We recently asked if there were any Switch games we’d missed which you thought were worthy of a review. Never Stop Sneakin’ was one of the most-requested games, so here we are!

Humble Heart’s Never Stop Sneakin’ attempts to parody the PSOne-era Metal Gear Solid whilst offering up its own rather impressively streamlined take on the stealth genre. Fans of Hideo Kojima’s beloved franchise will instantly recognise the cocky Codec conversations, overwrought music and ludicrously monikered characters here, all presented in a perfectly pitched recreation of the look and feel of late 90’s Metal Gear.

You assume the role of Agent Hummingbird, a top sneaky sneaker who, under the direction of Major Milestone, is charged with infiltrating a series of enemy bases in an effort to put a stop to the nefarious plans of Amadeus Guildenstern who has, quite cheekily, used a time machine to kidnap all the US presidents – past, present and future – and is demanding to be installed as their replacement for all time.

It’s a ridiculous premise with a lot of ridiculous haircuts, and Humble Hearts has done a great job in playing it completely for laughs with codec conversations full of silly dialogue and some nutty cutscenes that genuinely made us laugh on multiple occasions. This is a lovingly-crafted pastiche, for sure, and it’s one that also manages to impress on its own terms.

There are some beautifully simplified sneaking mechanics here – the touchscreen origins of this game are clear to see – that make shooting, throwing various grenades and performing stealth takedowns entirely automatic and context-sensitive, leaving you with only the direction you’re travelling to worry about. If an enemy sentry, turret or camera spots you, as long as you’ve got a bullet or grenade in your inventory, Agent Hummingbird will fire off a lightning-fast and deadly accurate shot to ensure your cover is never blown.

The top-down levels you’ll sneak through here are tiny puzzle mazes filled with security cameras, enemy goons and gun turrets that must be carefully traversed in order to gain intel and ESP – the in-game currency – from a bunch of hackable terminals. You’ll often be charged with securing some hostage or specialist – by simply approaching them – and most missions are topped off with a quick boss battle or two.

It’s straightforward and fairly repetitive stuff but it’s stylishly made and full of fun little nods to its inspiration; you’ll instantly recognise most of the sound effects here from classic Metal /, and dodging in and around locations feels great owing to those sleek and simple controls. There are also a ton of silly unlockable character and weapon skins to keep you busy unlocking as you progress through the campaign here and we thoroughly enjoyed manoeuvring through dangerous enemy territory dressed as an engineer wielding a tactical fish.

Where Never Stop Sneakin’ does run into a little trouble is in its rather unnecessary base building mechanics which rely on you collecting ESP in order to further the construction of your camp and in turn the story. This leads to unavoidable grinding as you progress, meaning you’ll have to replay levels which are already pretty samey and straightforward the first time around, and the whole thing comes off as an attempt to artificially extend the lifespan of a game which really would have suited a much shorter running time. Boss battles also tend to get repeated and we found ourselves tiring of taking on the same helicopter fight several times over for no real reason.

However, unnecessary bloat and misguided grinding aside, Never Stop Sneakin’ is still a fun budget title that nails its ripping of Metal Gear Solid, is crammed full of silliness and has its very own brand of slick and addictive sneaking action at its core.

Conclusion

Never Stop Sneakin’ is a lovingly crafted parody of early Metal Gear Solid games that pairs some genuinely funny dialogue and ridiculous characters and cutscenes with its own brand of impressively slick stealth action. Its levels are pretty repetitive and there’s quite a bit of unnecessary grinding and replaying of missions in an effort to artificially extend the running time but, overall, this is a fun little title that’s perfect for dipping in and out of for a hit of light-hearted tactical espionage action.

When it comes to having a fun day out with some chums you can’t beat a bit of mini-golf (or crazy golf or putt-putt, or whatever you prefer to call it). At the time of writing, however, it’s safe to say that the idea of standing in a small area next to people from a different household is frowned upon at best; luckily, Team17 is here with Golf With Your Friends, in the hope that it can offer the next best thing.

In terms of doing what it says on the tin it’s fair to say that Golf With Your Friends doesn’t pull any punches. Anyone expecting anything other than a golf-themed game with a heavy emphasis on multiplayer would be setting themselves up for disappointment, and with a title like that, they’d only really have themselves to blame. It’s actually even more literal than you’d think, but we’ll address that in a second.

