But as with the WarioWare series, Rhythm Heaven is less about bargain quantity and much more about offering dozens of brilliant ideas for tiny games – a landslide of joyful tactile discoveries that find harmony in the audio and visual to leave an impression best captured by a snapshot of the player’s lips curling into a smile the longer they play. My best attempts to describe the experience to others recently tended to descend into off-key singing and wild hand gestures while hurriedly listing off the games that stood out most.

The best review is probably that there are so many offerings from Rhythm Heaven Fever that I feel obliged to mention. If you’re willing to read on however, I’ll try to offer some more constructive words on the subject.

One of these mini-games I was recently trying to sing-explain at the dinner table is Love Rap, which asks players to simply press a single button to repeat lyrics in time with another backup singer for a hip hop performance by MC Adore. Players need to nail the timing after Adore utters recurring lines such as “fo’ sho” and “crazy into you”. The experience found me bobbing my head to keep the beat, much like the mini-game Double Date, which again used a single button press, this time to kick away sports balls to protect a couple of weasels while sitting on a park bench with a date. Another single-button favorite is Ringside, where players fill the shoes of a wrestler answering interview questions and posing for press photos. Already I’m three games in and haven’t mentioned the madness of Flock Step’s prancing birds.

While I love how crazy the variety of these activates sounds, it’s only a small example of how many ways Rhythm Heaven Fever finds to shake up the act of simply pressing one button. Some of the games will ask players to press the A and B buttons simultaneously to perform an action, but the larger share of games rely solely on the A button while conjuring situations and activities that almost always feel unique from the others. There are small moments of similarity that pop up – rolling seals aren’t far removed from dancing lobsters – but the game continually surprises with fresh and bizarre oddities that found me hurriedly pushing through each in anticipation of what might come next.

The desire to uncover every offering can stir some irritation when hitting a game that isn’t as easy to sync with, even after repeated replays. Each game starts with a tutorial covering the necessary prompts and beats required for success, but there are times where my rhythm skills are sadly lacking. Monkey Watch was assuredly the worst for exposing my rhythm deficiency, requiring me to maintain an alternating rhythm for a longer period of time versus the quick reactive actions found in the larger share of mini-games.

For the most part, the key is listening and staying in time to the beat of each game, hearing the precise moment of action or maintaining actions at key times. There’s a bit of trickery that found me often looking for visual cues as well, which is sometimes necessary in addition to the beat – helpful when working with a cheer squad, essential when firing pins through widgets.

As more mini-games are unlocked, the difficulty rises by adding a larger variety of beats and patterns to remember for each game, requiring players to switch between response timings in a hurry. This is put to the test by remix stages that splice the challenges of four mini-games together, quickly and cleverly swapping between activities to the beat of some rather memorable musical numbers.

Players are graded after each mini-game, with ratings varying between failing, being just good enough to pass, being good enough to get a medal, and achieving perfection.

If you happen to fail a stage three times in a row, you can visit the game’s friendly canine barista at the coffee shop, who will offer to show you a tutorial or simply unlock the next available stage. This will work for the first seven stages, with each offering four mini-games and one remix stage. An additional three stages offer revisits on established mini-games, taking the total to ten stages with fifty individual games.

Rhythm Heaven Fever offers some unlockable distractions as well, such as Rhythm Toys and Endless Games, which lends some quick additions to the package but certainly won’t steal players away from the main course for very long.

Occasionally the game will challenge players to achieve perfection on a certain stage, rewarding the victorious with reading material and/or music tracks that can be accessed at the coffee shop as well. Fever also introduces two-player mode, which challenges rhythm minded partners to achieve harmony to pass select levels based on a shared performance.

Nintendo’s mini-game releases are never hard-pressed to marvel me for a time, but what makes Fever’s offerings more memorable is the coordination of the audio and visual to deliver a sense of the tactile that bypasses the brain to talk straight to my hands. At least, this is how I choose to explain the times when I earnestly have no idea how I achieved a medal.

The rhythm is infectious here, worming a way into the brain, possibly causing you to hum strange songs at inappropriate times. If you happen to have a dance partner in mind, there’s definitely added longevity and enjoyment to be had here, and it’s always interesting to discover which mini-games speak to different players.

As a single-player experience, it won’t take players long to chew through these games, certainly favoring those willing to return for repeated bids at perfection after the initial wow factor wears off. The fact that Fever is hitting the Wii for a retail price of thirty dollars however, which is less than the price of the last DS release, certainly helps extend the invitation to put your rhythm to the test at least once.

Rhythm Heaven Fever

Developer
Nintendo, TNX

Publisher
Nintendo

System
Nintendo Wii

Modes
Singleplayer, Local 2-player

Release Date
February 13, 2012

*A copy of this title was provided by the publisher for review

Perhaps something along the lines of, “and on the eighth day, Michel Ancel and company created Rayman Origins”.

Whilst tripping through the Glade of Dreams with Rayman and friends, I was reminded of a recent documentary, Walt & El Grupo. The film details the 1941 goodwill trip Walt and a team of artists took to South America, and the primary thread captures the cultural inspiration and artistic influences that would take shape in future Disney creations as a result. I mention this because there were plenty of moments where I wondered where Ubisoft had sent the folks from Montpellier – what cultural exposure might explain the environments and creative madness of Origins.

As pretty as that thought is, the roots likely aren’t so mysterious. Plenty of the environments within the game tread the familiar, from thick jungles to snowy peaks – we’ve just never seen them captured with such vivid detail and organic flow. In many ways, Origins looks the way I remember games from my childhood to look, finally realized in the here and now when so many 2D games offer cheap and dirty visuals with bland palettes.

It only takes a few moments with the game to appreciate what a kick in the teeth this is to an industry largely devoid of color, and certainly short of concerning itself over minute details that gamers might never notice, but are certainly invited to linger with here. Feel free to dive into the water as bright schools of fish scatter for the simple joy of it and tell me I’m wrong. Where the focus of so many games remains the satisfaction drawn from a singular event, achieving X results in Y, Origins takes the road less traveled, layering visual and audio cues that blur against the foreground action, offering a painting in motion one could spend forever picking out details from.

The worlds Rayman visits range from robot filled factories to a Mexican themed hell, not striking new ground so much as taking familiar templates and then seasoning them with fantastic oddities – sausages that sit in roasting pans as if at the spa and forks with moustaches come to mind. In many ways Origins reminds me most of the bent that made Earthworm Jim and ToeJam & Earl such delightful oddities in their time, particularly when I’m swinging from the beards of meditating monks. As with those two franchises, Origins creates a bold and distinct world of humor and awe that isn’t easily compared to any other title. Black blob creatures with teeth are fashionable occurrences in other titles of course, but there are still more creatures to encounter that look like brilliantly mad sketches come to life.

