Stuff for Dads

  A Boy and his Blob (Wii)

Rated: 7+.

Story: A blob falls to Earth, searching for help. He finds a young boy and together they set off to defeat the evil Emperor who is terrorising Blobolonia.

This task involves a surprising number of jelly beans.

Gameplay: You control the boy as he explores the 2D platform levels. On his own he can't do much other than make tiny jumps, push small objects and come to a sticky end. Progress requires feeding the blob specific types of jelly bean to transform into useful objects. The available objects include a ladder, anvil, space hopper, giant hamster ball and (improbably) a hole.

The main levels are more about puzzling than quick reflexes. The boy is extremely fragile and guiding him past environmental hazards, dead ends and evil blobs is a case of working out which beans to use, in which order and where to throw them.

Each of the 40 levels has treasure chests hidden within it. Finding all three unlocks one of another 40 bonus challenge levels. These don't have to be completed to finish the game but getting through each one unlocks rewards such as concept art. The challenge levels tend to concentrate on exploring the uses of a single type of bean or on harder platforming.

There are no pointless motion controls. In fact, the game can be played using the Classic controller.

Difficulty: Seven-year-olds should be able to take a crack at it with some help.

Save System: Automatic save at the end of the level only. This can become a bit of an issue on later levels. That said, if you do have to quit halfway for some reason and come back later, making your way through a level is much quicker second time round.

However...

The game only has one saved game slot.

Count it. One.

Whose idea was that? Only one person can play through the game at a time on any given Wii unless they're prepared to share a saved game (which takes away much of the fun of finding the treasure chests).

There's absolutely no reason for this and it's just stupid. The only way around the problem is for every player to have their own SD card and move their saved game onto it after every play session. (Copying isn't enough. The data has to be moved entirely off the Wii and onto the card.) This is a fair amount of hassle, is potentially costly, and has the clear risk of a deletion disaster.

It's insane and worth thinking about carefully if more than one person in your household is going to want to play.

Comments: Sprog2 (aged 7) took one look at the box of this game and jumped up and down in excitement. He instantly loved the blob. I think he wants one of his own...

The game is initially a bit confusing, thanks to a lack of menus and tutorials. There's a short cut-scene and then you're pretty much left to your own devices. You have to work out the controls and mechanics for yourself. This adds to the haunting atmosphere but isn't entirely helpful. Fortunately, the graphics are deeply endearing, maintaining interest until the basic concepts have established themselves and the puzzles becoming absorbing in their own right. Watching the boy hug the blob is enough to make even the toughest housedad go, 'Aaaahhhhh...'



The first few levels are pretty easy, with lots of signposts showing which beans to use. These gradually peter out, though, and the treasure chests become better hidden, causing the game to require much more thought. Despite only having access to a maximum of eight types of bean in any given level, there are still often multiple ways to negotiate obstacles. It's easy to end up trying some convoluted series transformations, only to suddenly realise there's a much simpler solution. Controlling some of the blob's forms can be a trifle fiddly but the actual puzzling is a joy.

Collecting all the treasure chests quickly becomes obsessive (particularly for children) and greatly adds to the longevity of the game. There's an excellent balance of exploration, problem-solving and platforming. The numerous checkpoints, infinite lives and endless jelly beans help avoid frustration but the clever puzzles ensure the game maintains a steadily increasing challenge. Besides, although there's no great penalty for dying, the hand-drawn animation ensures a little pang of guilt every time you carelessly guide the boy to his doom (especially whenever the blob is close at hand to mope).

With heart-warming graphics and intuitive but complex gameplay, A Boy and his Blob is fun, challenging and charming.

When it comes right down to it, I want my own blob, too...

Conclusion: Essential... as long as you have enough memory cards to go round.

Graphics: Touching and beautiful. Imagine what a game based on Laura's Star would look like.

Length: Medium (if you make sure to collect everything).

Rating: 5/5 if you don't have to share it with anyone (or you simply don't tell them about it).

Labels: computer game review, wii

 
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  Hasbro Family Game Night Vol. 2 (Wii)

Rated: 3+.

