EDGE Gives Big Walk 9, Splatoon Raiders 8 — Switch 2’s Review Haul

EDGE doesn’t hand out 9s casually. The famously selective magazine has crowned Big Walk with a rare score in issue #427, and Splatoon Raiders’ 8 keeps the Switch 2’s critical momentum rolling. For owners still building a library, these two co-op-forward titles are the kind of reviews that separate must-plays from launch-window filler.

Palworld’s middling 5 and the rest of the scorecard confirm EDGE is still playing by its own rules, but the spotlight belongs to Nintendo’s newest platform. Both top scores describe games that reward short, shared sessions — exactly the kind of gaming a portable console is built for.

Big Walk’s 9 Is an Argument for Short, Shared Sessions

EDGE’s excerpt is unusually personal: getting separated from the group at music festivals, school trips, supermarket aisles, and the companion who asks “where the hell have you been?” That framing — memories, holiday snaps, in-jokes — is the game’s real pitch, and it maps perfectly to Switch 2’s sleep-and-resume rhythm. A 20-minute wander between chores, a longer tabletop session with a friend, a solo walk before bed: Big Walk sounds built for being picked up and put down, not marathoned.

The 9 matters because EDGE doesn’t hand them out lightly. It’s a signal that the game’s gentle, social design holds up over time, which is exactly what portable players need from a library investment. Big Walk isn’t chasing spectacle; it’s chasing memories — and that’s a better fit for handheld gaming than most 9-scoring blockbusters.

Splatoon Raiders’ 8: Chaos Worth Carrying

EDGE describes Splatoon Raiders as everything thrown into one pot: voluminous spawns, nonstop gadgets, legibility be damned. That’s a risk on a handheld display, where screen real estate is tighter than a living-room TV. The 8 suggests the chaos is part of the appeal rather than a flaw, and the post-game “extra-spicy challenges” are exactly the one-more-run loop portable players devour.

With four players’ worth of gadgets flying around, this is also the kind of game that begs for couch co-op and local tabletop sessions — if the launch build delivers on that promise as strongly as the review implies, it could be the Switch 2’s first essential co-op shooter. An 8 from EDGE doesn’t promise perfection, but it does promise a game worth carrying around.