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Nintendo Enthusiast

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792 games reviewed
75.6 average score
80 median score
53.4% of games recommended

Nintendo Enthusiast's Reviews

Nov 17, 2013

The debut trailer for Assassin's Creed IV depicted a tipsy Blackbeard profiling the suave and stylish Edward Kenway. The famed pirate tells the stories of this elusive man and his hierarchy in the ranks of other pirates. He ends the trailer by saying, "If it's fortune and adventure you seek, then Captain Edward Kenway is your man," following Kenway's subtle dispatching of a guard before walking off with a woman, a smirk on his face. Edward was portrayed as a cool, collected man and Assassin's Creed IV an adventure heavily focused on pirate culture. As it turns out, that is not what it is.

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Nov 18, 2013

Depending on who you talk to, Call of Duty: Ghosts is either a banal sequel or a fulfilling one. It\'s the series at its worst, or it\'s the series changing just enough to keep it fresh.

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8 / 10.0 - Wii Sports Club
Nov 20, 2013

Overall, Bowling for Wii Sports Club is pretty fun. If you are a fan of the original Bowling in Wii Sports, you will enjoy this version. The classic mode, as well as the newer modes, helps to add some spice to the game. Online play helps to take the boredom of playing alone and will keep you coming back for more.

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Dec 1, 2013

The launch of a three-dimensional Mario platformer on a console always carries huge expectations with it.  Ever since Super Mario 64 redefined 3D gaming and single-handedly sold countless people on the Nintendo 64, each 3D Mario game is expected to somehow match its impact.  Well, that's physically impossible — literally, we'd have to make a 4D game to recreate it — and we need to accept that.

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A Link Between Worlds is close to perfection. It hearkens back to the old days of Zelda, encouraging players to explore Hyrule to their heart’s content. It has a charming art style and some of the best dungeon designs in the series to date. And yet, it only succeeds; It never soars. Link’s latest adventure makes nearly every right choice from a mechanical front, but it never goes beyond that. The result is a product that could have been the next Ocarina of Time, but settles for Twilight Princess.

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Dec 19, 2013

The Mario Party franchise and I have always had a rocky relationship. I love its charming aesthetics and generally fun mini-games, but its focus on luck and random “surprises” always left a sour taste in my mouth. My favorites were the N64 titles, with sprawling maps and mad dashes to the power stars. Later entries tried to change the formula with varying success. Island Tour once again tries to shake things up ever so slightly, and again, has varying success.

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9 / 10.0 - NES Remix
Dec 21, 2013

Minor quirks aside, NES Remix is a real treat that came out of nowhere. It always amazes me how Nintendo can keep things so secretive and, in this case, make no mention of it until the release day.

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7.5 / 10.0 - Knytt Underground
Dec 22, 2013

If I were to describe Knytt Underground in one word, it would be \"contradictory.\" In some ways, it\'s everything I could hope for in a metroidvania-style game: it\'s beautiful, intuitive, clever, and most importantly, fun. For large portions of the game, you are pulled into an almost dreamlike state, exploring the massive world and marveling at the eerie ambiance. It\'s then that the game truly shines. But then, it turns around to have horribly unfitting dialogue and characters that pull you out of the experience that the developers work so hard to involve you in while the game simultaneously grows more and more tedious.

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Dec 28, 2013

To say that Sonic has had a rough time since transitioning to 3D would be a massive understatement; after his glory days on the Genesis, nothing was the same for Sonic.  Many people would defend at least a few of the Sonic games released between 1995 and 2009, but few would argue that the era as a whole was a rather painful, dark age.  Sonic Colors in 2010 was a turning point and Sonic console games have been in an upswing since its release.  This means that Sonic Lost World actually has some expectations to live up to.  Can it continue the cautious optimism that the Sonic games have finally won back?  While there are certainly some problems with the game, the overall answer is yes.

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8.5 / 10.0 - CastleStorm
Jan 13, 2014

CastleStorm is just as much a game as it is a test of your multitasking and micromanaging abilities. What seems like just a knock-off of the iOS hit, Angry Birds, is actually so much more. In fact, CastleStorm boasts just as much, if not even more, addicting gameplay, as well as several other layers of depth that make the title even more exciting to play. Couple this in with extensive single-player and multiplayer modes and quite the quirky style, and it becomes quite the appealing product.