Looks aren’t everything however, and there has certainly been no shortage of fine looking games that leave plenty wanting in the play of them this year. While the visuals demand attention, Origins’ real achievement is the delivery of controls that convince a sense of tactile fluidity matching the character animation, allowing for an equal share of rewarding platforming and awe struck sight-seeing. The controls are just loose enough to revel in the playfulness of that animation as players jump from vines and stretchy blue hands to jump off walls, but not so loose that you’ll blame them for repeated deaths while trying to accomplish what the game asks – a fine line few games earnestly tackle with the level of success seen here.

Rayman gains moves after freeing imprisoned fairies, granted the ability to punch, hover on the air, run up and along walls, change size, and dive into those aforementioned blue waters. There’s no great challenge to using these abilities to reach the end of the game, but plenty to master in recovering every medallion by acing stages. That typical two tier level of challenge makes it easy for up to four friends to slap each other in local play, and leaves plenty for single players to pull their hair out over.

Enemies are a great example of two tier challenge. Whenever an enemy is hit or crushed, their body balloons (bubblize’s), at which point they are harmless and can be ignored or hit once more to cause them to explode, or they can also be used as leverage for gaining a bit more altitude on a jump to reach tricky peaks.

While Origins isn’t an especially hard game, you can expect to die plenty during speedier sequences, because there’s very much something to needing to know where the game wants you to be at points – driven home by a borderline infuriating final chase sequence of falling debris where the slightest delay of timing will see you trying again – perhaps fifty times before the credits finally rolled in my case. There’s a strange sort of trust you need to have in the game, particularly during chase sequences, where you simply sprint, shut your brain off, and tap the jump button, trusting that some helpful arms will grab you and hurl you toward the next landing, which they will. But there’s also a frustration, because Origins hasn’t resolved how to continually capture the seamless action it strives for hand-in-hand with the player.

Origins also subscribes to a one hit equals death equation, save for a heart Rayman can pick up that will allow him to take one more. The game liberally spreads hearts throughout areas, which comes in handy because I got pretty antsy whenever I didn’t have one for insurance.

The primary platforming concern is collecting Electoons, happy pink dudes that have been caged up throughout the various worlds. They tend to sing and dance excitedly when set free, and also need to be collected to unlock extra features. Finishing stages rewards an Electoon, and several hidden areas within stages offer the chance to free additional ones – you can hear them calling for help when you are near their hiding spot. Players also collect gold Lums throughout stages – just think of them as coins that have a penchant for swaying and humming happily. At the end of each stage, those Lums are tallied up to offer the chance for more Electoons as well as a completion medallion to signify the player’s domination of a stage. A special larger Lum will even temporarily turn others pink and double their value. Treasure chest chase sequences found throughout the various worlds require a certain amount of Electoons for access, but the game itself isn’t too demanding about progression.

When players aren’t chasing treasure chests or jumping for Lums, the gameplay is broken up by a series of side-scrolling shooter stages where Rayman rides on the back of a mosquito, which can fire shots but also suck in enemies to spit them back out at others. There’s a basic shooter structure at work, elevated at later points by skies of debris and intense projectiles, and yet the shooter by numbers approach yields a better experience than I’ve had recently with some full-scale efforts in that genre.

Ryman Origins delivers six worlds of stages along with four additional worlds where players will face some formidable bosses to open the pathway to the finale. By the time the game asks you to accept that challenge, you’ll have seen the bulk of what the game has to offer and be familiar with the formula on hand. That said, the remixing never left me feeling like I was making that final grinding push to complete the game for the sake of doing so, with the scenery, action and challenges maintaining the wildly organic and chaotic rhythm that makes me ridiculously happy this game exists, because it’s just the refresh of color and bizarre creativity needed from studios like Ubisoft.

Aside from the slight repetition that can set in and the absence of any sort of online play features, my only earnest complaint about Rayman Origins is that the ride inevitably comes to an end.

Rayman Origins

Developer
Ubisoft Montpellier

Publisher
Ubisoft

System
Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, Nintendo Wii (Xbox 360 Reviewed) (Nintendo 3DS / PlayStation Vita TBD)

Modes
Singleplayer, Local Multiplayer

Release Date
November 15, 2011

*A copy of this title was provided by the publisher for review

And though it only took a day to lightly pass through Return to Dream Land, I’m not feeling quite that cynical. Kirby’s latest outing sports significantly less yarn this year, instead offering a traditional Kirby platformer that gives Hal Laboratory another chance to strut their penchant for visual flair and rather magical stage design. However, Kirby’s return does suffer for want of a point to all the wonderful abilities Hal can grant him, and in the absence of any real challenge the finer points become so ridiculously subtle that one could miss the treats entirely for never being encouraged to discover them.

The old rules apply, and Kirby once again becomes who he eats, which makes the menu of potential powers the emphasis, and though stages never slouch about finding space for moments of inspiration that leave me smiling at how clever Hal continues to be, the playing is much more an act of design appreciation over tactile engagement.

Nintendo’s marketing focus has set Kirby’s Return to Dream Land up as a multiplayer-minded adventure, with four players able to turn the Wii-Mote sideways to tackle stages, filling the shoes of Meta Knight, Waddle Dee, King Dedede, or as different colored Kirbys. Only Kirby and his color variations possess the power to inhale enemies and absorb their powers, with the rest of the cast assigned a set of fixed attacks, and the ability to ride on one another’s backs for a larger attack.

This certainly conjures memories of New Super Mario Bros. Wii, but is certainly not what’s underneath the surface. Multiplayer doesn’t shift the focus from the star of the game, with extra characters being pulled along wherever Kirby goes. It’s cute that they can run around the world map together, but the game is focused on single-player, with extra participants serving a more supportive role – tied to a pool of lives and ultimately undone should Kirby perish during a stage. And unlike Mario’s multiplayer Wii platformer, there’s never a sense that the game is lessened by the absence of company – not necessarily a negative here, but certainly a fact worth being aware of.

This time around, an alien visitor has crashed his ship, which naturally scatters pieces of the vessel across several worlds and finds Kirby and company volunteering to tackle the stages within to reach the boss in possession of each crucial part. Finding energy spheres acts as the added challenge of each stage, though interestingly, the game never asks that players find set amounts in order to progress, instead bartering them for bonus’ and mini-games. It’s odd for a Nintendo game not to force players to retrieve certain amounts of spheres in order to reach boss battles, though I’m not sure I’m complaining about the change.

Not having to search for those energy spheres saved on tedium, within a game that I very much felt myself rushing through for the sake of this review.

But don’t get me wrong, because Return to Dream Land is filled with many beautiful and clever moments of discovery. In many ways, I often thought of comparing it to Super Mario Bros. 3, not in a sense of depth, but in the way I continually found moments that inspired legitimate wonder – and maybe because Kirby gets to ride around in a boot sometimes.

