Tag: First Impressions - Page 7
First Impressions Might and Magic: Clash of Heroes
Might and magic and myths and... Meteos?!
The DS has loads of good puzzle games - Picross, Tetris, Meteos - and some fantastic strategy titles too - Fire Emblem and Advance Wars chief among them. But it could certainly do with more great puzzle strategy games; titles that blend the addictive action of matching coloured objects with the cerebral...
First Impressions C.O.P. The Recruit
Take the beat to the streets
C.O.P. The Recruit was announced back at E3 in June, and quickly marked itself out as one to watch by promising an open world experience unlike anything on DS. Now we've had chance to grab a few minutes with the title, does it live up to the hype or is it lagging behind Chinatown Wars? The first thing you'll notice on...
First Impressions Rabbids Go Home
Put this in your trolley!
There's only one possible conclusion to be drawn from Rabbids Go Home - it's mental. Anyone involved in its development should probably be sectioned under the Mental Health Act, such is the scale of the crazy acts featured in this first traditional adventure game for the Rabbids. Of course, if you've been following our...
News WiiWare & DSiWare London Event - DSiWare Coverage
We get to grips with the DSiWare games at Nintendo's media summit held in London, 16th September
Well, as if the landslide of WiiWare information from Wednesday’s media summit wasn’t enough, we now have summaries of the DSiWare titles on show. And while the selection on Nintendo's portable machine may not have been as high profile as its console...
First Impressions Derby Dog (WiiWare)
This breed needs a little more refinement.
Pet sims have been all the rage with the "yoof" for some time; especially on the Nintendo DS with scads of games having words ending with "Z" instead of the more grammatically correct "S." Derby Dog for the Japanese WiiWare service is clearly designed to cash-in on this trend,...
News WiiWare & DSiWare London Event - WiiWare Coverage
London, 16th September: Nintendo hold their WiiWare and DSiWare media summit, and we’re lucky enough to have been invited…
Well, those of you who scan our site on a regular basis will know that today - in London - Nintendo made a few announcements regarding the WiiWare and DSiWare service: first of all, they gave us the release schedule for a...
First Impressions Minna de Tobikome! Penguin Diving Hooper Looper
Jumping off a cliff can be fun!
"Everybody dive!" is part of the title of Agenda's newest WiiWare game to hit the Japanese Wii Shop, and that is what this game is all about: diving off cliffs – as penguins are known to do – for big points! Of course this isn't March of the Penguins, so the penguins in this game aren't dropping off...
First Impressions Discipline (WiiWare - Japan)
Art-house gaming comes to WiiWare.
Discipline is a WiiWare game long-rumoured and only recently revealed. As possibly the most unusual game to yet grace the service, it game centres around a prison called Discipline, wherein you control a character apparently posing as an inmate. It's difficult to tell what exactly is happening because text plays a...
First Impressions Simple Series Vol. 4 - The Misshitsu Kara no Dasshutsu (WiiWare - Japan)
Not quite Steve McQueen...
Well, Simple Series Vol. 4 - The Misshitsu Kara no Dasshutsu is quite a mouthful, so for the purpose of these impressions please forgive the re-titling of this game with the shorter, but still thematically correct name Room Escape. D3 Publisher is known as a publisher of budget games and has pushed out dozens of them for...
First Impressions Ninja Captains
We get our claws into Nordcurrent's latest
As much as it dents our hardcore gamer image to say it, we love a good minigame compilation here at Nintendo Life. When we're not blasting through Space Pirates or springing to the rescue of princesses for the thousandth time, you'll often catch us waggling away to a batch of minigames, so it was with great...
First Impressions Tomenasanner
Rock rock planet rock, don't stop. Rock rock planet rock - DON'T STOP!
What Tomenasanner means is anyone's guess (try guessing in the comments - better still, please advise if you know!). It's written in katakana so it's apparently a word of foreign origin (sure sounds it!), but the closest that Google Translate offered was "tomen" which...
First Impressions Japanese Nintendo Channel Update
Along with the 4.1J Wii system update, Japanese Wii owners have also received an updated Nintendo Channel!
The Nintendo Channel has long been a mixed bag: it provides Nintendo with a gateway into player's play habits (though you'd have thought this would be possible from the basic system given that the Wii has built-in networking capability) and...
First Impressions Water Warfare
We head to the playground to see if there's enough water in its soaker to keep gamers occupied
Earlier this month, Hudson took a gamble and decided to release a first-person shooter on WiiWare. Due to it being the first of its kind on the platform and a new IP, some thought that Hudson would regret making such a bold decision. In the end, though,...
