Game Reviews
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NCAA Football 09 All-Play Published Date: Aug 27, 2008In America, college sports work in large part because players are competing for more than just a moment of glory and the eventually threadbare mythological memories told ad nauseam to eyeball-rolling teenagers. With its shoddy promises of pro-sports glory—maybe even you are the next Michael Jordan...
Genre: Sports Platform: Wii
Read full review »5.1 -
Big Beach Sports Published Date: Jul 21, 2008Why do winter-sport games sell best in winter, summer-sport games when the sun is shining? Certainly there is a logic behind this larding of self-same seasonal content—thus Christmas movies at Christmas because, baseball fans asides, few want to see an ancient fat man during the summer. But there...
Genre: Sports Platform: Wii
Read full review »5.5 -
Top Spin 3 Published Date: Jul 20, 20082K’s Top Spin 3 has been highly anticipated on the Wii, especially since the producers continually promised hyper-realistic gameplay and graphics, as well as a pool of accurately modelled world famous players to choose from. To some degree, TS3 for the Wii lives up to these promises, but overall, ...
Genre: Sports Platform: Wii
Read full review »6.3 -
Super Smash Bros Brawl Published Date: Jul 11, 2008Hands up everyone who wants to knock the stuffing out of that annoying little yellow rat Pikachu? Well boys and girls, here’s your chance to vent all of that bottled up rage and, quite literally, knock him (or his wimpy trainer) out of the park. Welcome to Super Smash Bros. Brawl (SSBB), the new W...
Genre: Action Platform: Wii
Read full review »8 -
BlastWorks: Build, Trade, Destroy Published Date: Jul 8, 2008There’s something almost groan-inducing about a game when even its designers are willing to describe it as a “frenetic geometric battle”. Like the terms, say, “limber, sexy octogenarian” or “rowdy vitamin supplement,” such descriptors seem to reveal either a total disregard for the sta...
Genre: Shooter Platform: Wii
Read full review »8.5 -
Speed Racer Published Date: Jun 26, 2008It’s a strange feat, no doubt, to create a narrativeless videogame upon the back of a plot-laden television show-turned-movie. Like a child more interested in the box than the toy that came in it, the producers of Speed Racer have kept the superficial husk of the show and discarded more or less an...
Genre: Racing Platform: Wii
Read full review »7 -
Wii Fit Published Date: Jun 12, 2008There’s something counterintuitive, even vaguely off-putting, about a videogame that’s earnestly intended to improve your health. Videogames, as we all know and have heard, are pernicious, sedentary, monotonous activities that promote obesity, strain vision, and engender repetitive-stress injury...
Genre: Sports Platform: Wii
Read full review »8 -
Okami Published Date: May 23, 2008Okami, released originally for PS2 in 2006, was never a hit. Critics and selective gaming circles lauded it, sure, but legions of children and hardcore shoot-‘em-up gamers seemed only passingly affected by the game’s charming visuals, barebones gameplay, and mythological backstory. As a result, ...
Genre: Adventure Platform: Wii
Read full review »8.5 -
Sega Superstars Tennis Published Date: May 11, 2008There was something almost accidental about the release of Wii Sports. More demo than full-fledged game, Wii Sports exhibited all the strengths of a bare-bone presentation—yes, one was forced to acknowledge, the Wii’s motion sensitivity transposes realistically onto sport after sport—while e...
Genre: Sports Platform: Wii
Read full review »7 -
Mario Kart 64 (Virtual Console) Published Date: May 8, 2008If one were to uncover the defining characteristic of the Super Mario Bros. franchise—besides the fratelli themselves, of course—then what would it be? In short, an unflagging willingness to rethink and reinvent everything that has made Mario and Luigi not merely shorthand for videogames but als...
Genre: Racing Action Platform: Wii
Read full review »8.5