All Wii Reviews

Call of Duty 3 (Review)

Nov 22, 2006

The first-person shooter has hardly been the bread and butter of any Nintendo box (blah blah Goldeneye) but when the Wii remote was first unveiled, one of the big questions was how it would fare in a straight-up action game. With Metroid delayed, this port of Call of Duty 3 is our first glimpse of the remote in the FPS wild. It's a pretty impressive beast. The good news, both for Nintendo and for fans, is that the remote works quite well as a stand-in for the barrel of your gun, with precision ...

Carnival Games (Review)

Sep 11, 2007

Mii-mingling, brain-training, virtual puppy-petting gamers concerned over the comparatively hardcore Metroid Prime 3 crashing their pick-up-and-play party can rest easy - Carnival Games has arrived to resume the minigame mayhem. Recreating all the midway-inspired staples - skee ball, ring toss, shooting gallery - Global Star Software's reasonably priced package brings the state fair home, without the creepy carnies, out-on-parole ride operators and artery-clogging corn dogs. Like most ...

Cars (Review)

Jan 22, 2007

Imagine a game like Need for Speed Underground 2, in which you can drive around in a freely explorable city, racing other drivers or just messing around as you see fit. Now, imagine it with talking cars, a tiny desert town and nearly every hint of crime or violence removed, and you'll have a good idea of what to expect from Cars. While it ties in with the Pixar movie, Cars picks up where the film left off, with cherry-red racetrack star Lightning McQueen settling into the town of Radiator ...

Castle of Shikigami III (Review)

Jun 18, 2008

Castle of Shikigami is one of those games that we really wish we saw more of these days. It's a vertical "bullet hell" 2D shooter, which basically means there are more pink death blobs in the in-game sky than there are paparazzi hanging out at Britney Spears' neighborhood McDonald's. It's challenging, it's colorful, the controls are blessedly simple (no motion-waggling required), its dialogue is wonderfully campy and wacky. It has no fewer ...

The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian (Review)

Jul 2, 2008

It’s such a familiar quandary – there you are in your local games store, crisp note in hand, looking for a new addition to your collection. There are a few caveats, though: one, you want it to be a linear adventure mainly based around flicking switches and collecting shiny things; two, you’re also very keen for it to have a Christian subtext; oh, and three, there simply has to be a homicidal dwarf involved ...

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. ...

Cocoto Fishing Master - WiiWare (Review)

Jul 21, 2008

In ye olde Wii launch days, one of the few things that really showed off how well the remote and Nunchuk could work together was Twilight Princess’ fishing minigame. It was awesome – a great display of control finesse. Cocoto Fishing Master, a port of an old PS2 title, takes similar-ish controls and aims to strap them on to a more fully featured game. That should be a recipe for success, right? Unfortunately not. ...

Code Lyoko Quest for Infinity (Review)

Nov 15, 2007

Nov 15, 2007 Kids today clearly have a greater capacity for absorbing information from their Saturday morning TV - Code Lyoko is confusing as hell. Data clusters, sentient viruses, X.A.N.A., replica sectors - heaven knows what any of it means. And while the game is too mean to ease you in, its greater crime is betraying what is clearly a dense mythology with generic game ...

Cooking Mama: Cook Off (Review)

Mar 27, 2007

We cant help thinking that Cooking Mama was best suited to the pocket-sized DS, not the full-bodied Wii. The idea is that the Wiis functionality is perfect for the game, letting you use the remote to closely simulate chopping real peppers, cracking real eggs and stirring real soup. You know, like every real night of your life, right? Wrong. At least on DS you had the touch screen to create some sensation of resistance while you carried out your cooking tasks; on the Wii theres not even the ...

Counter Force (Review)

Dec 11, 2007

Dec 10, 2007 Shooter enthusiasts, look away. Budget gamers, avert your eyes. Gundam fans... haven't you been hurt enough already? This laughable attempt at laser-guided thrills ain't what you're looking for. Years from now, its epic awfulness may be the stuff of legend and we'll be able to share in a hearty chuckle at Counter Force's expense. Its presentation is a fascinating blend of generic and ugly. The soundtrack features a mercilessly wailing guitar of God-like electro-cheese, seemingly ...

Crash of the Titans (Review)

Oct 8, 2007

Even though Crash Bandicoot is pretty irrelevant now, his new game looks good - spinning above jungle vistas has a Sonic the Hedgehog level of greenery loveliness, and the games calibration screen assures you the games “designed to use the full range of colours,” which is worth pointing out, we think. And once youve accepted youre on one, single, long, 10-hour fixed path through Crashs world, theres something rather LEGO Star Wars-ish about the fun-size levels, the punch-kicky ...

Crayon Shin-Chan [import] (Review)

Feb 8, 2007

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 ...

Critter Round-Up - WiiWare (Review)

Jun 27, 2008

Presented with a pen of beasties, you have to fence the animals into separate enclosures without coming into contact with any of them – for that spells instant death. It’s Qix on a farm. A farm of mad. What kind of farmer shoves antagonising breeds in a pen and then tries to solve the problem? ...

Cruis'n (Review)

Nov 30, 2007

Despite dubious origins, Cruis'n is more or less the same loose racer that rocked arcades and the Nintendo 64 in the mid-90s. Except that it's now 2007, and nobody apparently bothered to tell the folks at Midway and Just Games Interactive. To say Cruis'n looks like a higher-resolution N64 game at times is neither hyperbole nor as ironically entertaining as you might expect - and that says nothing for the wonky controls, inconsistent gameplay, and generally horrifying presentation. As expected, ...

CSI: Crime Scene Investigation: Hard Evidence (Review)

Feb 28, 2008

Okay Ubisoft dudes, we get it. The television ratings for CSI are still relatively high and some genius at your Ubi towers thought gamers would like to put on the forensic gloves as esteemed/paunchy CSI Head Investigator Gil Grissom one more time, even though the show is honestly about as passé as the slew of milquetoast CSI games you’ve released since your sorta decent CSI: Crime Scene Investigation in 2003. ...