

The Switch console exclusive earned a 9/10 in our Monster Hunter Rise review.

This time around, though, Monster Hunter felt more approachable than ever before. Make no mistake, Monster Hunter Rise still offered a layered action-RPG experience featuring more than a dozen weapons with unique styles to master, loads of customization features, and increasingly challenging hunts to test your skills. In this respect, Monster Hunter Rise felt more action-packed by removing the tedium and letting you focus on what Monster Hunter is all about. In addition to the Wirebug, Rise introduced the ability to ride Palamutes across the maps to speed up the pace and get you into the thick of the action quicker.
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The Wirebug, essentially a grappling hook, let hunters zip around the richly detailed locales in a flash and made showdowns with the larger-than-life monsters more versatile. Arguably even more dynamic than Monster Hunter World, Rise added a wonderful new mechanic that completely altered the flow of both combat and exploration. While Nintendo Switch owners didn't have the chance to play the Monster Hunter game that catapulted the franchise to mega-stardom, Capcom more than made up for that with Monster Hunter Rise. In the end, for longtime fans like myself, that's probably for the best. "Though the gameplay is refined and new features have been added to the mix, Dread sticks closely to the formula of its predecessors. More than anything else, Metroid Dread feels like going back to a place of comfort after a long time away," Steven Petite wrote. We awarded it an 8/10 in our Metroid Dread review. Metroid Dread brought Samus' winding story arc to a fitting and immensely satisfying conclusion. While Dread followed the familiar Metroid progression, it added some new wrinkles such as the EMMI (killer robots) that Samus had to evade, brand-new suit powers, and more hidden areas than ever before. Dread simply felt incredible in motion, whether you were roaming the varied locales in search of missile packs or taking on your old buddy Kraid in a fight to the death. Metroid Dread hit all the right notes, balancing open-ended exploration with exciting boss battles and tight platforming sequences. While fans continued to wait for Metroid Prime 4, Dread offered a welcome return to side-scrolling action that many Nintendo fans grew up on. Nintendo tasked Mercury Steam with unburying Metroid Dread, a canceled Nintendo DS project, from its grave nearly two decades after the last (brand-new) side-scrolling Metroid adventure was released.

To be clear, it's not surprising that it's great it's just kind of wild that it exists at all. Metroid Dread was the biggest surprise of the year for the Nintendo Switch. For a look across platforms, check out GameSpot's Top 10 Games of 2021. Here are our picks for the five best Nintendo Switch exclusives of 2021. Given all of the standout exclusives that landed on Switch this year, it was difficult to whittle down the list to the best of the best, but that's exactly what we've done here.
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The action-RPG front was covered too with a new entry in Capcom's Monster Hunter series that, at least for the moment, remains only available on Switch.

We received not one, but two deep and engaging (and exclusive) JRPGs in Bravely Default II and Shin Megami Tensei V. Meanwhile, non-Nintendo franchises continued to flourish on Switch. The plumber also picked up a golf club again in Mario Golf: Super Rush, a new high-energy entry in the Mario sports game catalog. Super Mario 3D World + Bowser's Fury brought one of the best Wii U games to Switch and added a wonderful new campaign that showed off how Mario in a larger open-world setting could work. Of course, Nintendo's most iconic mascot jumped in on the fun, too. The trip down memory lane for the Pokemon series continued this fall with the release of Pokemon Shining Pearl and Brilliant Diamond, lovely remakes of the Generation 4 games that were originally released on Nintendo DS. Nintendo also revitalized one of the best Pokemon spin-offs in New Pokemon Snap. Perhaps most notably, 2021 saw the return of side-scrolling Metroid in Metroid Dread. Some of Nintendo's most storied franchises received new games this year for Switch. The Switch is approaching its fifth birthday, and Nintendo has shown no signs of slowing down on its avalanche of games you can only play on the hybrid console. The Nintendo Switch may have been the old guy in the room this year when compared to the PS5 and Xbox Series X, but the Switch arguably stole the show when it came to exclusive games in 2021.