Light comparisons aside, let’s just set aside the pretty words and get to the meat here. By inhaling enemies to absorb their powers, Kirby gains access to an impressive amount of abilities. Moreover, these powers then make impressive use of sideway Wii-Mote controls to grant Kirby an array of offensive moves. Playing the swordsman, Kirby can thrust upward, slam downward, rapid attack to the side, and fire off a charged shot for example. The catch is that the player never really needs to discover any of this, and I can’t even suggest that button mashing is the culprit. There are so few enemies, presenting so little challenge, that the natural order is to simply scoot through stages tapping out a sword swing here and there to clear the way forward.

When recurring bosses appear, then a certain amount of button mashing gets the job done. More creative use of Kirby’s powers will save some health loss, but is never really necessary. It’s not until the final few boss encounters that close out the game when a sudden appreciation of the differences between the fighter and the swordsman prove handy – when being able to stay in the air while delivering downward sword thrusts saves on frustration.

On top of this are super variations of powers, which see Kirby able to swing weapons that take up the entirety of the screen, reminiscent of the theatrics driving Final Fantasy styled summon attacks. These over the top actions have a place and time very much dictated by stage designs, essential for unlocking hidden paths that lead the way to more energy spheres, and leaving me feeling ever more disconnected from the actual playing of the game.

I think I get the problem, that the limited amount of enemies is dictated by the fact that each has to potentially offer Kirby a power-up and drag out development time – the natural wall of any Kirby game. It just can’t help alleviate the feeling that this release wants to slide by on simply being the straightforward Kirby platformer Epic Yarn deviated from, and lacks and real desire to take the series to the places reached by that title or even the latest DS release, Mass Attack.

The plethora of abilities begs for experimentation, but is likely only going to receive that commitment from those willing to appreciate the release on a strictly visual level – even here the theatrical action helps art direction that suffers for the straightforward agenda. The way Kirby suddenly has goggles on when hitting the water serves as a good example of how small visual nuances litter the game, finding this release not so short on charm despite the previously mentioned lack of yarn. But this doesn’t overturn the fact that the variety of abilities share many commonalities, and super-abilities are far more about hitting precise notes within stages while occasionally shaking the Wii-Mote to remind yourself that you’re playing on the Wii.

With that said, the relative ease of the title doesn’t make the unlocking of a game+ mode a savior, nor do the simplistic mini-games – cute as they might be for five minutes. Return to Dream Land has plenty of ideas, but feels pressed for time in the execution, even while dragging out the affair across multiple worlds with titles that provide delightful alliteration. A short dragon ride through a sudden sidescrolling shooter chase drove the point home for me, and leaves me hard up for recommending this release when you could still pick-up Kirby’s previous adventure on the Wii and several more on the DS.

Kirby’s Return to Dream Land

Developer
HAL Laboratory

Publisher
Nintendo

System
Nintendo Wii

Modes
Singleplayer, Multiplayer

Release Date
October 24, 2011

*A copy of this title was provided by the publisher for review

“Use the handbrake for sharp turns, Brad!”

“Okay, driving game—oh, I made the widest possible turn, spun out and crashed into a wall. Thanks.”

As a result of my crippling deficiency, driving isn’t usually a lot of fun for me. The driving games I play are invariably the ones where I can mitigate my incompetence with offense. That is to say, there’s a gap between me and the amount of skill necessary to win a driving game, and I close it by shooting other drivers. Mario Kart, Extreme-G, Blur—these are the games I can contend in (just barely), because I can leverage missiles and mortars and heat-seeking koopa shells against my fellow racers.

Driver: San Francisco doesn’t have any of that—but it does have something even more unusual.

San Fran tries to close the gap between incompetent drivers and fun driving with its “Shift” mechanic, whereby main character Tanner can eject his consciousness from his body and sit down in someone else’s brain. This means that the player can take over any car on the road (except, sadly, enemies) and use them to assist in the completion of objectives.

The idea here is pretty simple: if you’re losing a race, start crashing civilian cars into opponents, or if you’re tired of your mediocre wheels, snatch something new right off the road.

The power to shift between bodies also works well for jumping haphazardly across the world, assuming different objectives and undertaking different mission imperatives. When Tanner jumps out of a body, he assumes a bird’s eye view of the road, allowing him to select other cars nearby—or, by increasing height, he can cut a path across entire city blocks to snatch up new missions.

It’s an extremely novel approach, cutting all the fat and leaving nothing but driving in the game. You’ll never get bored navigating to a mission or driving to a sidequest, because literally everything in the game is a shift away. The result is that Driver has exactly one speed; you’ll simply never stop racing through the streets.

Shift gamplay applications, however, are a little more limited than I would have liked. In a chase, my primary instinct was to jump into a bus and turn it sharply to block and slow down my pursuers—but they were unfazed. They navigated around the obstacle perfectly and continued the chase, as if I had done nothing.

Unfortunately, the only way to reliably impede other vehicles is to pick a car traveling in the opposite direction and ram directly into the desired enemy—and cars can take more than one or two crashes to completely disable them.

More frustrating is that only Tanner’s vehicles seem limited by the physics of acceleration; enemy cars recover from crashes, spin outs, slowdowns and misdirection unreasonably quick, sometimes making talented driving moot, as the enemy will simply catch up instantaneously. This is especially maddening when attempting to escape enemy cars, as they seem impossibly adept at catching and crashing into the player vehicle, regardless of what moves the player employs.

That said, when the shift ability works, it really works. When driving a police vehicle in pursuit of a fleeing criminal, tapping a button will shift the player into another cop car in pursuit—making it easy to keep the chase going even if the initial vehicle spins out or crashes, and it’s touches like these that dramatically decrease the amount of time spent recovering from driving errors and reinforce the fast pace of the game.

Meanwhile, using civilian cars as weapons can dramatically change the shape of any race or pursuit, though to be fair, it becomes a little repetitive given the number of chases the game offers.

In addition to some nicely varied story missions (which may involve riding in a helicopter or exploding enemy cars with a tanker), there’s an entire mess of sidequests with their own bizarre objectives—from a selection of race types (some involving competing against other cars, others with more unusual objectives) to the more intriguing “Dares,” which demand eclectic driving feats.

There are a lot of interesting little twists on traditional racing conventions that make these missions more varied and interesting than they might otherwise be. One such task asks the player to drive a witness to a safe house while avoiding detection in back alleys—where main roads raise a meter that can lead to failure. Balancing the meter while also attempting to beat the clock to the safehouse made for a more interesting challenge than simply “Get there really fast,” and for someone who can’t muster interest in straight-out racing to save his life, that made a big difference.

