dracula X. Plus, new accessibility modes make it easier than ever to slay the undead. If you’re looking for the best place to start, Aria of Sorrow might rival Symphony of the Night for best Castlevania ever. 

As far as weird pinball-based action games go, Creature in the Well makes Yoku’s Island Express look downright traditional. In this sketchy wasteland, you travel through different dungeons playing hack and slash pinball tables. Your “score” is an energy currency that unlocks new rooms, giving you a lot of freedom with how to proceed. Between the constant projectiles and ability to charge and aim shots, it’s like you have multiball all the time. Or imagine an entire game made of that boss fight trope where you and the enemy hit a ball of energy back and forth like tennis. As novel as this all is though, the concept is maybe stretched just a little too thin by the end.

It’s easy to dismiss Darksiders: Genesis as a cheap Diablo clone, another theft from a franchise that has no shame taking from the greats. Although Darksiders: Genesis asks you to crawl through dungeons and score loot, it’s way closer to its traditional third-person, action-adventure big brethren than an RPG. You still have elaborate combos systems, only now melee and projectile attacks are split across the two co-op characters. It features Zelda-esque environmental puzzles, too. Instead of feeling pared back, the levels are impressively huge. Almost too huge considering how aimless they can often feel. As for the story, while it’s nice to finally see all four horsemen, 10 years later it still feels like the actual plot of this franchise is just constantly in a holding pattern.

Disco Elysium is more than just a video game, it’s a work of art. It’s a burning left-wing political statement in the form of a hilarious and masterfully written detective role-playing game. Build your drunken disaster cop by choosing which voices in your head to listen to (or ignore). Will you solve the murder, or fail to become a functioning human being?

In the 1990s, shooters didn’t need 4K graphics to get your blood pumping. All you needed was a good shotgun. Dusk draws inspiration from classics, such as Quake and Hexen, to create a retro FPS no less entertaining than today’s modern hits. Blast your way through bloody, Lovecraftian nightmares in the thrilling campaign and endless survival mode.

Fire Emblem Engage returns to a more classical style, focusing on tactical gameplay rather than in-depth story elements and relationship mechanics. When the gameplay is this good, though, it’s hard to complain. Team up with famous Fire Emblem faces for devastating combo attacks. Fire Emblem found new life on handhelds, and now that includes the Switch Lite.

DropMix walked so Fuser could run. Harmonix perfected its genius musical mashup technology to deliver a DJ simulator that lets anyone mix and match all sorts of songs for deliriously entertaining results. Finally, we can hear the instruments from Carly Rae Jepsen’s “Call Me Maybe” with the vocals from Smash Mouth’s “All Star.” More than a fantastic game, Fuser is a wildly inspiring creative tool. Take your custom tunes anywhere on Switch.

Gang Beasts is a beat ’em up that ditches crisp combat controls for flailing, physics-based slap fights. More often than not, the comedically chaotic physics system will knock you out before an enemy does. The game is amusing enough in solo mode, but it really shines as a multiplayer party game where you can’t help but laugh as your friend awkwardly tosses you from a roof.

Hades takes the punishing and divisive roguelike genre and masterfully twists it into one of the category’s most addictive games. Fighting your way out of the Greek underworld with randomly changing skills and weapons simply feels incredible. The family drama at the game’s core gives you that extra narrative push to keep going. Plus, everyone is smoking hot.

My problem with roguelikes has always been the lack of real progression. But who’s looking for progression out of a game where you bounce balls off of blocks? So, with its smattering roguelike ideas, Holedown makes an already replayable genre even more addictive. Like Breakout meets Downwell, Holedown tasks you with smashing as many blocks as possible through well-angled shots. Certain blocks absorb more hits than others, and if the slowly rising blocks reach the surface it’s game over. If you’re good enough each run grants you crystals that unlock new skills like extra balls, extra crystal capacity, and extra planets to explore. So, during your next run, you have even more power to dig even deeper. It’s a real virtuous cycle.

Islanders proves that city-building games don’t need to be overwhelmingly complicated, large-scale, and time-consuming to be satisfying. Using just a pack of cards, you’ll develop an empty island into a thriving community. Try to expand as long as you can with your available options. Run out of buildings to place? Just clear the board and try again.

