Dr. Luigi Reviews
It's a real pity. Wii U's eShop has been starved of decent fare of late, and Nintendo should be leading the way. Yet it's easy to see Dr Luigi as a symptom of the current malaise affecting its home console business. It features a strange gimmick no one's really that interested in, it highlights an increasing reliance on past glories, and most will find it somewhat overpriced. The outgoing Fiscal Year of Luigi draws to a close with a whimper, then - here's hoping the coming months see Nintendo offer a more convincing tablet-based cure for what ails it.
The Year of Luigi ends with Dr. Luigi, a fun twist of the 23-year-old classic Dr. Mario.
Virus placement and random pill drops can create extremely difficult starting scenarios, but head-to-head play with friends is great fun.
Dr. Luigi is content with safety over invention
Dr. Luigi repackages the Dr. Mario formula with some new ideas, but limited options and slow pacing leave it feeling anemic.
Dr. Luigi is a fun, if overly familiar puzzle game that will satisfy anyone who knows what they're getting when they download it from the eShop. While we would have liked a little more variety and some more twists for Luigi's puzzle début on Wii U, Dr. Luigi is a good way to end the Year of the Tall Green Brother. It's a simple, clear experience with strong gameplay that reminds us why we love the Mario Bros. in the first place.
Other than the new Operation L and Virus Buster modes, there is little in the way of new content that makes this a better deal than the previous (and cheaper) versions. For up to £5, Dr. Luigi would have been an OK puzzler, but at almost half the cost of a retail Wii U game, the person who decided the price for this retread probably needs some medical observation themselves.
Outside of Virus Buster, Dr. Luigi is very much a no-frills game mostly for fans of the Dr. series. If you don't find yourself getting excited at the prospect of L-shaped blocks or GamePad play though, you might as well just stick with Dr. Mario Online Rx. Either way, the Wii U's newest entry in the Dr. series is a nice cap on a great first Year of Luigi.
A competent and unexciting update to a competent and unexciting puzzler, which is not nearly praise enough to forgive the optimistically high price.
While I greatly enjoyed Dr. Luigi, most of my joy can be attributed to my profound love for Dr. Mario. Those who have such a nostalgic tie to the game will love Dr. Luigi in the same way the new iterations of Tetris keep fans from the '80s and '90s coming back.
Final game in Nintendo's Year of Luigi sends Mario's younger brother out with a bang
I love seeing Nintendo re-imagining classic franchises, especially ones like Dr. Mario that don't get enough love, but this small package does more to whet my appetite than satiate it. Still, for $15 fans of the formula cannot go wrong. This is as close as we are going to get to a proper Dr. Mario sequel for a while, so while the prescription doesn't cure all woes; it does help dull the pain.
Dr. Luigi does everything his brother does, but sadly not much more. The new modes do nothing to spice up this aging series' formula, and I really doubt they will be enough to justify a purchase for even the most diehard fan.
With so many ways to play for so little a cost, it's hard not to recommend Dr. Luigi. The Dr. Mario gameplay has held up over the years because, like Chess, Checkers, or Don't Take a Whiz on the Electric Fence, it's easy to pick up but constantly shifting. Plus, it only costs fifteen bucks to download Dr. Luigi, which, given the amount of replayability here, is a friggin' steal. If you've got a fever, you know the prescription. No, it ain't more cowbell. It's more Dr. Luigi.
It would have been nice to see more thought put into the presentation, but fans of the series will feel right at home with this familiar layout. The excellent touch controls in the "Virus Buster" mode along with the new challenges posed in "Operation L," make "Dr. Luigi" a worthy successor and a nice cap off to the 2013 Year of Luigi.
At a lower price, it would have been a good game worthy of recommendation, but at this price, stay away- there's better things on the Wii U eShop that deserve your attention anyway.
Overall, Dr. Luigi certainly scratches that virus-busting itch, and is especially fun with two players. Fans of the series and Tetris addicts shouldn't hesitate to pick it up from the Wii U eShop. It's the kind of game that doesn't need to change a great deal between versions, and its designers have wisely stuck to the basics while adding some entertaining twists to the gameplay with Operation L.
So if you're feeling particularly flush and have some yearning to play another block puzzler, Dr. Luigi does a fine job of sitting somewhere in the middle of this well-worn genre. Hardly a glowing endorsement, and a pretty sad way to end Luigi's very own year. Let's hope 2014 is the year of Link, or Samus, or even someone new. Otherwise 2015 might be the year of no more Wii U.
There's online play, which is a nice bonus for serious fans of the puzzle game, and these work well enough, but at no stage was I able to shake the feeling that Dr. Luigi is nothing more than filler material. This isn't an especially memorable game, doesn't utilise the capabilities of the Wii U to any meaningful degree, and is nothing more than a brief diversion on the way to something more.
Although Dr. Luigi isn't much of a step-up from other Dr. Mario games, the great presentation, Operation L mode, and being able to play online will make it a worthwhile download for fans of the series while newcomers will appreciate the simple yet hard to master gameplay.