Gameplay: This is a collection of virtual versions of five well-known family games: Operation, Jenga, Bop It, Pictureka and Connect 4x4. Each game can be played in a manner approximating the real world format or in a 'remixed' interpretation with aspects only possible in a computer game.

• Operation - Extract unlikely items from a patient by quickly and carefully pointing and twisting the wiimote. The remixed version includes additional stages, such as scrubbing wounds.
• Jenga - Use flicks of the wiimote to pull blocks out of a tower without it falling down. Extra features include bomb blocks which must be removed quickly before they explode.
• Bop It - Press buttons and shake the wiimote as instructed without messing up.
• Pictureka - Hunt through a jumbled mass of doodles to look for specific pictures or a set number of a certain type of item. Remix makes things harder, giving only the silhouette or the sound of what you're looking for.
• Connect 4x4 - In Connect 4, two players take it in turns to drop discs of their own colour into a vertical grid, attempting to get four in a row in any direction. Connect 4x4 requires four players and uses three different kinds of counter: rings, discs and double-thickness blockers. The grid is two counters deep, with rings going down one side, discs the other and blockers both at once. This means that each position in the grid can have a ring of one colour and a disc of another, leading to all kinds of strategic complications.

Each game has options for varying the difficulty and winning conditions.

Solo players can play against the computer or take on the High Score Challenge in a selection of mini-games based on the five main games. With multiple players, a Family Game Show is available. In this, success in mini-games brings extra lives for a final challenge which decides the ultimate winner.

The whole package is presented by Mr or Mrs Potato Head. Doing well in specific challenges wins new accessories to dress them up.

Difficulty: Children under seven may struggle with the fine movement required to play everything other than Connect 4x4 and Bop It. Bop It will have even adults pulling out their hair in exasperation.

Save System: Progress and rewards are associated with Miis rather than actual save game slots. When a player wins a reward, it is automatically saved for use with the Mii they're playing with at the time.

Comments: At first glance, turning board games into computer games seems crazy. The main point of board games is to get families away from the TV and sitting round a table together. Also, much of the fun of board games is in being able to touch and feel. Counting the money in Monopoly might be a pain but the whole reason for playing is the prospect of being able to wave a huge wadge of notes at your opponents. Even with the waggling options presented by a wiimote, that kind of thing is hard to replicate.

On closer inspection, however, there are a few possible advantages to board game conversions:

• An entire shelf of entertainment can be squeezed onto one disc. (Which, believe me, is becoming more of an attraction all the time as the kids get older and my house is filled with Gogo's and LEGO.)
• The computer can make up the numbers when extra players are needed.
• Laborious set up is avoided. (Good news if you've ever attempted Jenga with a child and spent more time stacking than playing.)
• Cheating is much more difficult.
• The computer can keep track of the score.
• The game can be expanded in new ways.
• It's impossible to lose pieces down the back of the sofa.

The version of Connect 4x4 in Family Game Night 2 is a nearly perfect example of when such a conversion goes right. With the remix adding interesting power ups, it ticks every item on the list. As long as you go for a set number of points to win, rather than a time limit, the computerised edition surpasses the real game.

Pictureka, meanwhile, gains and loses in equal measure. The Wii can shuffle the doodles around in a way impossible with a 'proper' copy of the game and it can also fairly judge who found an item first. Control is somewhat fiddly and frustrating, though.

Things start to fall apart after that. Operation, Bop It and Jenga are very tactile games. Much of their appeal is lost in translation. Using the wiimote to approximate the normal lever-pulling actions in Bop It brings a level of abstraction that takes away any fun. It's simply hard work. Without physical feedback, Jenga becomes more luck than judgement. Operation, at least, has been sensibly stylised to make it more suited to life on the Wii but unfortunately this means it doesn't actually feel that much like Operation.

Happily, these problems are less of an issue in the bite-sized mini-games, meaning the Family Game Show is still playable. Nonetheless, most players seem to opt for Connect 4x4 whenever possible. Despite being the hardest of the five games to explain, it's easiest to pick up and play. It's also much less of a lottery than the others, particularly for newbies. (Jenga and Bop It are impossible without practice.)