Meanwhile, the core story of Driver is completely preposterous—but redeems itself by never taking itself too seriously. Though I couldn’t be bothered to care one whit about the main quest narrative, I got a kick out of shifting into other vehicles and hearing little snippets of the lives of other drivers. Wives berating their husbands turn panicked when Tanner takes control and decides to antagonize the police into a chase, while crude driving instructors get a lesson in manners when taken for incredibly unsafe joyrides. The sense of humor is pretty sharp, and though listening to a passenger scream about driving on the sidewalk can only be funny so many times, the work here goes a long way toward making shifting fun.

San Francisco also includes a fairly substantial multiplayer package, which uses the bizarre abilities of the core game to craft some equally unusual gametypes. While there are, in fact, standard races where drivers don’t have the power to ghost-drive other cars, many of the gametypes hinge on the shift ability.

For example, in Tag mode, players must ram the player with the Tag in order to claim said Tag for themselves—and the player who holds it longest wins. This is complicated by the fact that, at any moment, the oncoming traffic may suddenly be possessed by a rival player looking for a head on crash. However, clever players can duck into alleys or other low-traffic areas, thus denying opponents cars to shift to, and forcing them to close the distance with pure driving.

Several such modes blend racing with objective-based gameplay (even an attack and defend gametype), providing a pretty unique selection of games for a racer—though it’s worth noting that if your core driving skills are weak, you’re still unlikely to succeed, despite the availability of magical powers.

Driver: San Francisco is more than a little weird, but it leverages its odd features toward creating a comfortably varied experience, one that’s accessible even for the driving-game-impaired, like myself. These qualities, along with the non-stop pace, serve to elevate the title above some frustrating elements and a goofy story and make for a solid game.

Driver: San Francisco

Developer
Ubisoft Reflections

Distributor
Ubisoft

System
Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, Nintendo Wii, PC (Xbox 360 reviewed)

Modes
Singleplayer, Online and Splitscreen Multiplayer

Release Date
September 6, 2011 (X360, PS3, Wii); September 27, 2011 (PC)

*A copy of this title was provided by the publisher for review

The protagonist is Michael Ford, former secret service agent on a quest to defeat some sort of alien bad guy who’s out to do stuff, I guess. I can’t tell you much more than that, because the game didn’t see fit to tell me much more than that. The story provides no context for the events, which I imagine is fine if you played the previous game—but I did not. I suppose I now understand how new players feel when picking up Halo 2 or 3.

This is symptomatic of a larger problem, however, which is the way the game communicates with the player—or rather, that it often doesn’t. The player is simply never educated on the premise or mechanics of the game, nor many of the core features.

There is an upgrade system—but the player is never told how to use it, how to collect upgrades, or, indeed, that it even exists. The campaign can be expanded by unlocking secret missions that can yield new weapons and items—but, again, the player is never informed that the opportunity exists.

While I understand the desire to leave some things hidden for the player to discover through exploration, Conduit 2 is in absolutely dire need of a tutorial to educate on the matter of its core gameplay features.

With regards to that gameplay, Conduit 2 is a reasonable collection of shooter conventions, with a little Call of Duty here, a little Metroid there, and a lot of Halo over here. Combat feels very much inspired by the latter game, while the All-Seeing-Eye device recalls Metroid’s various visor modes. The game doesn’t really elevate or interpret these borrowed ideas in new ways, but it does use them capably. The result is that the core gameplay is satisfying, even if opportunities were missed in the expansion and interplay that could have existed between these mechanics.

Control with the Wii remote is something of a mixed bag. Default settings for sensitivity and the bounding box are acceptable, but imperfect; I often found myself waving my reticule around to adjust my direction, and the sensitivity was high enough to cause my aim to bob awkwardly. That said, careful aim is rewarded with exceptional precision.

Additionally, there’s a lot of functionality that has been implemented here, but unfortunately the design of the Wii remote simply isn’t very accommodating. The remote, with its awkwardly positioned buttons, required me to constantly adjust my grip to take advantage of the various features.

If you’ve had this experience before, you know that grip adjustment is something that should not factor into any experience; it immediately hampers gameplay and pulls you out of the games. This is especially damning in combat, where having to adjust grip to hit reload and then adjust again to aim down the sights is plainly a disaster.

However, I can hardly blame the game for the shortcomings of Nintendo’s “Designed for Party Games” controller—and fortunately, Conduit 2 mitigates its awkward control by offering a suite of customization options. In addition to the ability to customize the button layout, the Wii remote sensitivity and the bounding box that dictates at which point the character begins to turn can also be adjusted to player preference. Also supported is Wii Motion Plus, alongside the classic controllers for those who want even more options, though I stuck to the standard remote for this review.

I found that, upon making the bounding box as small as possible I was much more comfortable, with my movement and aim far more precise. However, there was a significant drawback: because the bounding box not only affects normal aiming, but also the scoped or aim-down-the-sights reticule, reducing the size of the box made scoped weapons and ADS useless, with these functions becoming wildly oversensitive.

While I commend High Voltage for offering a range of control customization options, this oversight significantly hampers their usefulness; I was ultimately forced to choose between comfortable hip-fire and turning or functional scopes and ADS.

Also problematic is the relation between the position of the reticule while aiming down the sights to the position of the hip fire reticule. Initiating ADS will result in a reticule position that is roughly (or exactly) where the player wants it, but the player’s view is reoriented drastically when leaving ADS to account for the new position of the remote relative to the screen. This change is a little disorienting and extremely inconvenient, serving to make combat slower and more awkward.

That said, the dreadfully moronic AI will rarely take advantage of any momentary vulnerability. All things considered, there are really only three types of enemies to encounter, as identified by their behaviours:

1. The kind that stand in the open and shoot you.
2. The kind that march directly towards you and shoot you.
3. The kind that run up and bite your ankles.

With the exception of boss battles and a single on-rails vehicle sequence, these are the enemy types the player fights for the entirety of the experience. The ankle-biters are frustrating, as Wii control simply doesn’t work well in close quarters, while the other enemy types just aren’t particularly engaging to combat. They have limited behaviors and use them sparingly, they don’t animate well, and they’re slow-witted—which might make the campaign unbearably easy and slow-paced if there weren’t so many of them.

Fortunately, the game manages to redeem the core gameplay with a strong selection of weapons and satisfying shooting. There’s a selection of standard shooter pistols, assault rifles, and SMG’s—and then there’s the more eclectic sci-fi weaponry. These range from bizarre, organic weapons (including a creature that has the player’s hand crammed up its… well, you know) to heavy-weight, high-tech science-blasters.

Every weapon has a secondary feature which may be as simple as ADS or as absurd as the ability to launch a black hole. Some of these features are more for novelty than combat efficacy, but they’re always interesting—and a welcome departure from the bland norm that has overtaken mainstream shooter weapons. If you’re looking for relief from the endless parade of assault rifles, Conduit 2 won’t disappoint.

