Author Profile
- Username
- JonWahlgren
- Articles
- 591 (178 reviews)
- First Article
- Mon 4th, May 2009
- Avg. Review Score
- 6.3
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Review Sniper Elite V2 (Wii U)
Reach out and touch someone
Let’s just get this out of the way: Sniper Elite V2 on Wii U seems built for the bargain bin. Were it a movie then this edition would be one of those bare-bones, dithery full-screen DVDs that advertises its interactive menu and scene selection as "features". So says the cynic in us, and our realist chimes in with a...
Feature The Neutered Malevolence of Animal Crossing: New Leaf
Jon tries to drop the hammer but settles for waving a foam finger
This is the second part of our man Jon's personal Animal Crossing: New Leaf diary, which is part of a Nintendo-organised "Mayor Program". You can read all about how we came to be involved in this article, where we also explain our reasoning for participating. With that out of the way,...
Review Mario and Donkey Kong: Minis on the Move (3DS eShop)
Don't Panic
At times it feels like Mario and Donkey Kong: Minis on the Move is designed as a time trial to measure the shortest amount of time in which players will fling a 3DS across the room. Once the game is afoot, every trick in the book is deployed to trigger urgency: Constant unstoppable motion, ticking clocks, shaking tiles and frenetic music...
Feature Animal Crossing: New Leaf Has Atrocious Fish Puns
Nibbling away at good taste
This is the first part of our man Jon's personal Animal Crossing: New Leaf diary, which is part of a Nintendo-organised "Mayor Program". You can read all about how we came to be involved in this article, where we also explain our reasoning for participating. With that out of the way, we hope you enjoy this first despatch...
News Miiverse Now Available In Your Browser
Social network makes the leap off of Wii U
Miiverse, that perfectly civil, friendly and downright jovial Wii U utopia of a social network, which doubles as a place to discover just how much patience people have for creating incredibly elaborate works of art using two colors and a stylus, is now available in your browser. You're now free to sit in...
Interview Marc Franklin - Nintendo of America
We chat with Nintendo's head PR honcho about 3DS, Earthbound and Zelda
Between test drives of a selection of Nintendo's 2013 line-up, including The Legend of Zelda 3DS, Donkey Kong Country Returns 3D and Animal Crossing: New Leaf, we had the chance to catch up with Nintendo of America's PR wizard Marc Franklin to talk about w
First Impressions Donkey Kong Country Returns 3D
Jungle boogie
Retro's fantastic Donkey Kong Country Returns is a known quantity by now, so when we had the chance to go hands-on with the 3DS port in San Francisco recently we weren't exactly overcome with sweeping revelation. It was a great game on Wii and, unsurprisingly, that same great game translates very well to a handheld. Those who’ve...
First Impressions The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds
Further muddying the timeline
Surprise! That rumored Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask 3DS remake was totally not true, and no doubt planted as a red herring by some unscrupulous Nintendo employee to throw us all off the real story: Nintendo's handheld is getting a “sequel” to fan-favorite The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past.
News Nintendo to Pull the Plug on Several Online Wii Channels
Pour one out for News cat this summer
Better get those last rounds in with the Wii's Channels before Nintendo starts flickering the lights at closing time, as the company has announced that a chunk of the console's quirky online features are shuttering on 28th June. This will effect the Forecast, News, Everybody Votes, Check Mii Out and Nintendo...
Review The Amazing Spider-Man: Ultimate Edition (Wii U)
Spidey takes Manhattan, again
Our friendly neighborhood wall crawler's cinematic reboot in last summer's The Amazing Spider-Man had us leaving theatres utterly torn. We're down with new interpretations and while the Spider-Man on-screen offered a lot of what we love about the character, the surrounding film was kind of a mess. The same can be said...
Review BIT.TRIP Presents: Runner 2 Future Legend of Rhythm Alien (Wii U eShop)
A bolt of bliss
There's a really strong sense of liberation to BIT.TRIP Presents: RUNNER2: Future Legend of Rhythm Alien, made more pronounced if you’ve hung with any of the six WiiWare entries of the series. In no small part is it because of all the running and jumping, which does metaphorically speak strongest to our sense of freedom —...