First Impressions Escape Virus
A fun little mobile game for WiiWare
Escape Virus is the freshman effort from Peakvox - an iPhone and mobile game developer - with the focus being on pick-up-and-play arcade gaming and ascending to the top of the world ranking in each of five game modes. The menus throughout the game look like metal car number plates which drop onto a titled plane...
First Impressions Red Steel 2 Exclusive!
The game you've been waiting for.
When Red Steel launched way back in December 2006 it promised so much, with its mix of bullets and blades and intuitive motion controls, but was clearly rushed to meet the Wii's launch date and ended up a disappointment in many gamers' eyes. A few months after release, the development team sat down to create the...
First Impressions Muscle March
Namco delivers possibly the most bizarre game to come from Japan in years.
If you've gotten into the Japanese import scene at all you've probably discovered that there's games released in Japan that never see localisation outside of Japan. Japanese game developers have a knack for coming up with some pretty unusual game concepts and Japanese...
First Impressions Arkanoid Plus!
Taito plays it safe in bringing back a classic.
Whilst Atari's Breakout and Super Breakout pioneered the arcade block-breaking games that are well-worn cliches today, Taito's Arkanoid really took the idea to the next level and no one's improved upon it since. The game concept is pretty simple: a bar at the bottom of the screen is used to bounce a...
First Impressions Personal Trainer: Walking
We take Nintendo's new DS fitness title for a walk.
We recently got in the upcoming DS title Personal Trainer: Walking and we've had a chance to spend a little time with it and we think gamers who want to increase their fitness level are in for a treat with this interesting new DS game package. Inside the package you basically get the DS game, two...
Tap into a new game experience.
After the physical exertion of Virtua Tennis 2009, and with the shame of my first-round exit still hanging over me like a dark cloud, it was a pleasure to sit down for a bit with Let’s Tap. As a huge Yuji Naka fan I was dying to find out how his new studio Prope’s first game would play, and as soon as I got my...
First Impressions Tsuppari Oozumou Wii Heya
Su-mo! Su-mo!
Back in 1987 Tecmo released Tsuppari Oozumou for the Famicom. This was the first (and one of the only) sumo wrestling games to come to home consoles and was basically a button masher at heart where the object, like real sumo, is to force your opponent out of the ring or put him on his back like a fat unruly turtle. A sequel followed...
First Impressions Virtua Tennis 2009
MotionPlus, a full online mode AND curly wigs? It's too good to be true, surely...
Strawberries and cream, Robinson’s fruit squash and appalling curly hair were all out in force for Sega Europe’s Masters Monday event, an invitation-only tournament with some of the best Virtua Tennis players on the circuit – and me – in anticipation of...
First Impressions Mario & Luigi RPG 3
Mario and Luigi return to the DS in their third humorous adventure.
Mario and Luigi have been to some pretty bizarre places, but none as weird as where they end up in Mario and Luigi RPG 3. You see, a mysterious epidemic is raging through the Mushroom Kingdom, causing people to inflate many times their normal size. The residents of the kingdom...
First Impressions Contra ReBirth
BECAUSE YOU DEMANDED IT!
Remember Contra? After Green Beret (Rush 'N' Attack to Americans) it was the definitive run-and-gun game from Konami which saw two games in the arcade and ports and sequels on home consoles. I cannot say I ever played the latter, but the former I remember well. Despite being punishingly difficult (to me, anyway) there was...
First Impressions The Conduit Multiplayer Madness
Tom ventures to Sega’s London HQ to play the game that is on the tip of everyone’s tongue.
To say that The Conduit is eagerly anticipated would be a serious understatement – this is potentially the title that could be the next best thing since sliced Goldeneye. Imagine then the excitement I felt at the opportunity to visit Sega’s London...
First Impressions Let's Hitchhike!
Nippon Ichi delivers an oddball game as only the Japanese can.
It's literally called Let's Zenryoku Hitchihaiku!!!!!!!!! (yes nine exclamations!), which I guess you could translate as Let's Totally Hitchhike, Dude! (the "Dude" is my personal addition) and it's a recent release to the Japanese WiiWare service which I just had to try out...
First Impressions Puzzle Bobble Wii
Taito delivers another enjoyable update to an arcade franchise.
For those who aren't familiar Puzzle Bobble is a late-90s arcade puzzle franchise from Taito featuring Baburun and Boburun from Bubble Bobble. Fans in the rest of the world may remember this game better as the ill-titled "Bust-A-Move." It's had five arcade iterations, two of...
First Impressions Kimi to Boku to Rittai (You, Me and Shape)
Nintendo surprises by publishing this off-beat balance game from Fyto.
When I saw there was a bonus WiiWare update in Japan for some reason I was intrigued to see both games were from Nintendo. I was even more intrigued with the look of one of them: Kimi to Boku to Rittai (You, Me and Shape). The visual style and sparse soundscape reminded me of...
