Wii U

A wonderful site called WiiWareWave had a contest on twitter to win a Wii U indie game called Discovery. Discovery is yet another brick creation game in the vain of Minecraft. I had already played two other block creation games (Cube Life for Wii U and The Magic Hammer for 3DS) and thought they were just ok. And yet, I keep wanting to like this genre. I love creating things. So, I entered the contest to win Discovery and, of course, I won. After a couple of days with the game, I decided it was time to talk about it. Is Discovery any good?

For the longest time, I often would determine my level of interest in a game after sixty minutes. Growing up, I rented a lot of video games, all of which had to pass the sixty minute test before I would buy it from the store. As a reviewer, I technically can't have a sixty minute barometer - I must review the entire game. However, I often still use my sixty minute rule, even if I plan to play the whole game. With the release of Disney Infinity, the the almost impossible ability to adequately review everything in one 'review,' I've decided to share my thoughts ...

Although Nintendo has been pretty quiet at retail, they want to remind consumers that there is still plenty going on in the Nintendo Universe. Below is an update from Nintendo - provided by their PR company - on a few of the things happening this summer!

The rising price of AAA video games at Canadian retail locations is making me wonder something: how long can consumers continue to pay the high price of games? Best Buy Canada and Amazon Canada have been offering a bunch of pre-order incentives for games announced at E3 2015. With a 5-10$ discount, these retailers are charging 64.99 - 69.99; that means the regular price on these titles is 74.99 - 79.99. With a 13% sales tax in Ontario, that means a brand new AAA tilte at full cost could set back consumers 90.00, or roughly 1/5 the price of an Xbox One or PS4.

Splatoon is the latest and greatest title by Nintendo to grace the Wii U and boy does it deliver! As we begin our Splatoon campaign we select our character. You select either the boy or girl avatar and then begin the tutorial. Nintendo has had an excellent track record on making its mark with any game genre and this is no different as it takes the concept of a shooter subtracts your typical bullets and guns and adds colorful ink and a splatter blaster to paint the town red, or whatever color you can.

Disney Infinity 3.0 first leaked photos of Mulan, Mickey Mouse, Minnie Mouse, Olaf from Frozen, and characters from Tron as well as characters from the new Disney/Pixar film "Inside Out". Today there are images showing Star Wars characters on the box art as well as the figures of Anakin Skywalker from Star Wars and Ahsoka from Clone Wars.

We have had a wonderful relationship with Nintendo for well over a year now. They are great at answering questions, inviting us to events, and providing us with copies of games for review. Certain games are either free-to-play, meaning we don't need to wait for a review copy, or Nintendo simply doesn't have copies available for certain things.

I was promised in the email from Nintendo of Canada that tomorrows Nintendo Direct was not an April Fools joke. The direct is aimed at updating games that Nintendo is working on, particularly those coming in 2015. A Nintendo Treehouse presentation is to follow outlining a 2015 Spring title.

Nintendo announced that the upcoming Intelligent Designs title Codename S.T.E.A.M launching for the 3DS on March 13th will allow players to unlock playable Fire Emblem characters through certain amiibo. Marth, Ike, Robin, and Lucina will all be fully playable by simply touching their corresponding amiibo to the New 3DS XLs bottom screen, or by purchasing the upcoming add on Near-Field Communications device for the older 3DS models.

Nintendo announced the 4th wave of the toy-to-life franchise amiibo during their first Nintendo Direct of 2015. The next wave of the Smash Bros. amiibo packs some heavy hitters from the world of Nintendo as Robin and Lucina from Fire Emblem, Ness from Earthbound, Wario, Charizard and even Pac-Man will be releasing on April 24th. It’s safe to bet that these all will sell out well before they are actually launched so if you want one you better be ready to click that pre-order button whenever it becomes available.