File this one under ‘needless’. It’s another WiiWare puzzler that, rather than ripping off one of the classics, chooses to bravely strike out on its own path. Potpourrii, we commend thee. Unfortunately, we also scorn thee and would dearly love to kick thy face off and get our points back.

The lack of anything approaching a tutorial or even (god forbid) some text instructions doesn’t help. Once you’ve figured out what to do things hardly get less annoying. There are four dwarves sitting in a ring that a train-like thing travels on. You control this train, and collect little smiley-faced dudes in bubbles, before firing them into the pond that sits in the middle of the tracks. Each of the smilers represents a different season, and hitting one that’s in the pool with the season that follows on from his season causes him to pop.

Still with us? Let’s summarize: this is a rotten Actionloop clone in reverse. Not only will you spend the first half hour trying to work out what’s going on, but when you do work it out the realization hits that it’s not all that much fun. It’s kind of appropriate that it’s called Potpourrii though, because if there’s anything more pointless than bad-smelling colored cardboard trying to imitate nature, it’s a bad puzzler trying to differentiate itself from good ones.

Nov 6, 2008