3DS eShop Game Reviews
Cross your pis and mind your queues
As its title suggests, Picross e4 is not Jupiter’s first trip to the intellectual rodeo. The developer has been releasing collections of the classic puzzle at a steady pace, adding small tweaks to an already reliable formula. This latest instalment identifies itself with sunny hues, and fans of the series may...
Review Mega Man Xtreme (3DS eShop / GBC)
Xtreme Mediocrity
Mega Man X is often touted as one of the best games the SNES had to offer, which is certainly saying something. Its first sequel is further from consensus, but it's still safe to say that it's a great followup to its predecessor. If you've played either of these games — and, if you haven't, stop reading right now and do that —...
Review Mystery Case Files: Return to Ravenhearst (3DS eShop)
Never go back
Publisher Big Fish Games has certainly got the hang of porting its old PC games to the Nintendo 3DS. After releasing many of them as retail games in PAL regions, it has started to hawk them on the 3DS eShop as well. The original Mystery Case Files: Return to Ravenhearst was released in 2008 for the PC and is an evolution of the Mystery...
Review Me & My Furry Patients 3D (3DS eShop)
Diagnosis: a little hairy
There's a certain nostalgic charm to Me & My Furry Patients 3D's early-1990s PC game aesthetic – the rudimentary isometric 2D graphics, crude character models, heavy reliance on walls of text and menus resembling Windows 95 pop-up boxes are a nice change of pace from the ubiquitous FarmVille-esque cartoony graphics we...
Review Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse (3DS eShop / NES)
Join the fang club
Looking back, it's incredible to think that Konami took such a risk with the Castlevania series during its formative years. Having tasted critical and commercial success with the original NES outing, the Japanese company decided to give its direct sequel a different spin. The result was Castlevania II: Simon's Quest, a game which...
Review Smash Cat Heroes (3DS eShop)
Tokugawa Mew Mew
Imagine, for a moment, that you are a cat. What would you do for a can of delicious cat food? What about a can of delicious, destiny-altering Super Cat Food? If you're anything like the feline cast of Smash Cat Heroes — the latest eShop title from Escape from Zombie City studio Tom Create — you'd grab a kitten-sized katana and...
Review Tiny Games - Knights & Dragons (3DS eShop)
The dark knight
Taking the title of this game at face value, one could understandably conjure some exciting images of brave warriors setting off to battle in a land teeming with adventurous opportunities. The medieval setting is well-established by this point, and is versatile enough to appeal to even the very young demographic that Tiny Games...
Lock the box and throw away the key
With a huge assortment of puzzle titles on the eShop, PouncingKitten's Boxzle doesn't do nearly enough to set itself apart from the rest of the litter. With three variations on the "sliding box" mechanic the potential for clever and satisfying puzzles is there, but poor visuals and sound, generic presentation and...
Review Atlantic Quest (3DS eShop)
Aquatic amusements
All prefaces about there being too many match-three puzzle games available on the 3DS eShop have been exhausted. While it still rings true that there is an overabundance of them on the digital marketplace, there's no use beating the dead horse that this genre and joke have become. The fact is that people love tile matching games,...
Review Bit Boy!! ARCADE (3DS eShop)
Kubi, you blockhead...
It's been almost five years since Bit Boy!! graced the WiiWare service, providing a generation-spanning adventure through the history of video games. Unfortunately the execution of that game was middling at best, leaving a great concept — the guiding of a single hero on a nostalgia-tinged journey through the past — sorely...
Review Governor of Poker (3DS eShop)
Deep in the debt of Texas
Imagine that Donald Trump stole the DeLorean from Back to the Future. He warps to the Wild West, but instead of saving the Doc like in Part III, he creates a form of government in which you rule by simply owning every building in sight. It’s a monopolocracy, if you will, and everyone crams the saloons to play poker for...
Review Mystery Case Files: Dire Grove (3DS eShop)
Dire, dire docs
You know the drill. Mysterious, seemingly-abandoned location. Haunting atmosphere. Looming tragedy that unfolds through documents you find scattered around. It's a formula that works well for video games in general. As an interactive medium, the scares can be taken to a whole other level in the right hands. The mere fact that you...
En Passable
VooFoo Studios took on a tough challenge in not only producing cross-platform online chess multiplayer, but achieving it on both the Wii U and the 3DS. Pure Chess immediately earns credit right away, in that case, as a technical example of what can be achieved on what is relatively old tech with the 3DS. Bonus points are due, then, but...
Review Mach Rider (3DS eShop / NES)
A forgotten gem from the NES launch library
Mach Rider is an impressive feat for an NES title — a faux-3D motorcycle combat game with dozens of courses, an endurance mode, and a track editor. Not only was Mach Rider an NES title, but it was an October 1985 NES launch title. Namco's Pole Position had only hit arcades three years earlier, and...
Review Nintendo Pocket Football Club (3DS eShop)
Back of the net
Although they are perhaps a little alien to those outside of Europe, soccer management titles have a long and respected pedigree among those who commit weeks, months and even years of their lives to playing them. In the United Kingdom especially, such games have existed since the days of the 8-bit microcomputers, with franchises like...