The game contains 11 courses at launch, each with 18 holes, giving nearly 200 holes in total (a twelfth course based on Team17’s prison breakout sim The Escapists is coming soon). Each course has a theme, from sensible ones like a forest and a desert to slightly more off-the-wall offerings like a space station, a volcano and a world made out of sweets. There’s also one based on Worms, because of course there is. Each has its own charm and its own lovely little details, but if we had one criticism it’s that each course only has a single music track that plays on a loop, which can eventually get to you considering it takes roughly half an hour to get through all 18 holes.

The shot process can take a little getting used to: you aim with the right stick, choose your power in advance by moving the left stick up and down, then press A to hit the ball. In some modes, the left stick also applies spin to the ball, which can initially cause some problems; your power is shown as a horizontal gauge on the bottom of the screen so your instinct will be to move the stick left and right to set your power – but that sets the spin instead. Once you get used to it it’s fine, but considering this is a game with a heavy multiplayer focus, it’s not unrealistic to suggest that confusion can break out among some less-experienced players.

This extends to playing the game as a whole, really. Some of the later holes in each course are pretty convoluted and require a fair amount of trial and error before you eventually realise where you’re supposed to go. Eventually, after playing courses a number of times, you’ll remember where the best routes are for each hole and will end up with a better score as a result. Again, though, given that this is designed primarily as a multiplayer game – up to 12 players can take part – the complicated, maze-like nature of some holes means that players with experience will have a clear advantage; there’s no real ‘great leveller’ here that gives everyone an equal chance of victory, something all of the best party games possess.

That’s not to say Golf With Your Friends has nothing going for it, of course: it absolutely does. The level of customisation is impressive, for example, with a huge array of options that go beyond simply choosing your course and the number of players. Most notably, there are five main game modes: Classic, Dunk, Hockey, Explore and Party. Classic goes without saying, while Explore and Party are variations on it; the former turns off time and shot limits while the latter adds quirks like spin, power-ups and the ability to make your ball jump.

Dunk and Hockey, meanwhile, mix things up with varied results. Dunk replaces each hole with a basketball net and makes you jump the ball into the net before you can clear it. This can be extremely tricky because you can’t set the jump height, leading to many a frustrating moment. Hockey, on the other hand, is far more entertaining; this time the hole’s been replaced with an ice hockey goal with a cutout of a goalie randomly sliding left and right to defend it. Naturally, the aim is to score to clear the hole. Hockey is arguably more fun than playing with normal holes because your target is much bigger, allowing for some impressive long-range shots if you’re lucky enough to have the goalie in the opposite corner.

Each of these five modes has even deeper customisation options, allowing you to tweak all manner of bits and pieces. You can choose whether you can collide with opponents’ balls, change the gravity, decide how bouncy the ground is or even choose what size and shape the ball is. Turning it into an egg, a cube or a bauble can have a huge difference on the way it rolls, and while it can be frustrating at times the fact that everyone has the same shape ball means everyone’s struggling together, which makes it a good laugh.

All these options can be taken online, where everyone plays their shots at the same time. This is something of a godsend; it not only keeps online matches within that rough 30-minute duration, but it also adds to the anarchic feel when you see other players’ balls flying all over the place – especially in the more difficult holes where there are plenty of opportunities to mess up and put your ball out-of-bounds. By and large, playing online is great fun, even if the chat option is limited; there are 16 preset things to say, most of which are pretty mild like “oops” and “come on”.

If you plan on playing it online, though, we really do recommend you try to do it with actual friends (see, we told you the title was more literal). In our time spent with the game – including after its launch – each search for a quick online match took absolutely ages. On the occasions when we did find one, we never actually managed to finish all 18 holes in one without everyone else eventually dropping out, leaving us to beat the rest on our own.

It’s a real shame there’s no cross-platform multiplayer; given that it’s been in early access on PC for a couple of years and just launched on Xbox Game Pass, it would have been a great way of pooling together the total userbase. As it is, you’re going to struggle to get a match with a couple of other players, let alone the 12 the game supports.

There’s obviously local multiplayer too, but it has its own flaws. Some can’t be helped: players have to take turns instead of all getting to play at the same time, but when you’re only dealing with one screen you can’t really do anything about that. Others are a little less forgivable, such as the lack of support for single Joy-Con play, meaning you can’t get a two-player game going with just a Switch.

Even more frustrating is the fact that (as far as we can tell) you can’t rename any of the players in local multiplayer; the first player is your username and everyone else is just called Player 2, Player 3 and so on up to Player 12. When a game’s central mechanic involves taking turns then viewing a big leaderboard after each hole, we really wish people were able to enter their own names; instead, there’s likely to be lots of “oooh, I’m right behind Player 6, who’s that again?” and decent helpings of “it’s player 7’s turn”, “that’s you”, “I thought I was 5”. For a game called Golf With Your Friends, it gives an impersonal touch to proceedings; hopefully, this is something that can be added in later.