Journey to the Savage Planet is a sci-fi shooter with No Man’s Sky‘s look, Far Cry’s open-world structure, Metroid Prime’s powers and puzzle-solving tasks, and the Tim and Eric‘s wacky infomercial sense of humor. If even just two of those references appeal to you, and you’re willing to accept sporadic bouts of mediocre gunfights, this lean and focused experience won’t waste your time.

Killer Queen is a modern indie arcade game, so of course literally no one has played it. But it’s great! And it’s still great in Killer Queen Black. In this competitive, team-based, pseudo-platformer, you control one of several dutiful workers or a single powerful yet vulnerable queen. Beat the other team by either killing the queen, hoarding enough berries, or moving a snail across the finish line. Keeping track of all of these potential objectives, each moving at different paces, makes each match a fantastic fracas of shifting strategies and skill. On Switch you can play online, including the nifty streaming feature following whichever team is “black” after killing the previous black team. But I do wish the full eight-player local experience didn’t require two whole consoles.

Games industry gossip fiends may remember Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning as how baseball player Curt Schilling failed to turn Rhode Island into a game development hub for his cancelled fantasy MMO. Fortunately, even removed from that drama, it turns out the game was worth saving. Explore lush landscapes. Enjoy surprisingly action-packed combat for a Western RPG. As you discover more about your own fate, sculpt your character into who you truly want them to be.

There’s just nothing like a good gaming grappling hook, and Kunai’s centerpiece is a pair of great gaming grappling hooks. Metroidvania’s live or die based on how fun they make the otherwise intolerable act of backtracking. Swinging through the skies like a 2D pixelated Spider-Man, gracefully transitioning to sword and shuriken combat, makes Kunai just one of the best feeling 2D sidescrollers I’ve played in a while. The level design mostly presents you with clever challenges to overcome with that move set. The art style might be too minimal for its own good, though, perhaps because most of the attention went to the mechanics. The post-apocalyptic world of living computers is a cute conceit but could use just a little more personality.

Loop Hero cuts right to the core of what makes role-playing games so addictive: watching numbers go up. In this minimalist, idle adventure, you don’t directly control your character. Instead, you add new enemies and obstacles to the randomly generated path as your hero constantly walks in a loop. Overcome harsher challenges to obtain better equipment and take on stronger foes. Time goes by fast when it’s just a flat circle.  

In Lost in Random, the combat involves tossing a magical die, Dicey, and that’s not even the strangest thing you’ll see in this game. You play as a young girl, Even, and travel twisted, gothic, Nightmare Before Christmas-style environments to save your sister, Odd, in a world where randomness reigns. Use luck to your advantage by summoning various weapons and spells with your dice points. Delightfully unpredictable fights encourage you to always expect the unexpected, such as challenging an evil mayor to a rap battle.

Metroid Dread doesn’t just continue the 2D Metroid legacy, it continues the handheld 2D Metroid legacy. It’s a direct sequel to Metroid Fusion on the Game Boy, so this beautiful, bone-chilling, alien adventure plays perfectly in the palm of your hand.

Monster Hunter World introduced millions of people to the already-famous franchise by streamlining the controls and upping the production value. Monster Hunter Rise takes many of those innovations, like seamless open worlds and convenient quality-of-life improvements, and puts them in the portable format where the franchise has always excelled. New additions include canine companions, versatile grappling hook maneuvers, and a general speed boost that lets you mow down massive monsters faster than ever before.

Mortal Kombat 11 is a game you want to play on the big screen, beating your friends into a bloody pulp while they sit next to you. However, the Mortal Kombat 11: Aftermath expansion adds new material that even portable players can enjoy. The single-player story epilogue brings new characters and new twists to the main tale’s time-travel shenanigans. Plus, the smaller screen makes it harder to notice graphical downgrades on DLC characters Fujin, Sheeva, and RoboCop.

The only thing more impressive than No Man’s Sky’s infinite universe is exploring that infinite universe on the go. On Nintendo Switch, No Man’s Sky includes all the substantial additions that developer Hello Games offered for free since 2016, from organic spaceships to custom difficulty options. The only thing you lose is multiplayer and settlements, so get ready to explore cool planets. 

