WiiU Reviews

The 3DS has been a great device for playing puzzle games, from the very popular Professor Layton franchise to the Pushmo series. The Wii U also has a fair share of stylus specific games, but it wasn't until Pushmo World was released that I finally took the plunge with one of them. It has been well worth it!

At its heart, Shovel Knight is a platformer that echoes the NES classics of Mega Man, Duck Tales, Zelda 2, and Super Mario Bros. 3, then takes everything that works well within those games and throws away the tedium that can become infuriating.

NES Remix II builds on the same basic gameplay mechanics of the original NES Remix. And this is great, because it allows players to attempt challenges in some more popular classic titles such as Super Mario Bros. 3, Zelda 2, Dr. Mario, and Punch-Out. NES Remix II added leaderboards, allowing players to post their scores to Miiverse and to compare with others. Although not a game changer, it was a welcome addition.

It has been a long wait. It seems like years since we received our first screens, months since that detailed, energetic Nintendo Direct... Now, it will only be a little over a week before we can all play it. It's almost Mario Kart time, and it just cannot seem to come fast enough. I had zero desire to sit down and write this up. I don't want to tell you about Mario Kart, I don't want to discuss Mario Kart, and I definitely don't want to waste valuable time editing anything about Mario Kart.

It feels so long ago that I went out and purchased a banana yellow Gameboy Pocket and copies of Donkey Kong Country and Donkey Kong Country 2. As a kid, I always had to pay for my own games as my parents refused to purchase games for birthdays or Christmas. For that reason, these two games were played a lot. Many years later, Nintendo is still releasing titles in the Donkey Kong Country franchise; how thankful long-time fans must be, because Nintendo continues to release high quality, top tier games.

Mario and friends are back, in a brand new 3D adventure. Belonging to the same family as the 3DS's Super Mario 3D Land, Super Mario 3D World adds in a massive focus on co-op and a few new abilities that make looking back in on the Mushroom Kingdom well worth it. There's even some actual plumbing, which is probably a pretty major twist.

It's difficult to write about Sonic games. Depending who you ask, the only good titles in the franchise in the last decade have been re-releases of Mega Drive/Genesis titles. It seems popular to knock the Blue Blur, and it's fairly easy to pick out the commentators that haven't actually played the games they choose to badmouth at every turn.

Resident Evil: Revelations was a hit when it came to 3DS ahead of Resident Evil 6 and the controversy surrounding it. A handheld Resident Evil title that seemed to manage to successfully bridge that gap between the old and the new, the survival horror of our youths and the more action-based focus of today.

There's a lot of mixed voices about Disney's Planes, the spin-off from Pixar's 2006 hit Cars. Whether disappointed with the quality of the actual film itself (Planes currently "boasts" a 39 on Metacritic, with a user score lower than that) or if you've got wrapped up in some of the other minor controversies that have come out over the past few months, it's unlikely you're in a rush to go out and by merchandise or games based on the IP.

Like everyone, I looked at Disney Infinity when it was announced and saw only a money grabbing rip-off of Activision's popular Skylanders series. ANOTHER game where I have to buy overpriced toys to unlock some on-disc DLC? Ridiculous.