Level design is another high point; each distinct location looks entirely different from the others, right down to the doorways. There’s almost no recycled design here, and the art design is solid; from jungles to abandoned cities and alien spaceships, the backdrop is always changing and always interesting.

Missions are also comfortable to navigate—save for the occasional awkwardly hidden path—and conceal a pleasant amount of explorability. A wealth of items, log entries, and artifacts are hidden everywhere, extending the life of the otherwise six-hour campaign considerably.

Additionally, all tasks in the campaign (such as unlocking achievements or discovering relics) contribute to the player’s credit count, which can be leveraged to purchase upgrades and weapons. These can be organized into discrete loadouts that can then be equipped in both the campaign and the multiplayer component (with some upgrades being exclusive to one or the other).

The multiplayer itself is fairly elaborate, featuring the aforementioned expansive catalog of weapons and upgrades, alongside a whole mess of gametypes. There isn’t much here that’s new; like the core game, it’s assembled of pieces taken from other high profile releases (yet another iteration on Call of Duty’s perk system, for example), but what is here is done reasonably well. With the wealth of gametypes and progression options (and the unique weapons that put an interesting spin on things), players who enjoy the core Conduit gameplay experience will find a decent way to drain some hours.

The game is unfortunately hampered by a couple of technical issues, however. Framerate (more in the campaign than the multiplayer) is a serious issue, sometimes dipping to unacceptably low levels. While Conduit 2 is fairly graphically impressive for a Wii title, it’s not so high-powered as to warrant these framerate dips, which impede an otherwise solid graphical offering.

Also on the technical side, the first mission includes a possible glitch that, if encountered, will force players to restart the campaign.

The paramount problem with Conduit 2, though, isn’t technical shortcomings. The real problem is that it’s actually a good game—but you have to force it. That’s not something players should have to contend with; they shouldn’t have to dabble endlessly in menus to pound out a control mechanic that works, and they shouldn’t have to surmount poor instruction and communication of the game’s core features.

The result is a product that will satisfy anyone starving for a solid Wii shooter, but won’t ingratiate itself to players who are accustomed to the catalog available on other consoles.

Conduit 2

Developer
High Voltage Studios

Publisher
Sega

System
Nintendo Wii

Modes
Singleplayer, Splitscreen and Online Multiplayer

Release Date
April 19, 2011

*A copy of this title was provided by the publisher for review

Recently released by Gaijin games on WiiWare, lilt line is a game being marketed as “a retro rhythm racing beat ‘em up action game with a dubstep flavour,” which bothered when I first started the game.

I took one look at the UI and level design and flashbacks of raver kids tripping on E wearing stunna shades at HARD Summer’s electro festival came to mind, not dubstep. Around here, dubstep is a mellow, mostly downtempo scene, devoid of bright neon colors, and saying “rapid” is almost an oxymoron, so I feel it is an imperfect visual representation of dubstep. The scene is becoming a bit more commercialized as groups like Magnetic Man lead it into the mainstream, perhaps melding perceptions of dubstep into an all-encompassing view of electronic music, but I digress.

Apart from my disapproval of the stylistic design choices, lilt line is a fun game that breezes by too quickly. The game adds an accelerometer element (it was originally released for iPhones) to a musical game that’s not far from Rock Band, where the movements are tilting the remote and hitting the 2 button on the marked beats. There are 15 levels in which you control your line by tilting the horizontal WiiMote forward and backwards. Your lifeline is the score shown on the bottom left of the screen, depleting every time you hit the wall or miss a beat.

Most levels are fun and easy, but some stages are frustratingly challenging. The lilt line is fast, but not resilient – it sometimes gets lost in its own liltingly carefree self. Bad level run throughs go something like this: tilt up, hit 2, keep it tilted up, tilt down, dodge the menacing walls, hit 2, beat break, hit 2, tilt up, hit wall, keep hitting wall, tilt up too high, hit wall again, miss beat, hit wall, “game over,” throw controller. Once you hit the wall, the line moves too quickly to bounce back into the groove.

This game made me contemplate the correlation between presentation and gameplay and how there is a certain visual/gameplay ratio for games.

There are games that look spectacular enough to forget substandard gameplay issues, and games that are nowhere near the cutting-edge in visual terms but provide play that invites the imagination to overlook presentation. lilt line’s simple but engaging mechanics allow me to overlook my own design issues with the game, even though the visuals portray more of a “music visualizer” vibe and the neon colors and geometric shapes come across as flat and abstract on a first impression.

lilt line

Developer
Different Cloth

Publisher
Gaijin Games

System
Nintendo Wii (WiiWare)

Modes
Singleplayer

Release Date
December 13, 2010

Price
500 Wii Pts

*A copy of this title was purchased by Gamesugar for review

It’s ever tempting to suggest that the demise of the hardware was responsible for the continual release of the Sonic missteps we’ve suffered with, but that would be the real red nostalgia talking. From the beginning, Sonic has struggled to run outside the lines that structure the platformer, while awkwardly seeking to incorporate elements of that genre even while fighting to escape it – the shift into three dimensions simply made the conflict more visible, and often frustrating.

During a year when Sega seeks to appease fans with a classic revisit of the series’ roots via Sonic The Hedgehog Episode 4, Sonic Colors continues the quest for a solution to that long running problem. It’s as polarizing as ever, but Sonic Colors hits upon the reason we continue playing through a conflicted franchise, reminding us that when Sonic finds his groove, the experience can reach heights worth all the heartache.

On the list of most aptly named releases of 2010, Sonic’s outing on the Wii doesn’t disappoint. The blue blur runs through a world of glittering chaos, of Vegas flavored extravagance that maintains a detailed sense of structure and order even as the environment melts into incomprehensible sensory stew.

Seeking to unravel Eggman’s latest plot, Sonic and Tails arrive at an amusement park made up of worlds built on Candy, spatial anomalies, under water structures, and a slew of more bizarre constructions that challenge description. Any familiar minimalism inherent to Wii releases fades to thematic environments bursting with robotic enemies, but also brightly lit oddities, as if capitalism exploded inside the disc and the carnage painted every inch of the roller coaster ride that commences after pressing the start button.

You’d think the temptation to stop and take it in is like slamming on the breaks of a car to catch the passing scenery, and yet the game possesses a measured sense of its spaces, areas meant for momentum provide a view that doesn’t lessen when stopped, the details are still there when the breaks are on – however the emphasis is on momentum, and stopping to analyze and dissect the pieces would miss the forest for the trees.

There are times when sonic whips across the screen, able to quickly dispatch enemies and grab hooks to ascend to other levels, where the game finds a groove worth enduring the hassles of digging through a chaotic game structure. Maintaining the momentum convinces a feeling so positive that the imperative becomes fighting to keep Sonic in motion, mostly encouraged but sometimes hitched with those inevitable and awkward platform sections that thankfully litter this release far less than previous titles. Sonic gets his groove back when the player is encouraged and enabled to let go, to stop obsessing over collecting items and comprehending every inch of each stage on a first pass.

