Electronic Arts Game Reviews
Review MySims Cozy Bundle (Switch) - An Easygoing, Entertaining Pair Of Sims Spin-Offs
The Sim-ple life
Released in 2007 by EA Redwood Shores, MySims was an attempt to capitalise on the increasing popularity of Animal Crossing (the excellent Wild World had released two years prior). A chibi-styled spin-off from the main Sims franchise, this series skewed towards a younger audience and had players rejuvenate a community with friendship...
Review EA Sports FC 25 (Switch) - The New Best Football Game On Switch
We've been to Haaland back
If you've been following the history of the FIFA series on Switch, you'll know there was a massive plot twist last year. After delivering exactly the same FIFA game for six years in a row and getting progressively more frustrated Nintendo Life reviews in the process, EA finally stepped up its game with EA Sports FC 24 and...
Review EA Sports FC 24 (Switch) - The Best Football Game On Any Nintendo System, Finally
We Kanté believe they finally did it
Long-time Nintendo Life readers will be aware of the love-hate (mainly hate) relationship we’ve had with the FIFA series over the course of the Switch’s life. The first Switch entry, FIFA 18, was considered a positive start, even though it felt feature-light compared to other consoles and was clearly based...
Review It Takes Two (Switch) - Not Quite The Perfect Marriage, But A Satisfying Switch Port
Buckle my shoe
Marriage isn’t always perfect. Sometimes, as here, two presumably decent, hard-working parents, whose relationship you know nothing about and whom you can afford only the most general human empathy, find the joy of matrimony fades. So they must support their daughter as they carefully share their decision to separate. However, in It...
Review FIFA 22 (Switch) - Another Match Abandoned
Getting a new game? Neuer not
“Fool me once,” the famous phrase goes, “shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.” With FIFA 22, EA is attempting to fool us thrice, and although we haven't been able to find any official ruling on what this means, we’ve come to the conclusion that it basically rolls back to “shame on you” again...
Review Lost In Random (Switch) - A Rich Audiovisual Treat With Inventive But Limited Combat
Finely diced
Lost in Random tells a story of two sisters, Even and Odd, who inhabit a fantastical storybook world of woollen chess pieces and steampunk teapots and the like. They’re separated by the Queen in accordance with a draconian tradition that sees children roll a dice on their twelfth birthday to determine their station for the rest of...
Review Knockout City (Switch) - Dodge This Superb Squad-Based Arcade Action At Your Peril
Dodge, duck, dip, dive and dodge
As seasoned dodgeball professionals over here at Nintendo Life, we're well aware that the most important aspect in creating a successful video game based on this king of sports is nailing the sound that a ball makes as it smashes powerfully into the face and/or body of your opponent. It really needs to get that...
Review Plants Vs. Zombies: Battle For Neighborville Complete Edition (Switch) - Dig For Victory
A bountiful harvest
It’s been a long and weird road for the Plants vs. Zombies franchise. What began as a simplistic and quirky tower defence title eventually led to the creation of a surprisingly high-quality shooter spin-off series. The latest release in this series, Plants vs. Zombies: Battle For Neighborville, originally saw its debut on other...
Review Apex Legends (Switch) - A Great Game Hamstrung By A Compromised Switch Port
A Royale Mess?
Respawn's Apex Legends, to our minds one of the very best free-to-play Battle Royale shooters currently available on PC or console, finally makes its way to Nintendo Switch and it is, unfortunately, a real mixed bag of a port. This is at its core the same fast-paced, ping-tastic game we've been enjoying since 2019, but here the...
Review Need For Speed: Hot Pursuit Remastered (Switch) - A Racer From A More Innocent Time
Cop a load of this
Here’s a fun fact for you: there isn’t a single person on this planet who can recite the titles of all 24 Need for Speed games in order. It’s actually physically impossible, like licking your own back or hearing the words “Hi, I’m Daisy” without getting irritated. While this ‘fact’ is open for debate, here’s one...
Review FIFA 21 (Switch) - EA Insults Switch Owners Yet Again With This Half-Baked Effort
Don't spend your Mané on this
Okay, enough's enough. Ever since EA first brought the FIFA series to the Switch with FIFA 18, Nintendo fans have been given a lesser version of the game seen on other systems. At first, we gave EA the benefit of the doubt and put it down to the challenges of porting a game to a less powerful system with a user base...
Heaven is a race on Earth
If there’s one genre of gaming where the Switch is arguably lacking, it’s open-world racing. In fairness, that’s because there aren’t too many of them in general, but whereas other systems have their Forza Horizons, Need For Speeds and The Crews, the Switch is almost entirely bereft of free-roaming driving. That...
Review FIFA 20 (Switch) - A Shamelessly Cynical Attempt To Swindle Switch-Owning Footy Fans
This can't Coutinho happening
When EA released FIFA 18 on the Switch, it was missing a number of modes and features. Given that the game was being handled by another studio in Bucharest – and given that one of the game’s producers gave the (rather fishy) excuse that they didn’t want to overwhelm Switch players with every option at once – we...
Review Unravel Two (Switch) - Another Confident Switch Port, Perfect For Platforming Fans
Wool you bring a friend?
