SSX Blur has the best snow ever. Its a wintry playground with a new and better distraction around every corner, tucked in tunnels through rumbling glaciers and in the cotton-draped branches of the trees. A world that looks this soft and inviting just begs to be explored. And the way you make your mark on this gleaming white paradise is so satisfyingly ingenious, reality – or, at least, lesser snowboarding games – is always going to come a distant ...
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28 Feb 2007

World Series of Poker: Tournament of Champions

Wii Review

Its all about celebrities. Poker on TV gives you Sir Clive Sinclair sitting looking concerned in a hat. But World Series of Poker: Tournament of Champions has the ultimate celebrity: ...
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22 Feb 2007

Sonic and the Secret Rings

Wii Review

For a while we thought Sonic was a goner, a blue hedgehog-shaped smear on the tarmac of gaming history. With Sonic Teams every attempted step forward, his scores plummeted down. Multiple characters exploring 3D environments? Big the Cat? Sonic with guns? With Secret Rings, the team has finally realized that the only way forwards is backwards. At breakneck speeds. Filter him down into his purest form - the original Sonic on Genesis - and youll find little more than the urge to move forwards. ...
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12 Feb 2007

Wii Play

Wii Review

After spending no more than an hour with Nintendo's latest assortment of minigames, we'd unlocked everything there was to see. Considering the simplicity of all nine included games, it's plain to see that this is actually a $10 budget game bundled with a "free" Wii Remote, which runs about $40 anyway. But even if the value is suspect, there's still a decent amount of fun to have - just dont expect another multiplayer explosion like Wii ...
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12 Feb 2007

SpongeBob SquarePants: Creature From the Krusty Krab

Wii Review

In the same vein as the previous SpongeBob SquarePants: Battle for Bikini Bottom, SpongeBob Squarepants: Creature from the Krusty Krab transforms our porous pal's homeland into a den of platforming action. There are three playable characters in the game, SpongeBob, Patrick, and Plankton, and each has their own set of levels that almost feel like three distinct ...
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12 Feb 2007

Necro-Nesia

Wii Review

Like a viscera-loving fly, developer Spike has wormed its way into the rotting body cavities of countless survival horrors, laid its eggs and given birth to Necro-Nesia. Its a real scavenger of a game, gnawing on the meat of the finest pedigree - namely Resident Evil 2 and Silent Hill 3. But like the common fly, its unable to digest it all without puking up on it first and churning it into a grotesque gaming mess. Playing as a floppy-haired girly-faced guy - whose soft, boy-band looks look ...
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9 Feb 2007

Barnyard

Wii Review

Here's a refreshing entry into the games-based-on-movies fad: instead of simulating a movie's plot, THQ's Barnyard offers up an open-ended Grand Theft Auto-style experience (minus the sex and violence, of course). In fact, Grand Theft Bovine would have been a fitting subtitle. Upon first glance, the open-ended elements are simply a vehicle to take you from one minigame to the next with little to do in-between. But then something unexpected happens: the game slowly transforms into a fairly ...
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9 Feb 2007

Kororinpa

Wii Review

Kororinpa makes us feel guilty. Sort of. It's not that it's usurped Monkey Ball's place in our hearts, exactly, it's just that... well... now we've seen so much more of it, we kind of want Monkey Ball to pack a bag full of its tired, tedious minigames and get its embarrassing soundtrack and limited flexibility out of our goddamn lives forever. It's time for Kororinpa to move in - glorious Kororinpa with its 100% responsive meaty 3D, its sanity-defying corner leaps and turns and its entire lack ...
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8 Feb 2007

Ennichi No Tatsujin [import]

Wii Review

The waft of menace emanating from a carnies beard, rigged games, wailing children getting their limbs tangled in the whirring mechanics of a hastily constructed death wheel - sorry - Ferris wheel; theres no denying it, carnivals are horrible. This makes Namcos carnival simulator a surprisingly faithful adaptation. Even real carnies would balk at the audacity of only offering nine shoddy minigames. Especially when the best of the bunch - a remote pointer controlled-cork-gun-target shoot and ...
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8 Feb 2007

Crayon Shin-Chan [import]

Wii Review

A young boy with a penchant for older women who regularly exposes his buttocks and genitals and refuses to let anyone to see him laughing. This is the Japanese quasi-equivalent of South Park, the ever-so-disturbing Crayon Shin-Chan. The oddest thing of all, though, is that this risqué show was translated into such a tame dud of a minigame collection. Set around a series of locations in the eponymous hero's home town, you have to complete incredibly basic minigames as part of a TV quiz ...
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