GamesRadar - Wii Reviews

Actionloop Twist - Wii Software (Review)

8/07/2008

Download Magntetica Twist (known as Actionloop Twist in the UK), even if it’s only to experience the awesome ball-clack noise. For less ardent audiophiles, there’s also a polished puzzler here as well. The premise? Your Mii is plopped into a rotating cannon – twisted by turning the remote – that fires coloured marbles. Around your cannon a track of balls snake towards The Hole of Bad Things (our name). Chain ...

Agatha Christie - And Then There Were None (Review)

28/02/2008

What’s your view on point-and-click games? Old-fashioned and tedious, or deliciously retro? Because this game is only going to be suitable for those who thrive on the kind of gameplay that has you filling a bucket with water drawn from the hand pump outside the kitchen, offering it to a goat so he’ll move to one side and grant you access to a remote part of the island, where you’ll then find a harness you must give to the ...

Agatha Christie: Evil Under the Sun (Review)

22/01/2009

There’s about a million adventure games that would be brilliant on the Wii. Imagine a LucasArts compilation – we’d happily pay near full price for that. What we wouldn’t happily do is pay the same amount to direct a waddling Belgian around a static seaside resort. ...

Alien Syndrome (Review)

30/07/2007

You'll have to forgive us old timers for getting our bloomers in a twist over a new Alien Syndrome game. We who spent the mid '80s pumping arcade machines full of currency called "quarters" or praying to an ancient relic called the Sega Master System, carry with us very fond memories for the top-down sci-fi shooter. So it was comforting that the Wii's Alien Syndrome update plays a lot like the game we know and love, with a few RPG-style elements thrown in to reward our fifteen or so years of ...

Alone in the Dark (Review)

3/07/2008

Alone in the Dark loves a good cliff-hanger – quite literally in the case of one helicopter crash sequence – but there’s no scenario more hair-raising than that of publishers Atari themselves. Teetering on the brink of financial disaster, they’ve put all their eggs in this gothic basket, expecting a company-rejuvenating three million sales across multiple platforms. Here’s hoping the next-gen version shifts a ...

Alvin and the Chipmunks (Review)

11/12/2007

Dec 11, 2007 After some 50 years of existence, Alvin and the Chipmunks are no longer hip, relevant or cool. Hey, it happens - as times change, so do tastes, and modern youngsters may not see the appeal in a trio of warbling rodents painted with broad personalities and characteristics. But that didn't stop 20th Century Fox from prepping a new franchise film (starring Jason Lee as David Seville), and it sure didn't stop the aptly named publisher Brash Entertainment from making a quick buck off ...

AMF Bowling: Pinbusters! (Review)

25/04/2008

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. ...

Animal Crossing: Let's Go To The City (Review)

17/11/2008

We just had the most terrible nightmare. We were in debt to this horrid raccoon called Tom, and all our neighbors had animal heads and they kept spouting the same nonsense over and over, day after day, for years. The worst part is we could swear we’d done it all before, like some kind of hallucinatory déjà vu. Aaargh! ...

Anno: Create A New World (Review)

22/06/2009

Anno (Dawn of Discovery) on Wii is exactly how you’d imagine it to be and – more importantly – exactly how you want it to be. Its concept might be fairly dry but the game itself has been ‘Wii-fied’ to make it as accessible as a strategy game could hope to be.

Buildings and other structures can be plonked down in an almost comically easy fashion while road building is a snap. ...

Another Code R: A Journey into Lost Memories (Review)

26/06/2009

Newsflash, people: a game can have more words than bullets. Another Code R has more words than anything – a surprise after the more controlled ratio of chat to puzzle in the DS original. In actuality it feels like the first game filtered through Hotel Dusk, adopting the extensive nattering but keeping Code’s more innovative puzzle design.

Disappointingly, R drops Dusk’s adult vocabulary and attitude. ...

The Ant Bully (Review)

22/06/2007

You know the drill: games based on movies tend to bite. The thinking here seems to be that younger children don't yet possess fully functioning crap filters, and are therefore more likely to squeeze some fun out of a game that adults would tire of within ...

Anubis II (Review)

26/11/2007

Nov 26, 2007 The third installment of Data Design's cheapo reskinnable platform game has an Egyptian theme and sounds like some kind of ointment for piles. Strangely, there was no Anubis 1. Okay... It does look a little bit nicer than Ninjabread Man and Rock 'N' Roll Adventures but that's due to the shiny gold colours rather than any superior design, and it suffers from the same shoddy controls as its partners in crime. All three are small enough to keep running for a while without having ...

Art Style: CUBELLO - Wii Software (Review)

18/12/2008

Initially, CUBELLO doesn’t make a lick of sense. We stared, slack-jawed, at the screen for longer than we’d care to admit – like a caveman using a microwave, or George Bush Junior reading a book. After watching the tutorial three times over, though, it clicked. CUBELLO is Tetris in 3D. ...

Art Style: Orbient (Review)

24/04/2009

Drifting slowly through space, to a soundtrack of ambient bleeps and blorks. At first it seems like some strange kind of relaxation exercise for robots, but if you fail to appreciate the gravity of the situation you’ll be crash landing on the nearest planet. You control a little space rock, and the aim is to absorb similar celestial bodies until you grow big enough to have a decent sized moon of your own. ...

Art Style: Rotohex (Review)

24/04/2009

Formerly known as Dialhex on the GBA, this was one of the Bit Generations series of experimental games – so experimental that back then it didn’t even include a proper scoring mode. A puzzle game without a high score table? Hmm… Now it has high scores, sort of, but the gameplay is the same and it’s still some way short of greatness. ...

Ashes Cricket 2009 (Review)

20/08/2009

It’s Ashes time and the return of the cricketing competition for possibly sport’s smallest trophy: the Ashes urn. It looks a little silly being hoisted aloft, but who cares when you beat the Australians. Codies will be hoping you’ve caught the cricketing bug from the just-finished series with their timely title. ...

Astro Boy: The Video Game (Review)

26/10/2009

It seems Astro Boy returns every decade or so, and now American film makers have retooled the iconic character for another reboot. Albeit low budget looking and feeling, High Voltage Software put more life into Astro Boy: The Video Game than we’d expect from a movie tie-in. Bright, sleek and silver, Metro City sets the stage for Astro Boy’s adventure against an evil robot-wielding president. ...

Avatar: The Last Airbender (Review)

19/01/2007

Avatar: The Last Airbender, an anime-styled cartoon on Nickelodeon, has gained quite a respectable following for a show that was originally targeted at younger viewers. In a mythical world of four quarrelling nations (Air, Earth, Water, and Fire), the Avatar named Aang is the only one who can bring peace and stability through harnessing all four elemental powers. The show combines an entertaining mix of humor, drama, and likable characters that has drawn in a wide demographic of viewers. ...

Avatar The Last Airbender: The Burning Earth (Review)

14/11/2007

Nov 14, 2007 Controlling Burning Earths characters feels like sloshing butter around a hot saucepan. But, really, thats the least of the game's worries. Like last years original Avatar, this is a game of fixed paths, repeated button-mashing, insulting switch puzzles and cutscenes where people's mouths dont move when they speak. The combat is tedious - and it only takes around 25 minutes to get so fed up you start running straight past enemies to the next door. No worries, though - 25 minutes ...

Avatar - The Legend of Aang: Into the Inferno (Review)

4/11/2008

Blow us down with some air bent by a certified airbender if it isn’t actually quite good. The main reason for this reversal of fortunes from the original is the new Wii-optimized control system, which allows Aang to manipulate elements using the pointer. ...