Features

Breath of the Wild’s new VR mode, usable with the Nintendo Labo VR headset, is not proof that virtual reality is bad. It’s not even evidence that Labo and the Switch are bad ways to experience virtual reality. It’s proof that VR has to be looked at very differently from what we traditionally know about games…

Yoshi’s Crafted World is a curious game. I mean; it’s a standard Mario (or technically Yoshi) game, so you kind of know what you’re getting into. It starts out as being your standard side-scrolling platformer with the major quirk being that the world is “made” of common everyday materials you’d find at your local craft store.…

For over thirty years, fans all over the world have enjoyed the magic of The Legend of Zelda franchise. Starting with The Legend of Zelda in 1986, Nintendo has consistently put out some of the most popular and highly regarded games of all time. The series currently has 17 main story games spanning 12 different…

If you played The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, you know that one of the game’s vital features is cooking. The possibilities felt endless; you can cook many combinations of food and get a seemingly endless number of results. Have you ever wanted to taste some of the cooked food you cooked in…

It’s always a pleasure seeing familiar characters and landscapes transformed entirely to fit new themes or design choices in video games. Whether it’s Mario’s world becoming papercraft or Hyrule seeing a vibrant, cel-shaded ocean, being able to see things from a new perspective can help enrich the experience of what might otherwise be “just” another…

Diablo is a series that needs very little introduction, but, despite being one of the most famous video game series for PC, it has never been available on a Nintendo platform until now.  Diablo III was recently released for Nintendo Switch, and even though I have played many other Blizzard games, I had never played…

Stories often share common elements. This is fine, more or less, since there are only so many truly distinct stories that can be told. But sometimes things go a little further, and the resulting parallels are hard to miss. One example of this is the uncanny similarities and connections found between Nintendo’s Ocarina of Time and J.R.R.…

New games — new franchises to be more precise — rarely catch my attention right away. I am admittedly very slow to try new things. Usually when a new game comes out, and this is especially true for indie titles, I hear a lot of buzz about them, see YouTubers hype them up with one-off…

Often in the Zelda series, there are events that are never witnessed in-game but nonetheless have ramifications for gameplay and the in-game world itself. Few areas throughout the series inspire the sense of mystery and dread that Ikana Canyon does, and much of this is due to the Great War. The dry and barren land…

The Mario series has expanded into multiple directions since the NES era. Games like Super Mario Odyssey and Super Mario 64 gave us an open world 3D experience, and RPGs such as Paper Mario are filled with witty dialog. But Nintendo always remembers what made Mario the plumber we love today: platformers. Full Disclosure Nintendo…

The Legend of Zelda is well known not just for its world and gameplay but also for its iconic soundtracks. From its first appearance on the NES, the Zelda series has held pieces of music that are not only inseparable from the games but also some of the hallmarks of video game music as a…

Moonlighter, from 11 Bit Studios, does well to try and combine some rogue-like style concepts with the dungeon crawling of the original Legend of Zelda. For the most part, it’s actually quite nice. However, a few key areas keep this game from being quite as amazing as it could be. I do want to start out by saying…

I’ve always thought it took a lot of guts for Bowser to take on Mario and Luigi so many times, but I guess Nintendo took idea much more seriously than I ever did. Mario & Luigi: Bowser’s Inside Story + Bowser Jr.’s Journey is a remake of Nintendo DS game Mario & Luigi: Bowser’s Inside…

Having first played The Wind Waker on release day back in 2003 on the GameCube, I was pleasantly surprised by the controversial graphics at the time, being stubborn and judging the game for what it would be rather than what it wasn’t. The Celtic and Irish touches intertwined within the game can be subtle but…

I slept a total of ten hours playing Smash on the weekend of Super Smash Bros. Ultimate’s release, and it was amazing. Super Smash Bros. Ultimate is finally here, and it was well worth the wait. “Ultimate” is an incredibly accurate title. While the newest installment in the Super Smash Bros. series is not without some flaws,…