I have been a subscriber of Nintendo Power for about 4 or 5 years now, and I must say I love it. The game strategies are very good, but they leave little bits out, for the player to figure out for himself. In all my years of Nintendo Power, the magazine has never described, much less told me how to defeat boss characters in a game. These strategies with "holes" in them give the player enough of an edge to play the game without having to spend hours just figuring out the game's moves, but still allows the fun and challenge of have to figure out for one's self how to defeat the boss.
There is also a section in each issue called Pak Watch, which gives info and sneak peeks at upcoming games. There are enticing screenshots, plus production info, and an expected release date. I have bought (and been very satisfied by) several games due to Pak Watch alone.
As for the game reviews, I have rarely been steered wrong. Nintendo Power has been criticized, particularly in Epinions as having biased game reviews. Not to offend any epinion writers (for most of whom I have tremendous respect), but DUH!!!!!!!!!!! Nintendo games are being reviewed by Nintendo employees! Of course the reviews are biased! They want to make as many sales as possible. (Although to their credit, they have many times come out and called a game downright bad.) I don't read reviews for overall enjoyability of the game, in fact I generally like playing games that the reviewers are a little more leery of. The reviews tell me (in the most unbiased way possible) about the play control, sound quality , and visual quality of the game, which I take into account along with the subject matter of the game. In this way, Nintendo Power has steered me wrong only once. I won't name any names, however.
The only major problem with Nintendo Power I have seen is the recent addition of legion of ads. It used to be the only ads in Nintendo power were in the form of a really neat tear out poster, but now page long ads
swarm the mag, taking up prime article space. All in all, Nintendo Power is a great magazine, with good, witty articles, lots of activities and contests, plus fun polls, to see what the players think. What I think is that I'll be an NP fan for a long time.
Recommended:
Yes
Primary Reason for Buying: Product reviews/information Recommended For: Anyone
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