Space Pioneer: Nintendo Switch review

Space Pioneer: Nintendo Switch review

Developed by Vivid Games
Platform: Nintendo Switch

The run and gun is a simple concept.

Fire your weapon, defeat the bad guys, avoid being killed - it's a basic formula, easy to master, and yet also easy to mess up.

Space Pioneer on the Switch, in truth, falls somewhere in the middle.

It's a basic concept - you're a kind of ranger, mercenary type, who's tasked with simply going to different worlds during various chapters, firing your weapon, killing the creatures and performing simple tasks like taking artifacts, destroying hives and defeating marauding waves before warping out.

Objectives are filtered in to secondary and primary, but all essential to get the relevant stars to open up other planets for you to explore and to try and stop the intergalactic threat that awaits in the background.

Space Pioneer is kind of disposable fun, but yet it also sometimes too shallow to play long term - it's definitely here for the bitesize audience to enjoy, and offers some chances of easy progression because of the short nature of the levels.

Yet once you begin to upgrade, the game takes on newer forms and better weapons aid you in your quests - it's all fairly by the numbers kind of stuff, but it takes on a sort of compulsion that you'd least expect once the need to level up comes in, and the required amount of stars fall short.

Graphically the game is nothing inspirational, but it is fairly passable fare, it's a port that's clearly been smoothed over and one which offers the fun it needs. Upgrades to the weapons and robots are nicely done, and the game itself gives enough of itself as it gets going.

Ultimately, Space Pioneer is a handheld pleasure. It may not reinvent the wheel, or challenge the format, but it delivers what it needs to on the tin.