Snow Bros. Wonderland

Great idea to make japanese language default and start the game from unskippable cutscenes. And when you start playing you don't have language settings in pause menu (only in main menu). This is what you charge that price for?

Now even though this is a not recommended review, let it be known that I think the game itself is...decent. Not horrible, but maybe worth waiting for a sale to check it out. As far as revivals of retro franchises go, it's not nearly in the same realm as notoriously bad franchise revivals such as Bomberman: Act Zero or Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts and Bolts. However, I have to imagine bringing the Snow Bros. into the realm of modern 3D gaming was not an easy task, and boy does it show. At times, it's hard to see where you are or to estimate the physics of the snowballs. Some hazards, such as the lightning in world 5, feel almost random, and make the wind/lightning puzzles of this area a whole lot more frustrating than they need to be. There were elements of the game that I found fun, when the snowballs work for instance it is pretty fun to kick them around and bowl rows of enemies over at once. The abilities feature was interesting as well, and often was able to help me get ahead at levels I was struggling with. I also did like the big boss battles, they were challenging but in a fun way. So all in all, I feel like the building blocks for a 3D Snow Bros. adventure are here, and fundamentally things work, but they maybe need more polish and if we ever saw a sequel to Wonderland, maybe they'd be able to improve upon the flaws of this game. This is also probably more of a personal taste thing, but I don't like how seriously this game tries to take itself. I know gaming has evolved a lot from the simple stories NES games of the past took advantage of and as such Wonderland would have to strive for something more than that, but I don't think it makes much sense to put war and the death of soldiers in a game about funny snowmen. It honestly makes it very hard to take the story seriously, and creates tonal whiplash not seen since 1992's Super Duck.

Wow, this one's a stinker. I was thinking, you know, it's ugly, but maybe it's arcadey and snappy to compensate... They didn't add any way to precisely aim snowballs, so the whole appeal of rolling up all the enemies with a perfect angle shot that you'd expect from a 3D game with this concept... Not there.