All in all, the selection of games isn't what it should be. That said, there's still fun to be had. Children obsess over collecting parts for Mr Potato Head and the Game Show is organised so that everyone stays in with a chance until the end.

It's just a shame about Bop It...

Conclusion: A mixed bag but worth considering for Connect 4x4 alone.

Graphics: Perfectly adequate for the task in hand.

Length: Solo play isn't going to hold anyone's attention long but the multiplayer can keep kids entertained for days. Connect 4x4 is the only game with really lasting appeal, though.

Rating: 3/5.

Labels: computer game review, wii

 
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  Ultimate I Spy (Wii)

Rated: 3+.

Story: You've found a mysterious contraption. The only way to power it up is by solving riddles.

Gameplay: The game consists of a series of scenes, such as a science display in a classroom and a fish tank in a kid's bedroom. There are ten scenes and each one has four riddles to solve. Each riddle is essentially a selection of things to find by moving the camera angle around using the d-pad (or thumbstick) and then clicking on them. Some objects instigate a mini-game which needs to be completed to cross the entry off the list. These are mostly pretty basic affairs involving a bit of wiimote waggling.

Ten of the mini-games are slightly more involved and have a high score challenge separate from the main game.

Save System: It's possible to save progress and quit at any point. There's also an auto-save after the completion of each riddle.

Comments: You're probably not going to believe me but this game is brilliant.

I know it's called I Spy and sounds about as much fun as searching your lounge for a lost piece of LEGO. I know it's a budget game on the Wii. I know it gives the impression of being vaguely educational. I know all these things mean it should be rubbish. That doesn't matter. Ultimate I Spy is great.

What's hard to get across about the game is the fantastic design of the scenes. Items are so well hidden in plain sight that it's possible to still be discovering new objects even after half an hour of peering at a collection. Despite this, the scenes are beautifully arranged and never seem unfairly jumbled. Solving the riddles is a case of learning to shift focus between different levels of depth and detail and to question assumptions about everything from size to colour. Sometimes just working out what to find calls for lateral thinking. Each scene requires more concentration and brainwork than most games do in their entire length. It all goes to show just how lame and unimaginative the 'puzzles' are in things like Tomb Raider and Resident Evil.

Every session of Ultimate I Spy is a chance to discover and explore and slap yourself on the head for not spotting the 'obvious'. It'll give you a better mental workout than Brain Training. It seldom becomes frustrating, though, and it's always possible to progress with a little perseverance.

The game is ideally suited to the Wii since it's so easy to point at things using the wiimote. That said, it does feel like the developers' first experience of the hardware, thanks to the copious motion-sensing and rather excitable use of the wiimote speaker. For every inspired sound-effect and moment of enjoyable controller waggling, there are five pointless cranks to turn and twenty bizarre noises coming from your hand. This isn't a major problem but some of the mini-games can be quickly tiresome.

The real issue is the game's length. Play it in a determined fashion and you'll become used to the devious tricks employed by the designers, whistling through in around five hours. Theoretically, children will take much longer but they're liable to either ask for help or work together, so the time increase isn't as large as it might be. Nonetheless, the quality of what's on offer and the budget price ensure decent value for money. (There are also the high score challenges if they happen to take the kids' fancy.)

Overall, Ultimate I Spy is an excellent game. Your children may not be convinced initially but if you sit playing it in the lounge, anyone who passes by will be sucked in. Eventually, everyone in your entire household, no matter how young or old, will be staring at the screen, muttering to themselves as they look for 'four jacks, a hen, a bed; a fox on blocks and a marble that's red'.

Conclusion: Ties with House of the Dead: Overkill as the most fun I've had on Wii this year. Strange but true.

Graphics: Beautiful.

Length: Short.

Rating: 4/5.

Labels: computer game review, wii

 
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  Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Winter Games (Wii)

Rated: 3+.