Finally, a video game about pancakes. Nour embraces the simple tactile thrills of looking at good food and messing around with it. Make sprinkles rain from the sky onto a tub full of ice cream. Press a button to pop up the toast from the toaster. Stir tasty drinks. Nour is more of an artistic aesthetic experience than a game, a nifty interactive screensaver, but it’s still delicious. 

For whatever reason, the original Oddworld: Strangers Wrath was the game that almost got me to buy an original Xbox. Just something about this grizzled sasquatch cowboy and his critter ammunition really spoke to me as a kid. Playing the game now, it’s definitely a game from 2005. But it’s a good game from that earlier era. Even if there’s not that much difference between shooting bees and skunks versus shooting bullets and smoke bombs, wouldn’t you rather shoot bees? The different strengths of each weapon make bounty hunting feel like actual hunting. The themes of nature versus industry that Oddworld has always embraced feel especially appropriate in a Western setting.

This new Panzer Dragoon is a remake of the cult classic original from the Sega Saturn. Like fellow mid-priced recent remakes of mid-90s early 3D games Crash Bandicoot and Spyro the Dragon, this game paints lavish visuals on top of what’s still a pretty obviously rudimentary skeleton. Fly through cyber-fantasy landscapes on your dragon and shoot down everything around you. That’s about it. The on-rails missions (familiar to any Star Fox fans) won’t take much time to get through unless you replay them for high scores. Along with the updated graphics, this remake sports an alternative modern control scheme making it much easier to move, aim, shoot, and rotate the camera to always have the best view of the enemy.

I already went through the looking glass playing PC Building Simulator with folks who actually build and test PCs for a living here in the PCMag office. Now, things get extra meta when this game about building the beefiest rigs possible comes to the weakest modern console. But it’s not just a lark. With the real-world brands and in-depth construction mechanics, the game gives you creative freedom and an actually realistic consumer-tech education. The boot errors I encountered while messing around with liquid cooling definitely gave me flashbacks to real life. There’s even a little Stardew Valley-esque campaign about running the computer repair shop. Like many sim games, though, the experience is so dry that you must already be very into the hobby being simulated to have fun.

Persona 5 isn’t on Nintendo Switch, but Persona 5 Strikers really is the next best thing. It’s basically a sequel. It takes Persona 5’s stylish art direction and compelling characters, and swaps the turn-based combat with real-time, Dynasty Warriors-like combat. Phantom Thieves still change hearts with elemental Persona attacks, but those attacks look more explosive than ever. Just as with the original game, though, it’s the quiet moments spent with real people that make the experience stick. 

Pokemon Legends: Arceus finally gives the Pokemon franchise its long-overdue reboot. Taking place in the distant past of Diamond and Pearl’s Sinnoh region, you capture and study wild Pokemon in a world where humans still fear the creatures. Vast open fields, revamped battle mechanics, and an utterly addictive approach to exploration make your childhood Pokemon fantasies come to life like never before. On the Switch Lite, the smaller screen lets the painterly art style shine, while masking graphical shortcomings.

Red Wings: Aces of the Sky is a World War I dogfighting game. Barrel rolls, squad attacks, fatal shots, cloud cover, and other abilities give the arcade battles just enough strategic depth to stay engaging. The surprisingly unforgiving difficulty makes you pay attention, too. Main missions can get repetitive, and brief side missions don’t help. The comic book art style also barely masks the barren arenas. Still, shooting down an enemy plane with guns on the verge of overheating and swerving at precisely the right moment to avoid a collision is always thrilling. Illustrated cutscenes with voice-over provide historical context to your skirmishes.

Shadows of the Damned is a forgotten gem of a game, even for cult creator Suda51. With it, he teamed up with legendary Resident Evil 4 creator Shinji Mikami to create a third-person horror shooter. As Garcia Hotspur, you blast through demons with your shape-shifting skull gun. If you missed out on this B-movie grindhouse romp when it was first released, check out this remaster.

