Spring will soon… spring. But do you know what else awaits us? Nintendo Life eShop selections and the new February 2024 Readers’ Choice winner.
As always, Nintendo Life staff and contributors decide the top three by internal vote, all from the eShop games we’ve reviewed on the site that were released that month. And then, for Reader’s Choice, all of you lovelies voted for your favorite eShop game that we missed. At the bottom of the article you will see your top three.
Anyway, February was a busy month, wasn’t it? Partner Showcase, shadow-drops — it was a lot of juggling. Let’s see what gems we can get in the eShop this month.
Honorable mentions
As always, below is a list of games that didn’t receive enough votes from Nintendo Life staff and writers to make the top three. They all got at least an 8/10 from us, and even from this shortlist you can see what a good month we had on the eShop.
Nintendo Life Honorable Mentions
Oh, look! It’s Game Freak’s best game, finally on the switch. We’re not talking about Pokémon, but Pocket Card Jockey: Ride On!, a remake of one of our favorite 3DS games here at Nintendo Life. Come on, if you’ve been reading the site, you know we’re mad about this. Solitaire and horse racing make a dream combination, and even if you don’t like the gameplay, the hilarious texts and charming visuals will win you over anyway. We called Pocket Card Jockey: Ride On! “prize pony” in our review and gave it a rating of 9/10.
Obsidian’s medieval murder mystery Pentiment was called a “hidden gem” back on Xbox and PC when it released in 2022. Now it’s on Switch (and PS5), and it’s never been more at home on the little hybrid console. Combining RPG elements with point-and-click gameplay, Pentiment is a true labor of love that celebrates letters, font, the Middle Ages, and damn good storytelling. It scores a 10/10 for us on Switch and we’re glad we waited to try it out.
Well, well, well… we heard you, readers, and you were absolutely right. It’s Balatro fantastic.
Balatro was originally one of the options in our Readers’ Choice vote, but so many of you chimed in to shout about this brilliant roguelite deckbuilder that we gave up and checked it out for ourselves. Cracking poker with tarot cards, planet cards and special jokers is satisfyingly addictive. He just solved the murder mystery in Obsidian one voice in our staff poll, but it’s clear from your votes and his win in the eShop Selects vote that Balatro is a must-play and playing a winning hand.
We gave it a worthy 10/10 in our review. Yes, our second ‘Outstanding’ result in one week! damn it
eShop chooses a reader’s choice winner (February 2024)
WINNER: Golfinite
With late reviews of Balatra and Penny’s Big Breakaway running away with the readers’ poll in first and second place with a very nice 69% of the vote, we’re down the list to the next contender for this month’s Reader’s Choice winner: the golf-like Mario Golfinit.
We’re big fans of the original GBC Mario Golf and this top-down ball-striker (ouch) is certainly playing a role — we’re glad to hear that he’s playing a role as well. There will be a reserved tea time on our wish list.
Reader’s honorable mention
< Nintendo eShop Selects - January 2024
How we decide that our eShop chooses the top three: As we come to the end of each month, the Nintendo Life staff votes on their favorite titles from a list of games selected by the editorial team. To qualify for this list, these games must have been released only as a digital Nintendo Switch eShop title in that particular month and must have been reviewed on Nintendo Life; we select qualifying games based on their ratings.
Staff are then asked to vote for the three games they think deserve to be at the very top of that list; the first choice gets 3 points, the second choice gets 2 points, and the third choice gets 1 point. Those votes are then tallied to create a top three list, with the overall winner claiming that month’s top prize.
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