Game Reviews
Latest Reviews
Browse our collection of reviews.
Latest Reviews
Review: Final Fantasy (Virtual Console / NES)
The game that kicked off the most popular RPG series in existence.
Role-playing games began their climb to popularity during the early 80's on the many personal computers of the time period. These turn-based titles brought a more strategic element to gaming for those looking to use their minds more than their reflexes. Square obviously saw the importance and lure of the genre when they decided to..
Review: Thorium Wars (DSiWare)
One more proton and you'd be playing Protactinium Wars.
It's always refreshing (to us at Nintendo Life and also, we imagine, to you folks at home) when a game is released for WiiWare or DSiWare that fills a tangible gap, and the first thing you'll notice about Thorium Wars is that it's like nothing else available through DSiWare. That uniqueness alone might have been enough to earn it some default..
Review: "Aha! I Got It!" Escape Game (WiiWare)
Will you want to escape from this game as fast as possible?
"Escape the room" games have been quite popular on the internet for a while — a quick Google search will yield a number of creative flash-based puzzlers in which the aim is to solve a number of puzzles within a single room in order to escape. With "Aha! I Got It!" Escape Game, developer Ateam has attempted to bring..
Review: Final Fight 2 (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 that unfortunately had some omissions: one of the playable characters, one of the..
Review: Art Style: INTERSECT (DSiWare)
It'll drive you mad!
Games in the Art Style series have a reputation for originality, aesthetic invention and for being among the highest quality games on WiiWare and DSiWare. Art Style Intersect, however, is a remake of an old GameBoy Advance title known as DigiDrive, originally produced by Q Games of Pixeljunk fame. Although it might sound off-putting to download an old GBA game that was in..
Review: Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 (Wii)
Ultimate? Not quite.
Marvel Ultimate Alliance was one of the launch titles for the Wii in 2006 and despite being a port of a game also released on the PS3 and Xbox 360, it was still good fun. As a love letter to Marvel fans over the decades it provided a virtual travelogue of the people and places of the Marvel universe and was a wonderful beat-'em-up-cum-RPG. Three years later you'd think that..
Review: Banjo Tooie (Nintendo 64)
Can you bear second helpings?
Banjo Kazooie was a game that revolutionised platforming on the N64: Rare's off-the-wall-humour, creative level design and sublime controls made it the pinnacle of platforming on Nintendo's console. Fans of the original will most likely remember Rare's lavish promises about the second game, Banjo Tooie, including the ability to swap items with the original Banjo game..
Review: Demon's Crest (Super Nintendo)
Does this adventurous Ghosts 'n Goblins spin-off live up to expectations?
Fans of the Ghosts 'n Goblins series should be familiar with the rather annoying little demon Firebrand; he would be the main reason Arthur'd spend his time walking around the many levels of the games in his underwear. Capcom obviously thought enough of the guy to give him a series of his own, which began life on the Game Boy..
Review: Art Academy: Second Semester (DSiWare)
Less of the same.
Two weeks ago, Nintendo released Art Academy: First Semester. We reviewed it and were happy to do so. The title was impressively functional, easy to use and very much successful at fostering creativity. These are all good things. We were painting apples and red peppers like there was no tomorrow. The sun was shining. We were merry. This week, Nintendo released Art Academy: Second..
Review: Dead Space: Extraction (Wii)
One of the most polished and immersive Wii titles yet.
Hyperbole is not uncommon on the back of video game boxes; claims that the game you hold in your very hands in the store is the “most exciting” or “mind-blowing” tend to be full of crap. For Dead Space: Extraction, EA studio Visceral Games went with “most cinematic action horror experience on Wii,” and for once a game’s bold claim..
Review: Super Double Dragon (Super Nintendo)
Billy and Jimmy Lee star in Super Double Draggin'!