Review I am an Air Traffic Controller Airport Hero Hawaii (3DS eShop)
Come fly the frazzled skies
All right, let’s address the 500-ton jumbo jet in the room: I am an Air Traffic Controller Airport Hero Hawaii is a long and silly name. Although IAAATC is actually an established series in Japan, it’s not the kind of title that tends to inspire great confidence in the West. That’s too bad, in a way, as Airport Hero...
Review Rusty's Real Deal Baseball (3DS eShop)
A dog's life
To start with a key point, the actual games in Rusty's Real Deal Baseball are window dressing for Nintendo's rather quirky interpretation of the free-to-play microtransaction craze. A collection of ten baseball-themed minigames start out at $4.00 each, but players are encouraged to haggle with the eponymous middle-aged dog Rusty to get...
Review Young Justice: Legacy (3DS eShop)
Downright offensive
Welcome to Young Justice: Legacy, where the mechanics don't work and "play" doesn't matter. The game purports to be a strategic turn-based experience but accomplishes nothing more than being a horrendous nightmare. It is astonishingly incompetent in every field. Its gameplay, engine, animations, and entertainment value are among...
This cat ain't rad
There's been a surge of popularity when it comes to "runner" games over the last few years — games where you do little more than move right (or occasionally, left) while dodging everything that comes at you in an attempt to improve your high scores. While "endless" runners seem to be the most popular variant, Skater Cat falls...
Review Clu Clu Land (3DS eShop / NES)
Spinning from poles as a fish with human limbs...
Clu Clu Land is one of those unassuming early Nintendo Entertainment System releases that seems to show up all the time these days, from cameos in Super Smash Bros. to minigames in NES Remix, right alongside classics like Mario and Zelda. Even if you didn't grow up playing Clu Clu Land, most Nintendo...
Review Yumi's Odd Odyssey (3DS eShop)
Ocean Belly River's back!
In some games, just moving around is a joy. Soaring through the skies in Pilotwings, loop-de-looping in NiGHTS into Dreams, wet-jetting around Isle Delfino in Super Mario Sunshine, and tumbling through town in Gravity Rush are all exhilarating experiences in their own right, as memorable as the games built around them.
Review Lola's ABC Party (3DS eShop)
P-A-R-T-WHY? Because I gotta learn my ABC's!
The adorable panda bear, Lola, is back at it again. This time she's putting her life as a train conductor in the past, and is instead throwing a party...of knowledge. Being the second game in the series to focus on basic ABC's and spelling, following Lola's Alphabet Train on DSiWare back in 2012, does...
Review Devil World (3DS eShop / NES)
Absolutely Diabolical
Very few developers can boast the introduction of as many unique and refreshing gameplay concepts as game-crafting master Shigeru Miyamoto. Nintendo’s iconic developer has reinvented and reinvigorated countless genres, breathing new life into stale and tired gameplay tropes and carving a name for himself as one of the...
Review Adventure Island II (3DS eShop / NES)
"Just you wait, Master Higgins!"
The original Adventure Island — though a fun little platformer in its own right — is most fondly remembered today for being a strikingly comprehensive clone of SEGA's Wonder Boy, as a result of developer Escape licensing the property (minus SEGA's character designs) to Hudson Soft for an NES port. Adventure...
Review Bubble Pop World (3DS eShop)
Burst in line
The hardest part of starting Bubble Pop World might be remembering where you left the “?” box AR card you’ll need to play it. Precious few 3DS games have taken advantage of the system’s augmented reality feature, with the majority employing it just for an amusing little extra. Developer Cypronia, however, has fully dived into...
Review Cube Tactics (3DS eShop)
Strategy cubed
Given their relatively low asking price, it can be quite easy to fall into the trap of thinking that games on Nintendo’s eShop service amount to little more than short, throwaway experiences. You pay less and, therefore, you must get less value from that game, right? In terms of pure content, that may be true (unless you’re...
Review Galaga (3DS eShop / NES)
Space: The Original Frontier
There are a few reasons so many early video games took place in space. While the most obvious one is budgetary — a flat black background being quite literally the easiest possible background to render, thereby making "space" a pretty natural choice of setting — there's a psychological reason as well: space is a...
Review Inazuma Eleven (3DS eShop)
A Beautiful Game
In Japan Inazuma Eleven is an institution — a multi-modal soccer sensation spanning several sequels and spin-offs, a wildly successful anime adaptation, and even a collectable card game; it's also enjoyed a number of releases in Europe. It's captured hearts from Kyoto to Cádiz, and now Level-5 is aiming to complete that...
Review Pokémon Link: Battle! (3DS eShop)
Match maker
DS title Pokémon Link — known as Pokémon Trozei in North America — was a fine example of how Nintendo has been able to diversify and expand the franchise in different directions. This download-only sequel — once again developed by Genius Sonority — continues that trend, but has more monsters to catch, locations to explore and...
Review Vacation Adventures: Park Ranger (3DS eShop)
Park 'n Hide
Nature. The Great Outdoors. Land of beauty and majesty, where the earth itself holds reign over a freedom and intrinsic order spanning the eons. And, if you’re a hidden object game, a primo place to dump all manner of human-made junk imaginable for people to find. The nature of hidden object games can’t be denied, however, and...