If you were disappointed that the Tony Hawk games don’t star an actual hawk, Skatebird is the skateboarding game for you. The hook is right in the title. Shred your way through pint-sized skate parks, such as someone’s bedroom, as a fine, feathered, flapping friend. Customize your bird to be as adorable as possible. Wonky physics, a bad camera, and thin content prevent Skatebird from dethroning Tony Hawk any time soon, but this is a game where you skate as a bird. You can’t say they weren’t honest. 

One of the best starting points for a great little video game premise is to smash two unlikely ideas together and see how surprisingly well they work together. Snakeybus takes the old-school foundation of Snake, moving a line around a map and making sure it never touches itself, and marries it to something like Crazy Taxi. As you pick up more passengers and deliver them to their destination, the bus gets longer and tougher to avoid. Eventually, the only way to avoid crashing into yourself is to use a limited boost jump. It’s a fun flow state to fall into, but some maps are easier than others. The colorful and relatively simple suburb would have been a much better tutorial for wrapping your head around the idea than the claustrophobic, multi-level dorm room the game starts you in.

Star Wars is having troubles lately, but BioWare’s 2003 RPG Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic remains one of the greatest adventures you can experience in that galaxy far, far away. This HD remaster lets you take your quest for the Star Forge on the go, as you recruit allies and hone your Force powers. Before you play the MMO or the upcoming remake, catch up with the original KOTOR.

Just like its rotting protagonist, no one asked for Stubbs the Zombie to return from the dead, but that didn’t stop it from happening. Powered by the Halo engine of all things, Stubbs the Zombie didn’t set the world on fire when it first launched in 2005, but it holds up surprisingly well in this remaster. Stalking the streets for victims, eating bystanders to grow your zombie army, and unleashing that army against your foes is a genuinely fun power trip. Even the cheesy humor entertains. Short, somewhat repetitive levels go down as easy as tasty brains when you play on the go. 

The team behind the excellent, early Switch game Graceful Explosion Machine takes that same, immaculate approach to arcade action and applies it to the beat-‘em-up genre. Switching between various attacks, from high-flying uppercuts to twisting ground kicks, feels like playing Bayonetta or Devil May Cry in 2D. You even have a gun for extending combos, something I’ve never gotten a handle on in action games until now. Don’t let the soft pastel colors fool you. Besting enemy hordes is a tough task. Yet, the combat’s fluid, juggling nature, which tasks you with considering the entire playfield, makes perfect runs feel tantalizingly possible.

Bowser’s Fury takes 3D Mario in a bold and radical direction that we hope becomes the franchise’s new normal. More than a sandbox game, Bowser’s Fury lets you explore a dense open world that’s full of tight platforming challenges. The fact that this is just the bonus game included with an enhanced port of the excellent Super Mario 3D World makes this a must-play package.

He may not be made of paper, but Mario’s original role-playing adventure was a classic on the Super Nintendo thanks to development help from Square Enix. This Switch version gives the game a gorgeous visual overhaul while maintaining the accessible and innovative RPG mechanics that marry Mario so well to this polarizing genre. Adjustable combat difficulty makes this even more welcoming to newcomers. Finally, Geno is back!

The original Tactics Ogre enthralled fans in 1995 thanks to its deep strategy and strong narrative. If you missed out the first time, Tactics Ogre: Reborn gives you another chance to check out this lost classic, the prelude to Final Fantasy Tactics. Just don’t expect hugely revamped graphics. This shouldn’t detract much anyway due to the Switch Lite’s smaller screen.

Psychedelic visuals, hypnotic sound design, mind-blowing advanced mechanics, and transcendental multiplayer modes turned Tetris Effect: Connected into one of the best versions of the already perfect puzzle game. With the game released to Nintendo Switch, you can now take this blocky spiritual journey with you wherever you go.

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim received many mods over the years, but The Forgotten City is so ambitious and acclaimed that Modern Storyteller turned it into its own game. Trapped in an ancient Roman city, you must track down whoever is on the verge of committing a sin, as just one sin will wipe out the entire population due to a godly curse. Solve puzzles, track down leads, and reset the timeline to manipulate events in your favor. Note that this is a cloud game, so you’ll need a constant internet connection.

