Wacky Races would like to consider itself on a par with Micro Machines - in both, your input into the races is minimal. You can’t accelerate or brake, just simply waggle the Wii-mote to boost, and steer with the Nunchuk. Dick Dastardly occasionally steps in with simple minigame ‘booby traps’ for your racers to avoid, but they’re uninspired and disruptive to the flow of a race. Younger audiences might get a brief kick
Wario isn’t a complicated man, and making a decent Wario game isn’t really a complicated business. In fact, we’d boil it down to one very simple rule: capture his bulbous incompetence without succumbing to it. Give us clumsy, piggy-eyed foibles, but do it with class and intelligence.
“Water Warfare is the first family-friendly first-person shooter for WiiWare!” proclaims the PR patter. We’d rather be spraying bullets made from alien acid blood into our opponents’ faces, but hey, let’s give H2O a chance. There’s an eight-player online mode and everything.
Chance given. This is trash.
As you’d expect, We Cheer is totally wholesome and American – what else could a game about cheerleading be? It uses two remotes as virtual pompoms, which you whirl around according to the on-screen arrows. The actions seem authentically cheerleadery – lots of air-punching and arm-windmilling – and up to four people can play at once (presumably in a very large room) with one remote each.
You know you’re in safe hands when you load up We Love Golf. It’s that Camelot logo – it instantly speaks of heritage and gravitas. It’s also the final nail in the coffin of the dream that someday the Wii might play home to a golf game that actually feels like real golf. After all, if they can’t do it, no one can.
The Adonis-like figures bestowed by Wii Fit go someway toward justifying that hefty balance board start-up cost. But, for our money, it’s the strength of supporting third party software that will truly justify the purchase. ‘Babes’ digging our mad balancing skillz will only get it a free pass for so long; a sorry looking pile of sneered at DK Bongos reminding what fate befalls a library-less peripheral.
If, like some of us, you think that going on skiing trips is about as far removed from the idea of a holiday as a spell behind bars, Family Ski & Snowboard could be a comfortable middle ground. You can dress your avatar or Mii in a wealth of hats, gloves, ski suits and outfits without actually having to spend half an hour struggling into a fluorescent ski suit.
We’re sweating bullets - and we haven’t even stepped onto the board yet. Of all Nintendo’s wacky lifestyle experiments there are none that skirt as close to the game/non-game border as this. Nintendo’s previous jaunts into the realms of mental and ocular betterment have always had gamey connotations - we cannot, after all, pull homemade eye and arithmetic tests out of thin air.
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