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Column: 'Critical Reception: Mitchell's/Nintendo's Magnetica'

This week, Gamasutra's regular Critical Reception column, summing up the views of the video game press on one particular game, takes a look at one of the titles of the se...

Simon Carless, Blogger

June 8, 2006

1 Min Read
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This week, Gamasutra's regular Critical Reception column, summing up the views of the video game press on one particular game, takes a look at one of the titles of the second wave of Nintendo's recently branded 'Touch Generations' series, fiendish puzzler Magnetica for the DS, developed by Japanese developer Mitchell and published by Nintendo. As the column explains: "In giving it a relatively low 50% rating, 1UP's Jeremy Parish explains his sentiments: "It's fairly fun, but it's not particularly deep -- nor is it especially compelling. The mark of a great puzzle game is that "one more time, dammit" feeling you get when your screen fills with blocks in Tetris, or when you just barely lose to your Super Puzzle Fighter II opponent." "Polarium had it; Magnetica doesn't. The two games are polar opposites in many ways: where Polarium had shockingly minimalist graphics and an intricate, addictive design, Magnetica has garish visuals and a simplistic design that doesn't hold up well to repeated play."" You can read the full Gamasutra column for more, including the overall ranking for Magnetica and more on the game's reception from consumer review sites GamesRadar and GameSpy (no registration required, please feel free to link to this column from external websites).

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2006

About the Author

Simon Carless

Blogger

Simon Carless is the founder of the GameDiscoverCo agency and creator of the popular GameDiscoverCo game discoverability newsletter. He consults with a number of PC/console publishers and developers, and was previously most known for his role helping to shape the Independent Games Festival and Game Developers Conference for many years.

He is also an investor and advisor to UK indie game publisher No More Robots (Descenders, Hypnospace Outlaw), a previous publisher and editor-in-chief at both Gamasutra and Game Developer magazine, and sits on the board of the Video Game History Foundation.

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