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Username
JoelCouture
Articles
21 (20 reviews)
First Article
Mon 20th, July 2015
Avg. Review Score
5.6
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  • Review PEG SOLITAIRE (Wii U eShop)

    Solo Noble, anyone?

    Ever been to a restaurant or doctor's office and found one of those wooden Peg Solitaire boards just lying around? The little triangular board where you hop pegs over each other? The degree to which you compulsively feel a need to pick it up and play it rather than fiddle with your phone is indicative of the interest you'll have...

  • Review Near Earth Objects (Wii U eShop)

    Light and destruction in the stars

    Near Earth Objects is the type of game that gets under your skin - the kind where you tell yourself you'll only play for five minutes and then you suddenly find it's been an hour. Solid music, pulsing colours, various enemies and screen-shaking explosions add a lot of appeal to this variation on Asteroids, creating...

  • Review Molly Maggot (Wii U eShop)

    Play your own better game

    "Play your own music", Molly Maggot says as it boots up, which doesn't create high hopes for its quality. The clunky jumping controls, stilted animations and lifeless goals soon solidify that sense that you're sifting through trash. Save for a few sound effects that are almost funny, Molly Maggot doesn't have a single...

  • Review Sketch Wars (Wii U eShop)

    Worse than a pen and paper

    Sometimes, drawing with a time limit can be funny. Other times, it's pure frustration. Sketch Wars falls into the latter, giving the player a clumsy set of tools, a poor choice of words, and some awful presentation and sound just to round the whole unpleasant experience off. How does one even manage to mess up a game where...

  • Review Jones on Fire (Wii U eShop)

    Through the Fire and the Flames We Rescue Cats

    If you have a cat anywhere nearby when you play Jones on Fire, it's going to start snooping around at what you're doing. As this is an endless runner about saving kitties from a raging inferno you're going to be hearing a lot of appreciative meows, and your cat's going to want to know what's up...

  • Review Dementium Remastered (3DS eShop)

    A new horror with some old scares

    Why are you in this abandoned hospital? Why are these monsters attacking you? Where did they come from? Is it really safe to down 38 bottles of pain killers? Dementium Remastered has few answers for you, but the mystery only enhances its eerie, lonely atmosphere. This new version completely rebuilds the original DS...

  • Review Totem Topple (Wii U eShop)

    No strategy, depth or appeal

    In Totem Topple you have to drop heads down on top of a totem pole while weird spiny things idly float into it as they try to knock it down. It's hard to know what these spiny things' problems are, but they will never give up, only giving way to more persistent, different coloured spiny things until they eventually take...

  • Review Girls Like Robots (Wii U eShop)

    Happy happy, joy joy!

    Girls Like Robots. They also like pie. They don't like nerds, but nerds like girls. And nerds also like corners. They don't like other nerds. But cows like being near people who are beside things they don't like. And sometimes, everyone is just being attacked by the bug king and no one really likes it. Girls Like Robots'...

  • Review Stinger (Wii U eShop / NES)

    Cute, creative and cruel

    Most shmups ask you to shoot your way through hordes of enemy ships while dodging gunfire. Stinger asks you to do this while juggling. The cute, goofy exterior of the game hides just how challenging it can be, as while it may be hard to take smiling shoes, flying phones and whirling donuts seriously, they're all highly...

  • Review PictoParty (Wii U eShop)

    Bad drawings are funny

    Drawing with a time limit is a great recipe for laughter, especially among friends. PictoParty channels your inner terrible artist, letting you poorly draw cupcakes, skyscrapers and lamps as your friends desperately try to guess what it is you're trying to create. It's a simple party game that you may have seen before and is...

  • Review Slender: The Arrival (Wii U eShop)

    Scared, lost, alone (and maybe annoyed)

    Slender: The Arrival is either going to wind you up so tight with tension that you'll feel like you'll implode from fear, or make you so angry that you split your entire game room in two. There's really little middle ground between the two. Why? Because a teleporting monster that can appear anywhere around you...

  • Review Cutie Pets Pick Berries (Wii U eShop)

    Mandeer is Indifferent

    Cutie Pets Pick Berries is a far more innocent game than its smouldering mandeer hunks might have you believe. Sure, they'll be up there posing on your tv screen the entire time you play the game, but this isn't anything like Bubble Bath Babes or Peek a Boo Poker - don't expect some sort of saucy, torrid forest affair. Just...

  • Review Race the Sun (Wii U eShop)

    A fine line between rapture and ruin

    Race the Sun doesn't look like much from its screenshots. The minimalistic visuals and simple gameplay premise might not grab you at a glance. It's in hurtling down those gray fields, narrowly missing hulking monoliths as your plane's solar fuel gauge steadily drains, the sun slowly falling as the sky turns a...

  • Review Job the Leprechaun (Wii U eShop)

    "What do I look like, me lad?"

    Job the Leprechaun is having a hard time. A witch has kidnapped his best friend, Eri, and has taken her far away, past lands filled with knights, zombies, and goblins. So Job's going to save her…eventually. First, he'll grab all the four-leaf clovers he can find, slowly moving through the poorly-defended countryside...

  • Mario Memories Rediscovering the Wonder in Gaming With Super Mario Galaxy

    "I'd forgotten that games can make you feel happy"

    In this series of articles celebrating the upcoming 30th Anniversary of Super Mario, various members of the Nintendo Life extended family will share their memories and thoughts on the iconic franchise. This time we have our charming reviewer Joel Couture. There was a long period in my life where...

  • Review Mario Golf (Wii U eShop / N64)

    Serious Golf for Serious Plumbers

    You could argue that the best part of many of the Mario sports titles is that they bring goofy, lighthearted aspects to those pastimes. Games like Super Mario Strikers and Mario Hoops: 3 on 3 all make dramatic changes to the sports they're portraying, capturing the attention of players who might not be interested in...

  • Review Factotum (Wii U eShop)

    Best Robo-Buddies

    There's something very pleasing about hitting heavy buttons on a filthy old control panel in Factotum. The rusted controls and green screens give the game this sense that the technology fueling starships doesn't look much different from that which you'd find in your local auto shop. Luckily, repairing a space ship isn't as...

  • Review Endless Golf (Wii U eShop)

    Golf a while. Golf... FOREVER!

    The title Endless Golf pretty much explains the entire game. If you've ever found that eighteen holes just wasn't enough for you, then the constant rolling green hills of Endless Golf will call to you, promising a game that will never, ever end. By generating a new hole every time you sink a ball, the game's 2D golfing...

  • Review The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth (Wii U eShop)

    Gross. Gripping. Great.

    The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth has been a long time coming on Wii U, but it was worth the wait. With excellent enemy and boss variety along with a seemingly endless supply of pickups and items to help Isaac escape his mom's horrifying basement, the game constantly surprises players with something new. The only thing you'll see...

  • Review KEYTARI: 8-bit Music Maker (Wii U eShop)

    Weak Beats

    Keytari: 8-Bit Music Maker seems to be an interesting entry in the eShop for anyone who's ever grooved along to the chiptunes that played during NES games. After hearing music from Super Mario Bros. and Mega Man for decades, Keytari tries to put the tools in your hand to make your own. Unfortunately, its limited capabilities turn it into...

  • Review Asteroid Quarry (Wii U eShop)

    Lost and Bored in Space

    The life of a space miner is a lonely, but simple one. With Earth's resources exhausted, a single miner is dispatched to cut ore from nearby asteroids and bring it back to a space station. It's not the most complex work, but it is complicated by the abundance of space pirates out there who want to capitalize on the player's...