If video games have taught us anything over the years, it’s that adventures are always better when undertaken with a friend. Experiencing a challenging mission for the first time. Overcoming a boss with hard-fought teamwork. Solving a puzzle at the exact same moment. Co-op can often give us some of gaming’s most...
Review FIFA 19 (Switch) - The Best Soccer Game On Switch, But It's Hard Not To Feel Short-Changed
Here we go Higuain
Last year, EA Sports reignited its relationship with Nintendo by bringing a FIFA game to one of its home consoles for the first time in half a decade. FIFA 18 delivered a solid football experience on Switch, causing us to confidently declare it “the best Nintendo FIFA ever”. This wasn’t exactly difficult to achieve, though...
The best Nintendo FIFA ever
Video game spin is a curious thing. It must be difficult for publishers and developers to turn a negative into a positive, but sometimes the excuses are so odd our eyebrows can’t help ascending skyward. The FIFA series has been a good example of this for a number of years. Nintendo fans need only cast their minds back...
Review Need for Speed: Most Wanted U (Wii U)
Just what U wanted
Criterion is best known for developing the smash hit Burnout games — which last appeared on a Nintendo console over ten years ago — but since then the studio's gone on to helm the long-running Need for Speed series of racing games. Its latest effort is Need for Speed: Most Wanted U, an enhanced port of last year's PS3/360...
Still solid after all these years
It's hard to believe that it's been 25 years since the first Madden Football release, and given that the game has been released on pretty much every gaming platform imaginable over the years, it was pretty much a given we'd see a release on Nintendo's new console. While Madden NFL 13 on the Wii U has lost a bit of...
Review Beetle Adventure Racing! (Nintendo 64)
Infested with Bugs
These days, considering most of us have become accustomed to the smooth frame rates and high definition resolutions provided by modern consoles, revisiting the Nintendo 64 can sometimes be a painful experience as you may find that some of your favourite games haven’t aged very well. Fuzzy textures, choppy frame rates and limited...
Massively Effective
Wii U had a rock solid line-up of launch titles to accompany it last year. From Grade-A third party franchises such as Assassin’s Creed through to Mario, a classic staple in the Nintendo canon. Oddly enough, more than a few of these launch games were sequels, or even third games in series’ that have already been around for...
Party like it's 2011
EA has a bit of history when it comes to releasing versions of FIFA on new consoles. No matter how many years the series runs for or how many formats the game is released on, the first edition on a new machine is always a bit hit and miss. You can track that all the way back to the days of the Sega Megadrive and EA’s first...
Review Need for Speed: The Run (3DS)
Enough speed to make your eyes bleed
The high pitched sound of the engines roar assures us that we’re quickly approaching top speeds, but it’s barely noticeable from the techno jams blasting through the speakers. As each corner pushes us closer to the edge of losing control and the infectious music fuels our aggressive driving habits, one thing...
A new leash on life
Porting life management simulator The Sims to handhelds has proven a mixed experience with more missteps than successes, but when The Sims 3 debuted as a 3DS launch title the series hit one of its lowest lows to date. The obvious rush job felt like a cynical slap to the face, EA having sped the title to store shelves in a direly...
A narrow miss
When the 3DS launched in March, Konami instantly seized the opportunity to provide the first football – or soccer, for our US readers – title on the 3DS, with Pro Evolution Soccer 2011 3D. While that title was prompt but light on content, FIFA 12 has emerged for the second half of the year to attempt a comeback; can it turn the...
Perfect powder
As you curl around a banked corner, the lip of a large ramp of snow appears in the distance and your mind begins to race at the possibilities for gnarliness that lie ahead. Slamming the boost and tucking your body forward, you scorch towards the precisely constructed mound, pre-winding your hands, arms and shoulders for maximum...
Review Tiger Woods PGA Tour 12: The Masters (Wii)
A master stroke?
The seasoned PGA Tour Golf series shoves Tiger out of the way this year, instead choosing to put “The Masters” tournament front and center. The case, promotion and advertising for Tiger Woods PGA Tour 12: The Masters are all Masters-centric, perhaps in a first step toward abandoning the long-running Tiger Woods branding...
Review Madden NFL Football (3DS)
Down, set, fumble
It’s no secret that the NFL captivates millions of fans each year, and the Madden franchise has always been there at the forefront, leading the pack on the videogame side of the football world. Even though it’s currently in the off-season for the NFL, it’s not stopping EA from charging onto the 3DS scene and putting a new 3D...
My name is Hurl
Ever since David Crane and Richard Gold created Little Computer People for 8-bit computers in 1985, gamers have been fascinated with life simulation games, as demonstrated by the huge sales success of The Sims series. However, The Sims is also a series that has suffered from 'content filtering', as the PC experience has been watered...
Tied to the rail tracks
Rango is a new CGI movie coming to a cinema near you. You gamers all know what that means, a video game tie-in! Rango is a chameleon that becomes stranded as the sheriff of a mini Wild West town populated by animals of the desert; snakes, lizards, rabbits and a mariachi band of owls. So far, so typical of a CGI movie. The...
Third time the charm?
When the original PC title The Sims saw release, Maxis treated it as a spin-off of their popular SimCity franchise, the 3000 edition of which included a teaser for upcoming title SimMars. Before Will Wright could say "(insert Sim gibberish here)," though, it proved a sensational success both critically and...