Story: The eighth Harry Potter book - Harry Potter, Star Wars, McDonalds, LEGO, Rock Band and the Shameless Marketing Cash-in of Doom - fails to materialise due to various legal wranglings. Someone somewhere comes up with the next best thing...

Gameplay: Choose from one of twenty Nintendo and SEGA characters and then compete in twenty-five chilly Olympic events. These include skiing, snowboarding, ski jumping, curling, ice hockey, figure skating, the bobsleigh and speed skating. In most events, control is achieved by tilting the wiimote to change direction and flicking it to pull off jumps and tricks. Unlike the previous game based on the summer Olympics, frantic wiimote waggling is kept to a minimum, restricted to short activities like pushing off the bobsleigh and sweeping the ice in curling.

Events can be played individually or as an extended 'festival' of challenges to find the overall Olympic champion. There are also three party modes where success in events leads to an advantage in some other form of competition, such as trying to capture more squares on a board than your opponents. All these modes can be played solo or multiplayer.

When played individually in single-player, about half the events can be controlled using the Wii Balance Board.

Doing almost anything earns Star Tokens which can be spent on outfits and equipment. On top of that, dozens of emblems can be unlocked as rewards for achieving specific goals.

Save System: Achievements are automatically saved after every event. Quitting the multi-event festival on the event selection screen allows progress to be saved for the next session.

Comments: It's hard to get excited about another minigame collection for the Wii, even one where you can control a bobsleigh with your bottom. While the console's selection of first-person shooters and role-playing games is almost non-existent, there's already a 'wealth' of titles featuring a random assortment of wiimote-waggling tasks tied together in a perfunctory fashion. Unsurprisingly, most of them aren't that good, so I tend to approach a new one with more fear than anticipation...

Fortunately, Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Winter Games has a couple of things going for it, namely... Mario and Sonic. I can't imagine my boys (7 and 9) opting for a figure skating simulator under normal circumstances but with the addition of a portly plumber and a blue hedgehog, they were all over it. More than that, Mario has a reputation to maintain for only appearing in decent games and so MSOWG features a good sight more polish than the average minigame collection.

The main irritation with the game is the enormous numbers of menus, cut-scenes and loading screens which need to be navigated between each contest. Skipping through them as fast as possible can still take forever. It's particularly bad in the short events like ski jumping where it feels as if you're spending more time watching Wario do his victory dance than actually playing.

There's a reasonable variety to the games (given the source material) and the motion controls add to the fun rather than getting in the way. Much effort has also been made to increase the longevity of the experience. Winning gold in each event isn't that hard but there are plenty of modes and collectibles to reward those wanting more of a challenge.

That said, although there are officially twenty-five events, many of them are merely variations of the same thing, such as different distances of speed skating. Disappointingly, events like the bobsleigh and downhill skiing have only two courses - a real life one and an outlandish Nintendo or SEGA themed one with power-ups. If you're not fussed about breaking records or buying your Mii a Santa outfit, it's possible to try most of what the game has to offer in a few hours (much of which is reading instructions and watching victory dances).

It's initially a surprise that there's no use of Wii MotionPlus but it would appear that this is a very deliberate design choice rather than laziness. All the games can be played with only a wii remote, making them more accessible and greatly reducing the equipment required for 4-player matches. (The nunchuk can be used in a few events but it doesn't add much more than something for your other hand to hold.)

If you're looking for innovation and complexity, Mario & Sonic isn't for you. It's much more a game for kids to teach to their gran. It's got recognisable characters and objectives, plenty of content and simple controls, making it a safe bet for some family entertainment in front of the telly at Christmas. (If you can stop the children fighting over whose turn it is...)


NOTE: This isn't me. My kids only look this pleased when I mess up the ski jump and plant my face in a snowdrift at 100 miles an hour.

Conclusion: Who knew that a curling simulator could be such fun?

Graphics: Pretty good.

Length: Obsessive collectors and multiplayer fans will be kept busy for ages.

Rating: 4/5.

Labels: computer game review, wii

 
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  EA SPORTS Active (Wii)

Rated: 3+.