The scene is set: grimy, littered streets patrolled by ruthless gangs, whose sole intent is to cause mayhem in the neighbourhood. This urban jungle setting for Return of Double Dragon (Super Double Dragon in the West) is as synonymous with 2D side scrolling beat-em-ups as it was with movies like The Warriors, a film which provided inspiration for..
Review: Dragon Quest Wars (DSiWare)
It might not be a typical Dragon Quest RPG, but there's still plenty of fun to be had
It goes without saying that the Dragon Quest series has enjoyed phenomenal success around the world as an RPG series over the years, so placing the name on any game is going to automatically heap certain expectations onto that game, no matter what type of game it might be. Thus is the case with Dragon Quest Wars,..
Review: Yummy Yummy Cooking Jam (DSiWare)
A fallen soufflé
You may remember this game from its appearance on WiiWare, so you won't be surprised to know this is a direct port. We didn’t think much to its incarnation on the Wii, particularly struggling with its controls, but now it’s on the DSi is it more to our taste? Yes and no, is the answer. Essentially, the DSiWare version is all-but identical to the Wii edition, only really..
Review: DJ Star (DS)
Will DJ Star get your party started?
Sold as a sort of DJ-ing equivalent to the Guitar Hero franchise, DJ Star offers up the Guitar Hero concept for the Ibiza generation. You won’t find any guitars here: your instrument of choice is instead a set of decks, and your mission is to fill the dance-floor with as many dancers as possible. Loading up DJ Star’s career mode you could easily be forgiven..
Review: Wacky World of Sports (Wii)
Or should that be "Tacky World of Warts"? Maybe...
It’s a well-known fact that the Wii excels at quick-fire games – sports compilations and minigame packages abound, and amongst all those renditions of golf, tennis, boxing and the rest you’d have to assume there’s no sport on Earth yet to be rendered in glorious Wii-o-vision. Well, you would be wrong, as Tabot have proven with this..
Review: Opoona (Wii)
Stranger in a strange land...
Would you like to hear a story? Good! This is a story about Opoona and his family: his daddy is a famous Cosmo Guard -- that's right, Opoona and his family are from the planet Tizia. In fact, Opoona's daddy is one of the most famous Cosmo Guards ever! He was recently awarded the title of Startizian -- a rank only a few in thousands of years have achieved -- so he..
Review: R-Type (Virtual Console / Master System)
Blast off and attack the evil Bydo Empire once again in 8-bit!
While we applaud Sega for bringing some of its most fondly remembered Master System games to the Virtual Console, we can’t help feeling that on this occasion it is a little bit pointless. After all, we’ve had a near arcade perfect port of R-Type on the TurboGrafx-16 since 2006, which humbles the Sega Master System version by..
Review: Biker Mice From Mars (Super Nintendo)
Time to rock 'n ride!
If you want to know what Biker Mice from Mars is like, think of it this way. Take RC Pro-Am for the NES, change the cars into Harleys, and then throw a bunch of thug-like mice onto those bikes and there you have it. It's pretty much a carbon copy of the ideas and gameplay found in RC Pro-Am, with the over-the-top weirdness of the Biker Mice theme tossed into the mix. Now while..
Review: You, Me, and the Cubes (WiiWare)
Are these cubes worthy of Rubik, or just rubes?
Anticipation for this title has been somewhat high 'round these parts, thanks to some excellent first impressions by our own Sean Aaron. The only question was whether or not we would ever get our hands on it, but as of this week, we have. And so should you. Brainchild of the mad genius Kenji Eno, You, Me, and the Cubes is a game of balance and..
Review: Clubhouse Games Express: Strategy Pack (DSiWare)
Nintendo rehashes another set of Clubhouse Games, so we rehashed the review. Touché!
Nintendo seems to have a penchant for taking their DS retail releases,cutting them up into bits and selling them on the DSiWare service. So it should come as no surprise that they're at it again with this third release in the Clubhouse Games Express series. This time around, they're offering up five more classic..