Skyrim shows that Bethesda’s vast, open-world RPGs are a great fit for Switch. The Outer Worlds may not be as vast, but it delivers the same role-playing delights (if you prefer Fallout’s rusty sci-fi look to the Elder Scrolls’ high fantasy). Besides, developer Obsidian Entertainment is made up of original Fallout developers. They’re just taking back what belongs to them. Recruit memorable companions, complete quests on alien worlds, and witness the comically tragic consequences of capitalism in a universe colonized by corporations. On a purely technical level, this is one of the rougher Switch ports we’ve seen, but recent patches have helped it quite a lot.

It turns out that the “walk around a Myst-esque island solving puzzles” genre is bigger than just The Witness. In The Talos Principle, you play as a religious robot-child who’s tasked by god to solve various island puzzles. Sure! The puzzles themselves are portable, bite-sized challenges reminiscent of Portal. You navigate little mazes, while manipulating various mechanical traps, such as turrets and roving bombs, to clear a path to the prize. Even better, the game gives you the freedom to tackle puzzles and discover new areas as you please.

As far as Nintendo comparisons go, The Touryst is probably most similar to the cult NES game StarTropics. If you consider that game a Zelda clone, you should consider The Touryst as a tropical Zelda clone, too. The “overworld” is a series of vacation-friendly islands complete with party-goers, photo-ops, and mysterious monuments. Completing puzzles, such as diving underwater to guide fish toward statues, unlocks the monument and its dungeon-esque challenges. It’s all very chill. The tilt-shift voxel aesthetic is absolutely gorgeous, too. Beware the tricky the platforming, though.

Thunder Ray updates the classic Punch-Out!! formula for our modern indie-gaming times. In this intergalactic boxing tournament, you slug your way through towering alien challengers each with their own bizarre abilities. The only way to win is to watch their patterns and fight back with the right timing. You don’t get too many battles here, but they are brought to life through such gorgeous illustrated visuals and animations you’ll want to replay them again and again.

Has it been long enough since Diablo 3 came to Switch? The Torchlight 2’s devs hope so, because this fantasy action-RPG scratches precisely the same loot itch. In fact, before Diablo 3’s various updates, many considered Torchlight 2 the better game. We can see that. Action is snappy, loot is plentiful, dungeons are sprawling, and the quests are suitably epic, yet manageable. You can even team up with a unicorn pet when fighting monsters.

Two Point Hospital is the spiritual successor to a classic, PC management sim called Theme Hospital. It even has the same creators. If you’ve never Theme Hospital, or have no idea what it is, just imagine Roller Coaster Tycoon for hospitals. That premise is more fun than it sounds, thanks to a sense of humor that mocks the potential life-or-death stakes. “Diseases” make patients spew verbal diarrhea or delude themselves into becoming mock rock stars. Sure, they might die and haunt you, but you can just hire a janitor with ghost-busting tech. The easygoing atmosphere makes it a breeze to sink into the surprisingly intuitive management systems.

As the spiritual sequel to Void Bastards, Wild Bastards is another stylish blend of first-person shootouts, immersive sim elements, and roguelike progression. This time, you travel with a band of sci-fi outlaw cowboys, evading the police while rescuing more of your crew. Each Bastard has their own playstyle, from Roswell’s laser rifle to Judge’s hammer. Outside of combat, each planet is a little board game full of places to plunder before making your getaway.

Switch owners already got a taste of XCOM-like, turn-based tactics with the ludicrous Mario + Rabbids: Kingdom Battle crossover game. However, if you’re ready to put aside cuddly mascots and take up a crusade to save humanity from aliens, check out the XCOM 2 Collection. Unforgiving battles push your strategies to their absolute limit, forcing you to fight for every soldier’s life and intelligently invest in new research back at base. Consider hopping straight into the War of the Chosen expansion, which weaves additional content into the original game. With new options, you can make the experience slightly less brutal or really torture yourself.

Xenoblade Chronicles: Definitive Edition is the best version of a great RPG that Nintendo originally didn’t want to bring to America. Exploring the massive open world and enjoying the fast-paced, single-player, MMO combat on the go works much better here than in the downgraded 3DS version. Aside from revamped character models, the visual upgrades from the Wii version aren’t quite as substantial as we hoped. Still, we’ll take this relatively elegant anime affair over the overly complicated and self-indulgent mess that is Xenoblade Chronicles 2.