Mage Knight: Destiny's Soldier fails, even for fans of the tabletop Mage Knight strategy game. A simple dice game has been reduced to a convoluted mess of menus and drunken stylus controls. The inaccuracy of stylus input is the most infuriating aspect of waging this turn-based, grid-mapped medieval war, enough to weigh down whatever positives the game might manage to sneak through.
Tap a unit in your Lord of the Rings-style army and its action menu comes up; drag a unit and it moves to
Playing Magical Starsign is like taking a portal back to 1995. Much of the game feels like it came straight from the late SNES period - an era where RPGs in English were as rare and treasured as diamonds, and even mediocre titles got far more attention from fans than they rightfully deserved. By the standards of that time, Magical Starsign would have been a very good RPG - it's got vibrant, colorful sprite graphics, cute characters, a wealth of varied environments to travel to and explore, and
Imagine if Voldemort finally got his snaky hands on Harry Potter – only instead of exacting his bloody revenge, he gave the boy wizard a lobotomy and sent him back to Hogwarts.
Today, we're treated to two brand new "Touch Generations" games from Nintendo - the brand is supposed to encapsulate titles that appeal to anyone and everyone by focusing on simple, touch-screen gameplay and easily explainable ideas. Magnetica fits all those criteria, though its extremely straightforward, color-matching puzzles might be too little for the asking price.
Here's the setup - there's a winding track packed with colored marbles that are slowly rolling towards a hole. Your job is to
After a woefully lacking baseball debut last season on the DS, publisher 2K Sports went back to the drawing board, realizing that (surprise!) Nintendo’s portable powerhouse was no place for a sports sim. Between the machine’s capabilities, controls, and target market, it was time for a redesign. Creating a new franchise from scratch is hardly a simple task either, but MLB 2K8 Fantasy All-Stars is more than capable on all fronts. A
Do you remember that bit in the film where the penguins get out the yellow inflatable bouncy blobs in order to collect the higher snowflakes? That was the best bit. Yeah, some people reckon it was when the penguins had to find their way around the maze, but for us, it's all about the bouncing.
Good heavens on a handlebar, what's going on? An arcade game based on a documentary? What's next, Rockstar's Bowling For Columbine on the PS3? This game was always going to be garbage, but
Let's be honest with each other: the DS has more quality RPGs than anyone has the time to play. We get paid to do it and even with 30 hours a month on public transit we're still woefully behind. And yet here we are again with another high-profile DS RPG that comes out the same month as at least three others that we can think of. What makes Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story any more worthwhile than the rest of this creamy crop?
It's not often that a game makes you laugh. And by that we mean really laugh. You know, the kind of laughter that gets funny looks from anyone unlucky enough to be sat next to you on the train. The kind that, with each little chuckle, makes people think you're a bit mental. Partners in Time does. Like its predecessor, Superstar Saga, it's a real class act in terms of dialogue, scripting and story. An excuse for Nintendo to poke fun at their best-loved mascot and deliver something that feels
What if Mario were a real person? With his prolific resume and schedule, he'd be busier than Samuel L. Jackson and Ryan Seacrest put together. Mario Hoops 3-on-3 is his first official role as a basketball player - his cameo in the GameCube version of NBA Street 3 notwithstanding. After playing the game, maybe putting a short, pudgy white dude on a basketball court - even if it is Mario - wasn't the best idea Nintendo ever came up with.
We've come to expect some wild concepts out of new DS
There really is a lot of love here. Wire-free online play aside, Mario Kart DS gets so much right it's untrue. So much in fact that it's easy to forgive the fact that many of those irritating classic Mario Kart quirks have reared their ugly heads on to DS.Let's start with these quirks to get them out of the way. 50cc mode is still painfully slow and dull as ditchwater - it was true in Double Dash and the same applies here. It feels like your karts are driving through soup; every straight on