First Impressions Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Smash Up
TMNT comes to the Wii in "Smash-Up" a not-so-subtle clone of another fighter you might remember...in a good way
It’s back to the basics for the new TMNT game on the Wii and this one shows some promising signs of gratuitous coolness in light of their 25th birthday. That’s right - it’s been almost 25 years since that dark, gritty first issue of...
First Impressions Rainbow Islands Towering Adventure!
Rainbow Islands has been selected as the 3rd of Taito's Collection on WiiWare; it seems natural given that it's the arcade sequel to Bubble Bobble, the previous release
I'm old enough to have seen the arcade game, but I guess I frequented the wrong arcades because I never laid eyes on this game until I bought the Bubble Bobble collection on the...
First Impressions Mr. Driller World
The plucky arcade star comes to WiiWare!
The gameplay is so simple you would be right to wonder why a game like this wasn't released for the Atari 2600, and this is a large part of the attraction and part of the novelty: the idea of what is essentially a classic arcade game being released in 1999 when arcade games were almost exclusively lightgun...
First Impressions Bubble Bobble Plus!
Bub and Bob hit the WiiWare service in style.
I've got a confession to make, and it's not that I don't like Bubble Bobble, because I do like it and the two arcade follow-ups: Bubble Symphony and Bubble Memories. No, I actually want to confess that I didn't want to buy or play this game tonight. Now, like everyone else I saw the announcement which...
Whilst many of us are used to WiiWare games consisting of puzzle games and the very odd platformer, we are starting to see some more ambitious games.
Overturn is one of these, a 3D arena-based robot fighting game which features not only 2-player split screen and a single player story (tournament) mode, but online play with up to four players --...
First Impressions Pole's Big Adventure
I have a confession to make. I hate platforming games.
I think outside of sports games they must be my least favourite genre. So why would I be interested in a game like Pole's Adventure, which is very much a mishmash of 8-bit platformers? Well, because it takes the piss out of them fantastically of course! I think it's safe to say that if you...
It's no secret that the WiiWare service has seen quite a long line of puzzle releases since its inception, so news of yet another upcoming puzzler will likely draw more than a few sighs from Wii owners. But after playing a preview build of RiverMan Media's upcoming WiiWare puzzler MadStone, we have to say that you might want to give this game a try before you write it off as just another lame attempt to cash in on the WiiWare service.
The premise of MadStone revolves around the idea of smashing through piles of crumbling ruins in an attempt to get your M...
First Impressions Space Invaders Get Even
Players across the globe have been shooting aliens in the Space Invaders series for 30 years now but Taito has decided to put the shoe on the other foot this time as Space Invaders Get Even puts you in control of the Alien UFO, and your goal is to crush mankind once and for all!
Now that this game is out on the Japanese WiiWare service we took it...
First Impressions Alien Crush Returns
Alien Crush Returns has been on our radar for some time now. We're massive fans of the original game here at WiiWare World and the idea of a 3D update has us very excited indeed. It's out in Japan as we speak and we've had a quick blast to see if this lives up to expectations.
Alien Crush Returns is a pinball game with a difference. Set in an alien...
First Impressions Gradius Rebirth
Gradius Rebirth is out now in Japan and the guys at Konami have done a good job bringing the classic series back for another outing, this time on WiiWare.
ReBirth isn’t an all new game, more of a remix of past Gradius titles, all presented in a lovely retro style. The first thing that hits you is the charming 16-bit graphics and sound, which are...
News WiiWare Preview - Eternity's Child
Luc Bernard was kind enough to send us over a new preview build of his upcoming WiiWare platformer Eternity’s Child complete with tons of new levels to play. We've also added a bunch of new screen shots of the game in action which you can see at the bottom of this preview.
You might remember that we did a preview of the game last month, but for...
News Hands-On With Eternity's Child
Eternity's Child has traveled a long and troubled road to get to where it currently resides as an upcoming Nintendo WiiWare release. Loosely based on a mobile phone game, it actually started development as an Xbox Live Arcade title, but after a was later moved over to Nintendo's DS and Wii systems. Not long after that the DS version was cancelled and the game was officially announced for release on Nintendo's new WiiWare service. The game is probably best known for its unique art style - no surprise considering it's the product of eccentric Anglo-French artist and independent game designer Luc Bernard.
...
First Impressions World of Goo
Our new found friends at 2D Boy were kind enough to provide the team at WiiWare World with a playable demo of the first level of their upcoming game World of Goo. Whilst it’s not 100% confirmed to be a downloadable WiiWare game yet, the guys at 2D Boy are expected to spill the beans soon on if this is the case, or not.
Having only seen a few press...
