All Wii Reviews

We Ski (Review)

May 13, 2008

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. ...

Deca Sports (Review)

May 13, 2008

Deca Sports (Sports Island in the UK) has simple and genteel controls that mean you won’t be destroying any hardware - or indeed your wrists - and it’s a far less hectic proposition all round; ice skating, curling and badminton are hardly in the same adrenaline-pumping class as pole vaulting, hurdling and hammer-throwing. ...

Star Soldier R - WiiWare (Review)

May 12, 2008

The TurboGrafix-16, which once roamed prehistoric game stores, was the size of six double-decker buses but had a CPU the size of a pea. It could also eat its own weight in vertical-scrolling shoot-’em-ups, many of which are now available on Wii Virtual Console. Indeed, four titles from the Star Soldier lineage are already up on the Wii Shop for 600 points - the best of which (Super Star Soldier and Blazing Lazers) are a must for any ...

Dream Pinball 3D (Review)

May 8, 2008

Pinball - dead easy to do in a videogame, right? Actually, not if you’re going to do it well. You can’t just stick a load of ramps and targets on an oblong playing area, whack a pair of flippers down the bottom and expect it to work like a proper table. When pinball was a big deal in the arcades, the best designers were revered among fans much like Miyamoto or Kojima are today, except without the internet to make global stars of ...

Target: Terror (Review)

May 8, 2008

The credits list betrays their terrible secret. Many years from now, members of the Target: Terror development team will recount that fateful evening in the summer of 2004 when Target: Terror’s boss, Eugene Jarvis (of Narc and Cruis’n USA fame), sent down the order: Dave - bring in your bright red boiler suit; Gina - go get those PVC hotpants you wore to the Christmas party. And all of you - bring your sunglasses. The next day ...

Iron Man (Review)

May 6, 2008

Question: if Iron Man can fly, why has he stumbled into every pitfall of the superhero genre? His game is messy, confusing and, at best, about as good as Catwoman or Batman Begins. Which is not good at all.

In this game of the film of the comic, you are the titular Iron Man - disabled billionaire inventor Tony Stark - in his rocket-booted iron suit, out to thwart evildoers. At heart it’s a shoot-’em-up with a great deal of ...

Boom Blox (Review)

May 6, 2008

The story behind this struck us as a tad unlikely - the game Steven Spielberg always wanted to play with his family? Wasn’t he a bit busy with some movie when it was being made? But however it came about, Boom Blox is far better than it has any right to be. While we’d normally file celebrity-endorsed casual games alongside the likes of Carol Vorderman’s Sudoku, this is in a different league. It’s brilliant! ...

Battle of the Bands (Review)

Apr 28, 2008

Any rhythm game that compiles the likes of Electric Six, Tenacious D, and Tag Team – yes, of "Whoomp! (There It Is)" fame – deserves some serious props, and we gladly send them in the direction of Battle of the Bands. Offering five distinct renditions (rock, country, Latin, hip-hop, and marching band) of each full song further sweetens the pot, but when the most interesting aspect of your game (by a wide margin) is the ...

AMF Bowling: Pinbusters! (Review)

Apr 25, 2008

The success of Wii Sports was always likely to spawn imitators but after numerous frames and tournaments with AMF Bowling: Pinbusters! we’re still left scratching our heads as to why this exists. It is, as a whole, considerably worse than what is one fifth of Wii Sports - in look, execution and enjoyment. ...

Baroque (Review)

Apr 21, 2008

If you’re hardcore enough to derive happiness instead of pain from the Roguelike convention of starting from scratch when you die, but not quite hardcore enough to have imported this dungeon crawler ten years ago for your Sega Saturn, we recommend this terrific remake of Baroque.

Baroque’s death mechanic dovetails neatly with the narrative - it’s by dying and revisiting that you start to piece together the intriguing ...

Emergency Mayhem (Review)

Apr 15, 2008

Zany. Crazy. Wacky. Madcap. Troublesome words that set our wrongness klaxons a-whining whenever they’re used to describe something. They’re words you’d associate with the voice-over in trailers for comedies starring teenage ‘nerds’ who are trying to woo the hot cheerleader. And while we’ve not actually seen any of these words associated with Emergency Mayhem, they’re a perfect fit and no mistake. ...

