Wii U, 3DS, Wii, DS, DSi, WiiWare, DSiWare, Virtual Console Reviews - Page 31

Another kart racing game? Oh, boy!

By the end of the Nineties, UK developer Rareware had established itself as one of the most talented softcos in the world, and along with Nintendo's own in-house output, had helped to placate Nintendo 64 gamers throughout most of the console's life with a steady supply of premium software. Having delivered the...

Virtual world, real quality

After the delightful Pop (and its various offshoots), it seemed a bit like Nnooo was taking a break from game development. The studio released several applications through DSiWare, and while they were quite good, gamers might be forgiven for assuming that the company's future releases would gravitate more toward...

Cool as hell

Nintendo 3DS owners don't have many choices when it comes to picking out a new RPG nowadays. Aside from DS games, the only title currently out in the genre is Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor Overclocked, which is itself a port of a 2009 DS game. Atlus's decision to bring the title over to the 3DS may seem a bit confusing at first, especially when you consider the amount of updates..

"Another glorious day in the Corps!"

Of the four main Alien films, it's James Cameron’s action packed 1986 movie Aliens that provides the most explosive source material for a video game conversion. Konami knew this when it picked up the licence and released a fun arcade game, enabling players to blast pink xenomorphs in 1990. SEGA fans have...

Top of the high score table or tilt?

When was the last time you played a really great pinball table? Not a digital approximation but an actual whiz-bangin', light-flashin', chaos table? Sadly, the agonising death of the arcade has put a damper on the availability of pinball tables, and unless you're one of the lucky few who live nearby a...

Does 3D Thor give 2D a hammering?

When SEGA decided to port Thor: God of Thunder to 3DS, there were two clear routes available: could build upon the DS game, a well-received pixel art 2D side-scrolling brawler by WayForward, or directly convert Red Fly Studio’s third person Wii hack-and-slash title. It chose the latter — after all Red Fly has built a reputation on Wii for fun movie licensed..

Four Links for the price of none

In the hubbub, hype and over-excitement of E3 2011, some gamers would have been particularly delighted by a DSiWare announcement from Nintendo: while that seems unlikely, it does reflect the dedication of fans and their love for the Zelda series. After a relatively short wait, the much anticipated The Legend of Zelda: Four Swords Anniversary Edition is now available..

Together at last

Say what you will about the rest of the game, one thing Bugs'N'Balls gets exactly right is its title. It has bugs, and they are indeed armed with balls. The question is this: do bugs and balls go together like peanut butter and jelly, or is it more like oil and water? Let's just say it's peanut butter jelly time. Bugs'N'Balls is excellent fun in short bursts, and it comes with an..

101 reasons to avoid this

One hundred and one games. It's a tempting proposition isn't it? It's unlikely that as an average consumer you will play, let alone purchase, one hundred and one games in a whole year, so when Nordcurrent comes a-knockin' at your door and offers you exactly that many titles for the low, low price of 700 Points, you'd be forgiven for thinking it's a Billy Bargain. But when..

Monochrome Mario is back in style

Nintendo managed to squeeze quite a bit of the Super Mario experience into the original Super Mario Land, but many gamers felt like the game was a bit too scaled down to feel like a true adventure from the series. Nintendo obviously sensed this when they sat down to create Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins, as this...

Uninspired, but not broken

Strategy games come in many forms, but these days, subgenres like tower defence and resource management are far more commonplace than your traditional turn-based affairs. Break Tactics helps fill the void, and while it's a fine entry in the category, it doesn't innovate much either. The game is reminiscent of Chess and a...

Rage against the machine (gun)

Multiplayer has been a mainstay in first person shooters since only a few years after the genre's formal debut. Nonetheless, PC gamers had been shooting each other either in LAN setups or online for many years before console FPSes got in on the act. It wasn't until GoldenEye 007 hit the N64 that the idea of getting...

This cuts it

There has been much debate in gaming circles about Nintendo’s digital offerings and the competition from smartphones and tablets. Now one of the biggest hits from those rival platforms, Cut the Rope, has finally arrived on DSiWare. The question is, does this title succeed on the DSi, or does it miss out on the candy? The premise of...

Escape while you still can

Escape Trick: Ninja Castle is the second game in the Escape Trick series that we've seen here at Nintendo Life. The first game, Escape Trick: The Secret of Rock City Prison, failed to really grab us: its ambition was laudable, but its execution consisted of dull visuals, underwhelming gameplay, and nonsensical puzzle...

Bee very grateful for this one

Most of our readers could be forgiven for never having played TwinBee: after all, it began life in 1985 as an arcade game that never left Japan. It was later ported to the Famicom, and though some reports state that an NES localisation project was actually completed, for some reason it was never released. In fact,...

Fair-ebellum

Brains – we've all got 'em, and up until 2006, many thought that video games would rot 'em. That's when a certain Dr. Kawashima came on the DS scene with his Brain Age training game and showed people, with the help of some (since called into question) science, that with simple math problems and puzzles intended to exercise different areas of thought, you could keep in good mental..

Don't touch this

When a genre of game saturates a market it's fair to expect that any new title coming out within that style of play must do a good impression of the leaders in the field, in the very least aping what made the forerunners successful, hopefully providing an interesting alternative. As the number of first person shooters, mini-game...

Middle of the road

Many games take the history of Asian nations as their focus, from the Japanese combat-based Samurai Warriors series to the Romance of the Three Kingdoms games, which use the warring kingdoms of first-century China as their basis. The newest to enter the ring is Defense of the Middle Kingdom, which also focuses on the latter's subject matter, putting a tower defence spin on the..

Joker's wild

When Enix released the original Dragon Quest Monsters for Game Boy back in 1998, many quickly dismissed it as just another vain attempt to cash in on the Pokémon craze. But over the past 13 years, the Monsters series has developed quite a following and become more in-depth and multiplayer-friendly with each new release. Where the first Dragon Quest Monsters: Joker on DS introduced a..