Conclusion

At its core, Golf With Your Friends is still a decent golf game. Get an online multiplayer game going with some similarly-skilled pals and you’ll have a great time making your way through its weird and wonderful courses (don’t even get us started on the Worms course and the jetpacks you can get). Its main problem is that every time you change these optimum conditions – playing with strangers, playing offline, playing solo, playing with a mix of experts and beginners – you’re going to get diminishing returns from your experience. As long as you take the title literally, you’ll have fun.

For the initiated, baseball is the great American pastime. From the pang of a freshly struck home run to the smell of hot dogs wafting down from the stands, it’s the quintessential U.S. sport. Much like gridiron and basketball, the sport’s recent video game recreations have also become more focused on hyper-accurate realism over anything else. The likes of R.B.I. Baseball 20 has followed the trail blazed by MLB The Show with huge attention to detail, but that focus can too often put off players looking for more of a merciful arcade experience. For those looking for a little more accessibility, the Super Mega Baseball series has become the go-to place on Switch.

Of course, we should point out that the latest addition, Super Mega Baseball 3, isn’t a proper pick-up-and-play experience such as retro classics such as Clutch Hitter or MLB Slugfest, but rather a comfortable middle ground between simulation and silliness. There’s just enough tutorial content to ease you into the game’s rule-set and the nuances of the sport, but a huge amount of depth for those that know the subtle difference between a two-seam and a forkball, or the pros and cons of rotational hits vs. linear.

Super Mega Baseball 2: Ultimate Edition set quite a bar when it jumped onto Nintendo Switch last summer, and this instalment thankfully keeps all the things its forerunner did right – the customisable difficulties, the subtleties of power batting and the sheer level of player customisation options – and simply adds in many of the features that were notably absent or in need of extra flesh. One of the biggies, and something most big-name sports sims simply couldn’t live without, is the introduction of a new and improved Franchise mode.

Now you can oversee a team through multiple seasons rather than just the one, controlling everything from rookie signings all the way to the diet of your players. Yes, you can even have a go at being a sports nutritionist, with your choices affecting player performances on the field. There’s a real joyful sense of humour to how Super Mega Baseball 3 ties this mode together, with the option to send your players to aerobics classes if they’re getting a little slow or assign them to yoga classes for a little extra flexibility. There’s no option for trading, but even without that sort of external economy, this new and improved mode will likely become your biggest time sink.

On the field, Super Mega Baseball 3 is every bit the deep and rewarding experience it was in the previous entry, although a few niggles still persist. While it very much leans into the simulation with the sheer amount of nuance to pitching, batting and running, the developer continues to utilise mini-games to make all of the various mechanics flow into one another. Battling is all about finding the rhythm and sweet spot, pitching centres around timing and angles, and running becomes a chess match of sorts, where you need to weigh up moving your runners between bases at the risk of an out. Baserunners can now move off the base as soon as you initiate a steal, forcing you to watch with bated breath as your players attempt to beat catchers to safety. You can also pull off pickoffs now, but these can sometimes be a little too erratic for their own good.

Fielding is one of the few areas in which Super Mega Baseball 3 still struggles, mainly because it can’t quite decide how much agency it wants to give you. For the most part, fielding is done automatically – mainly because balls are often struck so fast they’re already halfway across the diamond before you can react – with your success of making a quick and secure catch determined by the stats of a given player. Your control of this aspect of the game centres around pitching the ball back to one of the bases on the diamond, with each position represented by a face button. It’s an enjoyable aspect, but one that often feels a little too random.

As a full package on Switch, Super Mega Baseball 3 really isn’t struggling for content. While it doesn’t have the additional DLC bulk of the previous game, the improvements to on-field play and modes more than make up for it. Performance-wise, the game rarely drops the ball, although those semi-cartoonish character models are still a bit of an eyesore – even more so with the blurring that’s been employed to keep it running smoothly on portable hardware. Thankfully, the full support for both local and online co-op play (including in Franchise mode) has been included on Switch, so those with a shared love for the sport will really enjoy sending this semi-simulation out to bat.

Conclusion

What it lacks in hyperrealism and officially-licensed teams, Super Mega Baseball 3 more than makes up for with a carefully adjusted set of physics that are deep enough to cater to RBI Baseball players while offering up the welcome addition of some improved modes. Franchise mode alone feels like a proper extension of the brand, with its irreverent sense of humour lending a welcome nuance to an otherwise content-heavy sports simulation.