Review Ben 10: Omniverse (Wii U)
Hangin' with the Plumbers
Is it just us or has Wii U already amassed a swath of licensed beat-em-ups in the three months since its November launch? It seems like there's no shortage of ways to punch and/or slice hordes of bad things, between the reasonably OK Transformers Prime and the why-oh-why of Rise of the Guardians, so forgive us if the...
Under pressure
Having covered bullets and time, EnjoyUp's pint-sized yet madly challenging 99 series of score-attackers aligns its focus on the third staple of classic game design: movement and the limitations thereof. Over the dozen or so stages of 99Moves, players are dared to make it to the end of a gauntlet in as many moves or fewer. It doesn't...
Review Transformers Prime (Wii U)
You've got the touch (screen)
The long-running Transformers franchise has shifted, morphed and diverged enough to certainly live up to its name since debuting in 1984: the original Generation 1 adored by long-time fans and purists, Beast Wars, a few Michael Bay interpretations and loads of comic books and video games. Much of the fiction's focus...
Review Fire Emblem: Awakening (3DS)
I love the smell of Elfire in the morning
A hint of trepidation arises whenever the "Powers That Be" decide that "Your Cool Thing" needs a bigger audience, primarily because "What They Like" and "Why You Like It" don't always mesh. Take Fire Emblem, possibly the most hardcore of Nintendo's franchises — not "hardcore" in the nonsense term of it...
Dance epidemic tonight
Given its massive success, we can't even feign surprise at this point that Just Dance hasn't veered far from its path. Pleased with its gift horse and eyes locked firmly elsewhere but its mouth, Ubisoft keeps it on the same track for yet another go round of light-hearted party fun. The prerequisite tweaks and fiddles to the...
Review Rytmik World Music (DSiWare)
Bring the beat back
Cinemax has cooked up a number of flavours of its Rytmik music production suite, allowing the musically-minded playgrounds with which to explore dance, chip tunes, hip hop, rock and now world music. Rytmik World Music is a fun little musical tool tha
Review Anonymous Notes Chapter 3 - From The Abyss (DSiWare)
Return of the Abyss
Things have been quiet on the Anonymous Notes front — after a year and a half the series returns for a hat trick with Anonymous Notes Chapter 3 - From The Abyss. Not much has changed in that time, really: save for a new protagonist, Chapter 3 is still the same mechanically sound and somewhat aimless dungeon crawler as Chapter 2...
Review Call of Duty: Black Ops II (Wii U)
Always outnumbered, never outgunned
Black Ops was a remarkable achievement for Treyarch. By finally carving out their own vision of the franchise, one steeped in Cold War history and with narrative focus, the studio broke out from under Infinity Ward's imposing shadow and pulled off one of the most compelling games in the series. It was a breath of...
Review James Bond: 007 Legends (Wii U)
Thunderbore
With the new James Bond film Skyfall currently rocking movie theaters across the globe, you might expect this year's 007 game to be all about the present. Instead, Eurocom's swansong digs into the franchise's rich 50-year legacy, updating some of Bond's more memorable moments for the modern era. With the successful re-imagining of...
Review Assassin's Creed III (Wii U)
America, **** yeah!
Assassin's Creed III is a weird game to launch alongside Wii U: there is little context for those Nintendo-only players who sat out the other four games because they perhaps didn't own the proper hardware, and those who are invested in the series probably already picked this up elsewhere when it released weeks before the Wii U...
Review Transformers Prime (3DS)
More than meets the eye?
Long-time Transformers fans have enjoyed a renaissance of sorts this console generation, with the Cybertron games offering a vision of the robots in disguise that those of us who grew up with the old cartoon could get behind in our capacity as grumpy old men. Keen to serve fans of all ages, Activision has turned its...
Review ESPN Sports Connection (Wii U)
Taking one for the team
Launching with Wii Sports was, in hindsight, one of Nintendo's best ideas: the pack-in's elegant simplicity helped skyrocket the fledgling Wii right up into the stratosphere. Families rallied around Tennis, grannies couldn't get enough Bowling, that annoying uncle hogged Golf, mass hysteria yadda yadda. So no surprise then...
Pants party
When you're aiming for a wide audience with your new console, it's important to have all of your boxes ticked. New Mario? Check. Zombies? Check. Party game? Check, mate. That seems to be the driving force behind SiNG Party, a game so light and fluffy that it wafts through the air like the smell of cotton candy. It just kind of exists in...