Once I learned to let go, the game offered chaotic gold, levels meticulously designed to convince me that I was always taking the right path despite the knowledge that there were numerous roads available.

The problem as always is the aforementioned stoppages that occur as the design dips into platforming distractions. Sonic Team has worked to split up this division, most often basing stages on short bouts of puzzle like platforming, and the speed racing I’m waving a flag for here, so that it often feels like a case of choosing one or the other by stage, with speed taking the priority. There are crossover moments, and the game is a continual experiment trying to resolve what exactly a Sonic game should be to that end. But nothing is worse than being taken in by the momentum only to suddenly stop at some elementary puzzle that costs the connection the game had been forming up to that point.

There are times where I want to stop playing, when a jumping challenge suddenly demands a level of patience requiring a Monk. Anytime Sonic becomes dependent on an object, such as a moving platform to provide his ride, the game suffers.

Sonic Team is still digging for a way to justify the platforming here, the answer this time around a series of color-coded aliens Sonic encounters and seeks to save from Eggman. These aliens absorb into Sonic to offer new powers – Sonic can become faster, blast into the air like a rocket to reach new areas, stick to surfaces to crawl to new areas, and even transform into a purple menace with a hunger for metal enemies. Mentioning that another of these aliens gives Sonic the power to turn into a laser beam in order to reach new areas, you’re probably noticing that the bulk of these powers necessitate the platforming breaks previously mentioned. They create a toybox within the game, a series of powers to experiment with for a time – the first time I gained the ability to drill through the ground to reach new spaces was definitely a treat. But it isn’t long before said abilities become a distraction from the prime draw of the title.

It’s not that these can’t be fun, turning into a giant purple beast that grows as it consumes enemies has to be worth something, and these probably offer the best solution to the platforming areas, but this is still an attempt to make the platforming better, which would be fine if the speedier parts of the game weren’t finding greater ways of letting the hedgehog loose to discover his potential without them.

I think we find our way back to questioning whether we’d play an endless series of race courses if offered them. There are times when you could question whether you’re even playing this game during those points, simply tapping a button to jump or duck obstacles as Sonic runs through the spectacle of stages. Sonic Colors is digging for more of a connection during these sequences however, offering players button prompts during some of that play, challenging us to ask whether this is a simplistic solution, or a different way of playing – where the simplicity is allowing players to really absorb the entirety of what’s occurring onscreen.

I can’t escape the sensation that this game is most successful during sequences where sonic runs flat out and players can switch from side to side to dodge attacks, fall to lower levels, raise again, and eventually fight a ship along a track where Sonic’s speed attacks are the weapon of choice.

In the end, it boils down to whether players are willing to dig through some chaotic presentation and structure to discover the core that I’m going to admit finding value in.

Surprising as it may be, Sonic Colors finds a groove that feels unique while familiar, entirely overdue whether it is intentional or accidental – something from a dream of speed, color, and sound, dancing to the fingers holding a sideways WiiMote.

Again, it’s simply a case of letting go of old habits, strapping in for this experiment to discover a great relationship of the sensory and tactile powering the core of this game.

Sonic Colors

Developer
Sonic Team

Publisher
Sega

System
Nintendo Wii

Modes
Singleplayer, Multiplayer

Release Date
November 16, 2010

*A copy of this title was provided by the publisher for review

The sincerity drips from every digital brush stroke, and remarkable seems like a word worth using to describe the amount of attention given to the details. Junction Point has created a living, breathing world for characters few players are likely to readily remember. But the devil in those details is whether this labor of love offers an opportunity and incentive for players to truly immerse themselves in this world, or if this epic undertaking merely offers a lightly pulsing museum, one which assumes that the care of content can counterbalance significant design problems, which Disney Epic Mickey unfortunately offers in spades.

If this quick appraisal leaves you making a sad face beneath your Mouseketeer hat, join the club.

The game disc offers the opportunity to unlock and watch an Oswald the Rabbit cartoon, a chance to appreciate the connection shared between the animation and gaming medium. Watching Oswald attempt to rescue a princess in waiting, it’s impossible to not still see the charm in the exaggerated movement characters exhibit. There’s a joy of movement there as the priority, the central draw over which all other concerns are layered.

Incidentally this is how I also see that great defining title of the videogame medium, Super Mario Bros., a game that even under the constraints of technological limitations was successful in the way it gave the sensation of joyous movement to the player. It’s still as much a joy to watch Mario jump and move, more so to know and feel your connection to causing it – comparable to the same amount of joy found in watching Oswald take to the screen so many years later.

Given the history of Disney animation, that joy of movement is the burden, the primary job of any videogame looking to explore the rich content of that dynasty. This would be the case whether we were discussing a current release, or waxing nostalgically on dated titles from the Sega Genesis. As for how this comes together within Disney Epic Mickey, an example is definitely in order.

During Mickey’s quest through the wasteland player’s will encounter a series of themed areas that offer pockets of challenges – collecting objects, talking with and aiding characters, and solving puzzles that open the path forward to more still more areas. And yet the greatest challenge in each of these areas is caught between rotating the camera to see the entirety of these spaces, and positioning it in a way that allows for the platforming required.

At one point I climbed a series of platforms to reach the peak of a tower, simply because only at that highest point could I fully rotate the camera around the stage to take in the sights. From that vantage point I spotted another lower platform near a roof I needed to reach. But as I jumped from my perch to that platform, the camera hit the wall and spun away, making any chance of landing successfully a complete game of chance. And even though there is a first-person mode that can be activated as a potential solution to this problem, the camera is rarely willing to cooperate, leaving the places capable of activating said mode not as desperately in need of the aid.

And would you believe that such a simple and familiar control gripe invades every inch of the adventure until you just don’t want to play anymore?

I’ve been apologetic of control issues in other titles, and I hate to be that guy, but it’s 2010, Super Mario Galaxy 2 exists, and I can’t honestly recall ever fighting with a camera so much in my gaming memory. The bottom line is that admiring the attention to detail given to the content, and marrying that with these control problems, makes it hard to come to any other conclusion than Junction Point treated how the player would interact with this world as an afterthought to the design, and no matter how wonderfully detailed your world is, if the player can’t explore it without repeated aggravations, the experiment is a failure.

Odder still are the 2D sequences that held the most hope for me prior to playing the final release. Classic Disney cartoons have been turned into sidescrolling segments, which act as gateways between the 3D areas of the game. Players pass through the amazingly recreated environments of Steamboat Willie and other cartoons, not able to overtly interact with these environments, but experiencing them in a relevant way to the themes of the game.

