Welcome to the first, and only, almost entirely automated feature at Nintendo World Report: The Deal Machine.
The Deal Machine is our newest serial feature aimed at giving automated shopping advice. That's right, automated. Let The Deal Machine do the shopping for you!
So, how does it work? Well The Deal Machine itself is a little tool I set up that scours the Information Superhighway to find you good games on the cheap. Every month I'm going to set The Machine loose on a mission to find four games for Wii or DS that cost under $20 and $15 respectively. Not only that, the games have to have earned a respectable, if not amazing, average review score.
Of course, many games are under $20, and got good reviews. Instead of just posting them all, or just picking my favorites, I put my faith in the virtual hands of my creation. The Deal Machine takes the result set and spits out four games at random that fit the above criteria.
I don't promise this is the best way to spend your money, but at these prices it's all relative anyway.
Animal Crossing: City Folk (Game Only) – So the very first time the Deal Machine spins up its gears it gets this? An era snuffed out before it ever began... Honestly, Animal Crossing: City Folk isn't a bad game. It's just the same game that we've played over and over. If you resisted the urge to make your own fabric patterns, plant trees, and go into massive debt to raccoon loan shark... a loan sharcoon it's time to try it out.
There is some new stuff, now you can explore the city. The titular city can now... be folked? That's not right.
Buy it now.NEXT
Academy of Champions: Soccer – My enduring memory of this game comes from Ubisoft's 2009 E3 presentation. Joel McHale (of The Soup and Community fame) was presenting Pelé (of soccer fame), who plays the headmaster of this Hogwarts of Futbol. In a confusing speech Pelé announced that he "Did it for the children, for the children." I assume the it he spoke of was "made this game," but I am not an expert in Portuguese.
How is story that related to the game? No idea, I didn't play it. The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (of The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles fame) we're distracting me. It did apparently so fail to live up to our own Neal Ronaghan's hopes that Zach Miller ended up reviewing it. Zach's review mentions that the game includes tests and lectures!
I'm not doing a good job selling this game. But, it is for the children, and children love tests and lectures. Why else would they
go to school?
You got a problem? Take it up with The Machine.
Dawn of Discovery – The third game The Machine gave us harkens back to a simpler time: the colonization of The New World. A simplified city building/resource management game (think Sim City) set in an era where Europeans made friends with the locals. While the game might look silly, it's actually part of the highly regarded "Anno" series. Dawn of Discovery is the first to be released in America.
The title features strategy, good pacing, and both story and freeplay modes. It does not feature any enslavement of native populations. At least, our review doesn't mention it. I feel like it would if you could do that.
Bring it home, Mr. Machine!
Wario Land Shake It! - Really, this game is only $20? I'm pretty sure anyone reading this knows about Wario Land Shake It! It's Wario's latest 2D offering. It features motion control. It's hand drawn. It has awesome vertical bars on the side (TAKE THAT WIDE-SCREEN!) and is a blast.
I'm not sure I'm thrilled Dealy put two Nintendo games in one run, but there you have it. For less than $80 you can shake the gold from your colonial empire, to pay for your house expansion (I DIDN'T ASK FOR THIS, NOOK!), and hope that one day your new colony will...enjoy soccer.
The Deal Machine works in mysterious ways.