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8.5 / 10.0 - Unepic
Jan 30, 2014

Unepic is a liar. There — I said it. Why is it a liar? Well, look at the name — the game implies that it\'s \"unepic,\" but in actuality, this is one of the most epic quests seen on the Wii U eShop. The name actually helps set the tone because, while the gameplay is for the hardcore gamer, the game manages to lighten the tone with excellent and funny dialogue.

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I pull out my SNES every year to enjoy the good ol\' days of gaming and last summer, a series I decided to tackle was no other than Donkey Kong Country. While playing, I would keep muttering under my breath, "Why can't gaming be like this today?" Imagine my excitement when I found at E3 that Retro would be blessing us with another Donkey Kong platformer!

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8.5 / 10.0 - Bravely Default
Mar 11, 2014

Bravely Default is a game that excites me about the future of the JRPG genre. It takes the standard JRPG that we have grown used to, adds in several new features, and modernizes the genre for the new generation. So much is done right that I hope other developers look to it as an example. Unfortunately, what Bravely Default does so ingeniously in its first forty hours falls apart in its last fifteen. What could have been a revolutionary game is debased by the horrendous endgame that Square Enix could have so easily omitted.

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Having played every Professor Layton game released, I have seen both the highs and the lows of the franchise and it saddens me that Azran Legacy marks the last title featuring the infamous and titular Professor Layton. With this in mind, I went in hopeful that Level 5 crafted a game suitable for Layton’s departure, a game which would allow him to go out with a bang. Unfortunately, although the presentation of the game and the finale to the game were grand, the rest of the game failed to be anywhere near as exciting as the rest of the Professor Layton franchise.

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10 / 10.0 - Child of Light
Apr 28, 2014

The visuals, the gameplay, the music, the story, and everything else — when all of these elements come together perfectly and form a true world. A world that takes no effort to get lost in, a world that takes you far away. Individual parts of a game are huge, to be sure, but it is a world that we as gamers truly crave, a world that takes us to an experience beyond anything we previously could have imagined.

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8 / 10.0 - NES Remix 2
May 7, 2014

When Nintendo released the original NES Remix last December, the first thing I and many others thought — after our initial reaction of "Wow, they released a game the same day they announced it" — was that it would be awesome if they made one with better first-party NES games. Well, it certainly didn't take long to get our wish; just months after the original, NES Remix 2 has been released and it contains Nintendo's best games for the NES. The quality of the base games naturally has a huge effect on the remixes and NES Remix 2 is a little shorter than the original but much sweeter.

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May 9, 2014

It's amazing how, after twenty-two years of games, that Kirby can still offer a fresh experience, despite never leaving the second dimension for his main titles. I love how Kirby, as opposed to Mario or Donkey Kong, regularly changes up the formula without losing what makes Kirby special and really shows off what can be done in a 2D space. Triple Deluxe doesn\'t shake up the formula drastically, as it sticks closely to 2010's Return to Dreamland. What it does do, though, is make great use of the system's 3D, offers a classic Kirby experience, and tons of alternate gameplay modes.

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9 / 10.0 - Mario Kart 8
May 25, 2014

To say that Mario Kart is popular is an understatement. Few series have ever matched its twenty-year legacy of sheer popularity and critical acclaim, so needless to say, Mario Kart 8 has a lot to live up to. Expectations have perhaps never been higher, as this is the first entry on a high-definition, online-competent console, but the game pretty much fulfills all of them. It is classic Mario Kart and that means it\'s great — the game even throws in several cool improvements and additions to the franchise. But it is not quite perfect, and by no means is it a revolution.

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8 / 10.0 - Tomodachi Life
Jun 6, 2014

Perhaps it was at the point when I saw Chuck Norris doing yoga with Batman, the Joker, and Barack Obama or maybe it was when Princess Peach was rejected by Peter Griffin. At some point while playing Tomodachi Life, I realized how much the game activated my imagination. When I was little, I was never one to play with action figures or make up fake storylines for fictional characters to partake in, but with Tomodachi Life, I have never felt my imagination so stimulated. I feel like I am managing a virtual dollhouse of celebrities; that is okay, because I have never had so much fun planning the daily goings-on of my Miis.

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8.5 / 10.0 - Ittle Dew
Jun 6, 2014

I didn\'t have much of an idea as to what to expect going in to Ittle Dew. From what little I\'ve seen of it, it seemed like "Zelda clone" could have been appropriate. After playing and experiencing all it had to offer, "Zelda clone" would be doing it a great disservice. Ittle Dew ultimately crafts a unique and charming adventure that often made me laugh and definitely made me sad when it ended a handful of hours later.

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