And yet even here the controls feel off, with a lagging feeling that has Mickey simply passing through these spaces rather than demonstrating the joy of movement that made those cartoons so special for their time. And despite the charm of animation occurring in these sequences, experiencing them more than once quickly degrades the significance and value.

The game eventually devolves into a strange series of fetch-quests, tasks unquestionably meant to stretch out the playtime and add the lightest sense of exploration to The Wasteland. Players will travel between areas to deliver or search out items, lacking any real inventory system and essentially running toward characters to engage in obligatory conversations that swap one item for another, with varying degrees of significance to the story, and at many times without real warning – I’m sorry Pete, I didn’t know you needed that book back!

A pirate may desire flowers to impress a would-be lover, leaving Mickey searching for flowers, but then quickly derailed to deliver a pie, fumbling between areas and quickly losing the point of the entire endeavor. And through all of this, Mickey uses those 2D tunnels as a passage, until you’ve passed through the looking glass so many times that you vomit a deck of cards and lose the final shreds of interest in collecting another single e-ticket – The Wasteland’s primary currency.

The stake in the heart of this beast are paint mechanics that leave the player struggling to find a harmony between using paint to create and add to the world, or thinner to dissolve it – not unlike the dip from Who Framed Roger Rabbit. While each area is sorely in need of a dab of color, the majority of what the player does resets each time they enter an area, save for tasks that specifically move the game forward, which dramatically affects the desire to interact at all, and perhaps feeds a cynicism that makes it more fun to dissolve characters into a blob.

Aiming the paint or thinner becomes a game all its own, one that often requires excessive movement to so much as fill in the holes of a bridge – deducing the drop distance of a paint stream becomes essential to sanity while trying to find any harmony with the camera controls.

The choice between paint and thinner plays into that other draw of this release, the much sought after Holy Grail of game design that convinces players that their choices play a significant role within the game sphere. It likely won’t surprise many that this is no greater a realization here than in any other lofty title hoping to convince the player that their actions have real consequences. There are many moments of choice, often lingering on whether Mickey will take an easy route to his objectives or run around performing additional tasks to be the hero The Wasteland needs and his reputation suggests he is.

I’m going to suggest that the aggravations listed above make it impossible not to take the easier road after a time, but I don’t want to go so far as saying that choice is inconsequential. The results are often direct, whether you decide to paint enemies to make them allies, watching as they immediately attack other enemies, or spare a boss in battle and have a relative of his give you a bonus. What’s in it for you to play it nice isn’t some mystery that builds and makes you feel all warm and fuzzy for having a moral compass by the end, but it isn’t so simple as gaining scars for being a badass either.

The most visible consequence of whether you use the paint or thinner more is a gauge in the top of the screen, which affects sprites the can be set upon enemies, at least on occasions where you can get the Wii Motion controls to cooperate as you “flick” said sprites into action.

Any sense of really being able to take control and have effect on this world is a fallacy. There is no investment to be made, no rewards that encourage taking the time to either rebuild or destroy The Wasteland, but rather a series of tasks painfully laid out by a handholding agenda overseen by guardian characters, so that in the end you’re just pushing toward inevitable conclusions. It’s unfortunate given the expectations built by this project overtime, not only because this release is incapable of living up to the very hopes its initial announcement produced, but because it proved that such a hope existed, that gamers really do want a mature and evolving conception of Disney in their lives. Based on the results herein, we’re still left waiting, and unfortunately it may be a long time before anyone gets the chance to offer that to gamers again.

The salt in the wound is that beneath the generic Tim Burton flavored atmosphere and the facade of choice hoping to mask authoritarian direction and control, we’re left inspired and imagining what could have been, which makes the idea of forcing a path through this release for the content alone more of a tease than a lingering incentive.

Disney Epic Mickey

Developer
Junction Point Studios

Publisher
Disney Interactive Studios

System
Nintendo Wii

Modes
Singleplayer

Release Date
November 30, 2010

*A copy of this title was provided by the publisher for review

Two straight days in the jungle have created a time machine, the latest cog in Nintendo’s flux capacitor bringing players back to the age of Super Nintendo, taking advantage of an evolved 2D palette and a long absence that brings characters back with a vibrancy I fantasized about while playing the original titles so many years ago.

Perhaps the key is that the visual seduction inspires the same level of awe now as it did then, so that even if everything new is old again, it’s hard to complain about the result.

Donkey Kong treks across an island home littered with enemies and bursting with life on the quest to reclaim his stolen bananas. The hypnotized critters standing between Kong and his goal are a part of that eco-system, but Retro has also created a layered backdrop that gushes with organic trappings, which while serving as background set pieces, still sway and breathe to invite player investment.

Pounding Kong’s furious fists against the ground shakes the earth, causing plants and bones and whatever else litters the jungle floor to shift with the action. The studio that put us behind Samus’ visor to experience the universe of Metroid as if we were truly there has herein created a 2D world filled with the chaos of life in motion, of the cause and effect unleashed when a giant gorilla marches to war.

The priority of 2D longing puts the emphasis on quickly tearing through all the stages Kong has to offer, discovering levels that play to a familiar beat, remixed by hands skilled enough to legitimately make the old seem new and never deprive the game of its ability to surprise.

One stage found me waking a cave filled with fruit bats that summoned a swarming storm chasing me through the rest of the stage. Another saw waves at the beach taking out everything on the screen, forcing Kong to rush between shelter points. At other points Kong grips patches of grass to ride swinging chunks of earth teetering over chasms.

The road forward is never laid at the neglect of the environment flowing underneath the immediate action, rather there’s a continual marriage where the two layers play off one another, taking turns at offering the emphasis that keeps Kong moving. Players can stop to smell the roses and explore every nook and cranny, but continually swirling events place the emphasis for fun on keeping Kong in perpetual motion and feeling like an old school God for surviving.

Kong’s world is crammed with secrets and eccentricities that make every stage both an endurance run and a place of exploration. Puzzle pieces, bonuses, and special KONG letters wait to be devoured.

I’d like to suggest that the rumors of Donkey Kong’s difficulty have been greatly exaggerated, but such things will vary with players. There are continual situations that encourage chucking the WiiMote at the television – I’ve lost so many Kong’s while compiling this review that the species must certainly border on extinction. And yet, it’s worth stressing that the game doesn’t hit players with “cheap” difficulty.

Obstacles are carefully placed to demand a certain level of precision, but leave just enough room for error so that the game doesn’t leave me feeling cheated even after I lose so many lives that the game’s guide kicks on and offers to let Super Kong show me how it’s done. There is nothing to be shown, no real secret to prevailing. This is that old style of difficulty, where you can see what you need to do – it’s just a matter of getting your fingers to co-operate. Keeping Diddy on hand becomes essential as he rides atop Donkey Kong to provide two extra hit point hearts as well as a jetpack that offers additional space for recovering from miscalculated leaps.

