Game Reviews
Latest Reviews
Browse our collection of reviews.
Latest Reviews
Review: Academy of Champions (Wii)
A drab 0-0 draw
Over the years there have been some really enjoyable and innovative takes on the game of football (or soccer to our overseas chums) – Nintendo brought us the Mario Strikers series of course and Sega released the stereotype-laden but still enjoyable Sega Soccer Slam on Gamecube. Now Ubisoft are after a piece of the half-time meat pie with Academy of Champions Football, but does it..
Review: A Boy and His Blob (Wii)
Now this is how you're supposed to update a classic
Originally released in 1989 on the NES console, A Boy and His Blob was quickly praised for its originality and unique gameplay ideas. Unfortunately, it was also criticized for its often sluggish control system and sometimes confusing level designs. Over the years several developers have created updates of the original title for the Game Boy and DS..
Review: Little Tournament Over Yonder (WiiWare)
It can stay over yonder for all we care!
The strategy genre is not a very popular one on WiiWare - aside from the RTS game Swords & Soldiers, there's no real "traditional" offerings available. Little Tournament Over Yonder finally gives us a turn-based strategy game, although it has some action genre elements as well. A match in Little Tournament consists of two "modes",..
Review: Viking Invasion (DSiWare)
Pillage the village!
Viking Invasion by BiF is a tower defence game that puts the player in charge of protecting various castles and forts from hordes of Viking invaders. The game takes a slightly different approach to the standard tower defence set up, with foes pouring in through various waterways and rivers. Set over three difficulty levels and offering two modes of game play, Viking Invasion..
Review: Wakugumi - Monochrome Puzzle (DSiWare)
Ikaruga: the puzzler
There’s a great “I’ve got it!” moment in Wakugumi where you graduate from simply sliding blocks about in the hope of making a capture to preparing combo captures with expert precision. Something about the game simply clicks and you find yourself having that classic puzzle inner monologue – “well, if this bit goes here and this pieces goes there..." It’s just..
Review: Porky Pig's Haunted Holiday (Super Nintendo)
A Looney Tunes platformer that's actually not too shabby.
For anyone who's watched the classic Porky Pig cartoons, you know that animators were quite fond of placing our stuttering pig friend into scary situations. Who could forget the leprechaun shoes or the moose head with the gun barrel protruding from its mouth. Well you'll be happy to know that not only are they both found in this haunting..
Review: Heron: Steam Machine (WiiWare)
WiiWare: the home of arcade puzzling goodness
Many people ask "don't we have enough puzzle games on the Wii already?" Triangle Studios answers "no!" and it's hard to disagree with them - especially given the quality of recent releases including their own Heron: Steam Machine. A little animated introduction tells the game's back story of a rubber duck factory taken over by the..
Review: Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Winter Games (Wii)
For once, there's no bad puns - snow joke!
A few years ago, the unthinkable happened – Sega announced that Mario and Sonic were to put aside their 16-bit rivalry and join forces in an officially licensed Olympic game. Clocks ran backwards, dogs barked uncontrollably in the street and the whole world lay in danger. Then we played it, and saw that it was good, and the dogs did stop barking and the..
Review: Ninja Captains (Wii)
A mini-game too far...
Mini-games. One might say that mini-game (or, more nicely, "party game") collections have a serious presence on the Wii; it is often a fact bemoaned by more "hard-centred" gamers. Some of these titles are amongst the more successful games on the platform: both Carnival Games and Game Party have done quite well for their publishers and Mario Party and..
Review: Gravitronix (WiiWare)
One of the first titles announced for WiiWare finally sees the light of day.
Among the very first games announced for WiiWare, we might have expected to review Gravitronix around two years ago. But, as they say, life gets in the way. Plans change, things don't work out the way we expect them to, and release dates slip further and further away. It happens, and it's not infrequently to the benefit..
