10/16/2010

The state of Nintendo's E3 lineup

E3 for Nintendo fans was almost like Nintendo finally giving some serious effort to appeal to those who bought a Wii system for games that weren't for the more casual set. Metroid: Other M, Kirby's Epic Yarn, Donkey Kong Country Returns and Epic Mickey along with a couple others were leading the charge. Well, Metroid Other: M, to put it bluntly, sucked hard. It might actually be the worst game Nintendo has put their name behind that doesn't have the word "Wii" or "Olympics" in it. To be fair, this was a rare incident of Nintendo having an outside party developing the game, and that rarely turns out well (especially the developers of the extremely shallow Dead Or Alive series).

To a smaller degree Dragonquest IX & NBA Jam were supposed to supposed to help draw in gamers but frankly while they were perfectly decent releases, they didn't really set the world ablaze with their somewhat ancient gameplay mechanics. And their much touted multi-player features weren't quite up to snuff.

So with that in mind we come to Kirby's big return to a home console in Kirby's Epic Yarn. While Kirby is not one of Nintendo's big three (Mario, Link, Samus) he has been a long-running character popular with the gaming crowd, mostly on Nintendo's portable systems. The reviews are rolling in already, and while they all agree that it's a gorgeous and fun game, the average play-through of about 6 hours doesn't exactly make this more than a strong rental reccomendation imho. Not exactly the great lineup we were promised, and frankly, Goldeneye isn't looking so great. Us Wii owners will have to hope Donkey Kong & Epic Mickey deliver because Nintendo's lineup isn't living up to it's high promises so far.

Ok I should be back next weekend with another post (earlier if I can manage), in the meantime, here's your FREE GAME OF THE WEEK: Road of the Dead



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