That said, levels that take Donkey Kong on a ride with rocket barrel flights or railcar trips threaten to break the Zen of the most hardened Monks even with a precious few level aiding bonuses. Maybe a few rides on Rambi the Rhino will help blow off some steam as players get a few opportunities to bash through levels.

Keeping perspective on the old school, there are no obligatory motion controls hamstringing the play of the game. There are two control settings available, either turning the WiiMote sideways ala Kirby’s Epic Yarn, or using the NunChuk and WiiMote together, but still as a straightforward controller affair that doesn’t require motion pointing.

With either setup, shaking the devices will cause Donkey Kong to pound the ground, and button additions with the shaking will cause Kong to blow on objects like lights and flowers, or power-charge through enemies. It’s a clever grab for realism in the physicality of that action, imparting some sense of Kong’s brute force on the player and encouraging that we all go a little ape while playing. I largely stuck out the game with the sideways controls, but there were a few times where the NunChuk option seemed to make the shaking easier to perform and maintain.

The sideways control setup seems to suit the boss fights better however. Such confrontations largely present the age old challenge of hopping on enemies at the right time, and yet also stretch at a precious few points into near environmental battles that require Kong to use every trick at his disposal to move quickly and strike with precision.

The game also offers a two player option, which lets a friend tag along as Diddy – tag being an important word given the nature of the levels, which don’t invite a truly co-operative experience given the emphasis on keeping in motion. One player seems destined to always get ahead of the other, and while the game would launch Diddy ahead to where Kong had gotten, and allow him to ride on Kong’s back and fire projectiles, it’s clear that this is a game better devoured one person at a time.

Retro has truly channeled the spirit of Rare, creating a game that encompasses everything memorable about the original series, with levels that play out like carefully placed rows of dominoes, and visuals every bit as detailed. The art style offers up the lush jungle paradise of the Kong’s with color bursting from every inch of the screen. There are also subtle touches, a few stages where Kong and Diddy are silhouettes beneath a setting sun or within the bowels of a darkened factory, the only splash of color the red of their trademarked bits of clothing – a bit of arthouse flavoring that even extends to loading screens.

This channeling has created a spot on revisit of the series, a defining summation of life in Kong’s Country. Platforming titles often have a hypnotic effect on me, where my brain goes on auto-pilot as I start tackling levels like a chore list. But the ideas at work within these stages manage to slap me awake and keep me engaged – I know I’m having fun again, which seems entirely the point. And yet, it’s hard ignoring the fact that Retro, so capable of expanding the horizons of classic Nintendo franchises beyond perceived boundaries, has primarily written a love letter here, rather than finding the space and freedom to leave their unmistakable mark.

It really is hard to complain about the result, which achieves so much more than other titles looking for quick results off of grain fed nostalgia – a better throwback to the golden age of platforming will likely be a long time coming. But it’s equally hard to ignore that revisiting the past still leaves us all looking to the future when the ride is over.

Donkey Kong Country Returns

Developer
Retro Studios

Publisher
Nintendo

System
Nintendo Wii

Modes
Singleplayer, Co-op

Release Date
November 21, 2010

*A copy of this title was purchased by Gamesugar for review

Perhaps we could label this release more free-range, with players turning the WiiMote sideways to take direct control of Pikachu, exploring the zones that comprise the PokéPark and grasping at another opportunity to touch the franchise by different means.

The priority of the PokéPark isn’t to catch them all, rather to meet them all, and if possible to become friends with them all. Certainly that touchy-feely angle sounds more childlike, but the label is more properly grounded in the simplistic design and approach, from the controls to the specific objectives on Pikachu’s todo list.

Slipping on the yellow paws to explore this 3D space offers a lesser gained view of Pokémon, ready to great Pikachu and ever eager to play games in order to earn friendship. These games vary, from chases, to rounds of hide-and-seek, and battles that offer a chance to dodge and attack Pokémon in realtime to get a fuller view of abilities usually written off with quick animations and HP decreases elsewhere. Earning the friendship of fellow Pokémon is essential for gaining the ability to use them in the park’s various attractions – where some Pokémon excel over others and winning rewards the player with the shards that Mew sent Pikachu looking for in the first place.

There are good ideas afoot, offering players a chance to meet Pokémon via direct exploration and make connections through shared activities with them, while a larger goal hangs overhead and mini-games offer breaks along the way. Those mini-games offer slices of familiarity with races, some vine-swing long jumping, air races, and a block bashing game to name some. Of course this tows along some obligatory WiiMote controls that reunite me with my old nemesis, tilt-WiiMote-flying. Other events require shaking the WiiMote for momentum, while a bit of block bashing simply leaves you alone to use the dpad in a more old school fashion. It’s hit and miss, these are mini-games in a very literal sense, offering very short and small experiences that although accessible from the main menu after being discovered, lack any long term pull for attention and certainly don’t prove the main attraction of this release.

The draw comes instead from wandering through the PokéPark to meet fellow Pokémon, gathering berry currency Pikachu can spend in order to level up his stats for battles as well as learn new moves – though learning tail attack required me to forever after watch exactly how I held the WiiMote, else Pikachu insisted on endlessly executing the attack while I struggled to use his more electrically-minded ability.

Perhaps because I found some joy in the idea of wandering around in this fashion, it was hard to ignore how underdeveloped that idea is here, as if so many decisions allowed the notion of children as a target audience to shorten the corners of the game’s development. Given the amount of games children have access to, that’s a pretty big oversight that also doesn’t give that ideal audience enough credit.

The PokéPark lacks a sense of depth, with the environmentally varied zones allowing the developers to simply dump handfuls of Pokémon into areas without much consideration beyond the general environment in which they’d likely prefer to spend time given the options available – meaning any sense of real exploration has no space to develop and deprives any long term reason for return visits. What you’re left with is a release that feels very much like an overgrown WiiWare title, bloated by repeat performances via additional zones to round out something closer to a retail release that is undeniably overpriced – though I acknowledge most vacations are.

I should also make mention of codes, which allow new Pokémon to be added to the park, here’s one Nintendo sent just yesterday for Groudon – 49446209.

PokéPark Wii isn’t without some charms and small flares, but the solitary experience was a bit depressing as I watched it sink helplessly into tedium to be honest, because this type of game is something Nintendo could stand to get right with more depth, creating a title with an appeal easily as wide as recent releases such as Kirby’s Epic Yarn, particularly considering how many original fans might be contributing to the creation of new gaming audiences even as I type this.

PokéPark Wii: Pikachu’s Adventure

Developer
Creatures Inc.

Publisher
Nintendo

System
Nintendo Wii

Modes
Singleplayer

Release Date
November 1, 2010

*A copy of this title was provided by the publisher for review