Review: Pinball Pulse: The Ancients Beckon (DSiWare)
Maybe too realistic for its own good
Pinball simulations have always been a mixed bag over the years. While some developers have chosen to shoot for more of an authentic pinball machine experience, others tried to make their pinball simulations more arcade-like using multiple boards and mini-games to further accentuate their gameplay schemes. Pinball Pulse: The Ancients Beckon takes the more..
Review: 1080° Avalanche (GameCube)
Dude, where's my snowboard?
With its December 2003 GCN release, 1080° Avalanche faced a quandary which mirrored the mixed up personality of the board sport it represented. Development had to decide between following the previous 'extreme to the max' approach of SSX 3, or to continue in the vein of its N64 predecessor 1080° Snowboarding, which strived for greater realism. Just as surfers, skaters..
Review: MechAssault: Phantom War (DS)
A stomping good game?
MechWarrior. You’ve got to love it. The very concept of stomping around in your own personal giant robot, crushing things underfoot and blowing things up really is the sort of thing we gamers live for. Go on, admit it: every one of you has at some point had ‘the MechWarrior fantasy’. Up until 2002 however, the MechWarrior fantasy could only be lived through the PC,..
Review: Big Brain Academy (DS)
A bit of a mental lightweight
There’s something intrinsically addictive about the whole genre of ‘brain training’ games. Implicitly we all want to better ourselves to a greater or lesser degree. By being told just how much a success or a failure we are at intelligence-related tests, there is definitely a major hook in this whole genre of games that makes them nearly irresistible to anyone out..
Review: LostWinds: Winter of the Melodias (WiiWare)
Is this Winter warmer as good as Toku’s first adventure?
LostWinds was one of WiiWare's launch titles, and is still one of the best games on the service. Now, almost a year and a half later, it has finally gotten its long-awaited sequel. For the uninitiated, in LostWinds you took control of Toku, a young boy who found a magical crystal containing the spirit of wind, Enril. Using Enril, Toku could..
Review: Wonder Boy III: The Dragon's Trap (Virtual Console / Master System)
SEGA plays catch-up again with this classic Master System VC release
Wonder Boy III: The Dragon’s Trap marks the end of the Master System trilogy. It’s a direct sequel to the wonderful Wonder Boy in Monster Land with the action starting out in the final lair of the last game. Unlike the original Wonder Boy, though, there are no loincloths in sight. Most Master System fans will consider this..
Review: Happy Holidays: Halloween (WiiWare)
Take your holiday elsewhere!
The idea of sending greeting cards to your Wii friends isn't a bad one - after all you can already send messages with photos - so as a concept a cheap and cheerful greeting card program could easily have a place on your Wii, but a Halloween-focused one? Creating an application that will only be used once a year seems redundant from the start, and there's no DLC so..
Review: Word Searcher (WiiWare)
Words fail to impress
Digital Leisure and Aksys seem locked in a fight to the death to see which company can release more generic, public domain games on the WiiWare service. Following up on their release of Sudoku Challenge earlier this year, which we found to be about as barebones a presentation of that game as you could get, DL now brings us ‘Word Searcher’. That’s the genre and the..
Review: Zombies Ate My Neighbors (Super Nintendo)
Horror movie action comes to the Super Nintendo console.
Every once in a while a game is released that's so unique it garners a cult following and becomes more popular years later than when it was first released. Toe Jam & Earl for the Sega Genesis is one such game, but another prime example would be Konami's Zombies Ate My Neighbors. The game takes the "B" grade horror movie theme..
Review: Final Fight 2 (Virtual Console / Super Nintendo)
Final Fight for two
The Mad Gear gang are back and out for revenge. This time they’ve kidnapped Guy’s fiancée Rena and her farther, so it falls to Haggar and friends to rescue them from the gang’s evil clutches. The original Final Fight was a classic side-scrolling brawler which received two paltry SNES ports, the first of which is already available on the Virtual Console service. What let..