Okami (Review)

Apr 14, 2008

What the hell happened? Ready at Dawn had a year and a half to successfully port one of PS2’s greatest games to the Wii - what we all thought was a match made in heaven - only to nerf the controls and subsequently bungle the entire gameplay. That’s not to say all is bad. You still get the lengthy, top-notch quest blending the best puzzle aspects of Zelda with a visual style that no other can match.

Graphics aren't ...

Obscure: The Aftermath (Review)

Apr 2, 2008

Obscure: The Aftermath is a survival-horror game aimed at people that love Hollywood screamers. The story involves a rowdy fraternity party that unleashes mutants on a college campus, and the to-do list calls for hacking up those creatures with hockey sticks, chainsaws, and other fun killing implements. Sounds sweet, right? NOT! The action is weak and the graphics are butt-ugly.

Atmospherically, the game does what it need ...

WWII Aces (Review)

Apr 2, 2008

It was the appeal of guiding a World War II plane as gracefully as a conductor guides an orchestra that prompted our eagerness to try WWII Aces' Wii Remote-only control scheme. Visions of smooth, intuitive dog fighting danced through our heads, only to be shattered by the control scheme's harsh reality. Furiously waggling the remote rarely prompted a response, and when one occurred, it was almost never what had been instructed: bending a ...

Opoona (Review)

Mar 31, 2008

It seems to be the more traditional a game is, the more difficult it is to concoct a sensible control scheme for it using the Wiimote. Opoona realizes this and ignores the Wiimote completely; the nunchuck is the only controller used to play the game, leaving your other hand free to stuff Cheetos into your maw. From the story, to the graphics, to the plot, the game is going for a pure and simple RPG experience. Unfortunately for Opoona, ...

Octomania (Review)

Mar 26, 2008

From Katamari to PaRappa the Rapper, gamers tend to love Japanese games with an offbeat flair. Octomania, a puzzle game full of samurai crabs, bitchy angels, flaky robots, mama’s-boy demons, and sentient food items, will easily charm the pants off even the most discerning of Japanophiles. Think Puyo Puyo/Kirby’s Avalanche/Dr. Robotnik’s Mean Bean Machine but with the quirkiness cranked up a few notches. The object of the game ...

Mario Kart Wii (Review)

Mar 24, 2008

The brothers Mario clash on the racetrack. As their karts grind together, the combined mach speed threatens to tear the lip warmers from their very faces. The scene seethes with venom - never has Nintendo dredged up such ferocious rivalry. As an opening FMV? It’s a killer. As an indicator of the day at the races to follow? They’re being a little liberal with the truth.Entering our first race - Luigi’s Circuit in Mario’s ...

Pinball Hall of Fame - The Williams Collection (Review)

Mar 24, 2008

Pinball is like a dinosaur to most of today’s gamers, who’ve become used to parent-horrifyingly realistic graphics, epic storylines, and massively multiplayer online worlds. However, those few who still dig on this old-school action would have to look long and hard to find a better deal than this lovingly handled compilation. We’ll get the list out of the way first: You’ve got Black Knight, Pinbot, Gorgar, Space ...

Classic British Motor Racing (Review)

Mar 24, 2008

There are bad games, there are "so bad, it's kinda good" games, and then there are "Dear God, how did this shit even happen? Can this be legal?" games. The Wii version of Classic British Motor Racing - which appears to be a port of a budget PlayStation 2 game released in the UK in 2007 - lands squarely in that last category. ...

Indianapolis 500 Legends (Review)

Mar 24, 2008

We have to hand it to the developers of Indianapolis 500 Legends: they've got balls. Does Electronic Arts, the largest game publisher in the world, have the nerve to make a Madden football game with only the Dallas Cowboys? Of course not. Does Nintendo, a company whose corporate philosophy is apparently, "Screw you. We'll do what we want." have the stones to craft a new Tetris that uses only one shape of block? No they do not. Yet, the scrappy upstarts in charge of this historically-inspired racing game thought it would be perfectly fine to make a racing game that contained only a single track - and an oval one, at that. ...