3DS

Shin Megami Tensei IV is an RPG with great narrative ambitions – trying to discuss the purpose of religions and forms of society – that presents a complex – albeit unbalanced – battle system. Its narrative, however, is very erratic and often puts the focus on its least interesting elements. The game’s protagonist, called Flynn, works as an avatar for …

Paper Mario: Sticker Star is one of the most unusual entries in its franchise thanks to some controversial design decisions: treating the great volume of story in the previous games as unnecessary fat, Nintendo has decided to rip it out from this adventure as much as possible and shift the game’s genre from RPG to puzzle-solving. Amid festivities celebrating the …

Professor Layton is a franchise that has never needed constant revamps to work well. Its games, after all, are about only two things: their story and puzzles – and two puzzles are never the same. The fact that Miracle Mask doesn’t do much to reinvent the wheel, then, is far from a problem, as it still offers the franchise’s best …

Despite being developed in just one year, The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask remains the most narratively ambitious game in the franchise. Establishing an oppressive atmosphere from the very first few minutes, Majora’s Mask presents a doomed world that forces people to come to terms with death and loss. The game begins soon after the events of Ocarina of Time, …

Zero Time Dilemma, the third and final entry in the great adventure series Zero Escape, has a narrative structure as complex as those of previous games, although it introduces less interesting characters and ends with a couple of questionable twists that don’t survive retrospection. The game begins when nine people wake up trapped in a cell and are approached by …

The multiplayer moments that Mario Kart games provide are always entertaining. It’s an ever-shifting chaos of flying shells and exploding items, but the secret is that it’s usually a controllable one. A rookie can take advantage of the speed boost and invulnerability of special stars to not finish in the last place, for example, while experienced players can break when …

3D Mario games have always excelled at renewing themselves, making their most basic mechanics – like jumping – more interesting in the most imaginative ways possible, either by abusing and twisting gravity in Super Mario Galaxy or by prolonging the jump in Super Mario Sunshine. The current 2D titles appear to follow a different guideline, basing their design on familiar …

Released in 1998, The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time has become one of the most influential titles in the action-adventure genre. The game surprised players at the time by reinventing the Zelda formula established in A Link to the Past, adapting it to accommodate the arrival of the third dimension in gaming. Despite a couple of flaws, Ocarina of …