Contents:

• Game disc and manual.
• Leg strap to hold the Wii nunchuk to your thigh during some exercises.
• Resistance band. This is a long stretchy length of material with handles. You stand on the middle and then pull on the handles to work your arm muscles.

Story: Your kids are getting older so that you don't have to spend your entire time running round after them anymore. You're getting more sleep and you don't have to push a buggy everywhere you go. There is no more wrestling over nappies.

Nonetheless, you're still eating just as many chocolate biscuits as when you were chasing toddlers 24/7. Your trousers no longer fit. Something has to be done before you're forced to go and buy new clothes!

Gameplay: This isn't a game really - it's an interactive workout video. There are dozens of exercises arranged to form numerous half-hour routines aimed at increasing your fitness and building muscle-tone in different areas of your body.

The exercises include basic things like squats, running on the spot and bicep curls but there are also some sport and dance minigames. A few of these can be enhanced using the Wii Balance Board but it's by no means essential.

The Wii tracks your movements as you perform the exercises to make sure you're doing them right and a trainer offers constant feedback.

There's a '30-Day Challenge' involving a prescribed series of 20 workouts to be done over a month. There are also various one-off workouts and options to customise your own. Three levels of exertion can be selected.

Save System: Your achievements are automatically saved after each workout.



Comments: I think it's finally time to admit that I need to do a bit more exercise. I can no longer say with complete honesty that looking after the kids is enough in itself to keep me in shape. There just isn't as much physical activity as there used to be. My years of toddler hefting and buggy racing are gone. Any day now, I'm going to wake up fat and bald.

Active can't do much for my imminent hair loss but it has got me burning calories regularly. Switching on the Wii is much less time-consuming than a trek to the gym and has the added bonus that I don't have to leave the house in the rain. It's simply much more likely to happen.

While Wii Fit is about balance and well-being, Active is about heart-pumping sweatiness. All pretence of being a game is dropped in favour of increasing the amount of exercise involved. As such, it's not gripping entertainment but the real-time estimate of calories burned and the constant changes of activity are enough to maintain attention. After a while, it's a case of focusing on keeping breathing anyway. The very enthusiastic woman offering constant praise and encouragement is embarrassing if anyone else can hear but it's actually rather pleasant and motivating getting such positive feedback. You'll want to turn the music off and switch on your own MP3 player before long, though.

Each exercise routine takes around half an hour once you've got the hang of things but the first few take much longer thanks to the need to watch the instruction videos for each activity. It also takes time to get to grips with the equipment. The strap works best with leggings and has a tendency to slip down unless done up very tight. The giant elastic band is a little limp and needs to be folded over for some exercises. Swapping between activities while changing accessories and juggling the wiimote and nunchuk requires practice to do efficiently. Fortunately, the Wii waits until you're ready and then monitors your movements, so the routines stick to your pace. I'm looking into getting a wireless nunchuk, however, because the wire can be restrictive in a few of the activities and I keep whipping myself in others.

The main issue with Active (apart from getting sweaty) is that you'll need somewhere suitable to play it. Some of the exercises require plenty of space and/or a ceiling high enough to reach straight up without destroying a light fitting. Worse, such things as running on the spot and side-to-side jumping make the floor shake. Exercises can be easily removed from the supplied routines but, even then, if you live in a flat, you're going to have to make sure the downstairs neighbours are out.

The use of the Wii Balance Board is fairly cursory. That said, it's still nice to get a little more service out of the thing.

All in all, Active is surprisingly good. As with any exercise regime, it requires perseverance to get results but it's a great way to work your whole body without having to go outside in the cold and rain and without filling your house with expensive equipment.

Conclusion: Brings the gym to your living room (minus the monthly fees and scary blokes called Sven).

Graphics: It's all pleasantly bright and sunny.

Length: Depends on your willpower.

Rating: 5/5.

Labels: computer game review, wii

 
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  Madden NFL 10 (Wii)

Rated: 3+.

Story: Two lines of men wearing helmets and Dynasty-size shoulder pads charge at each other, a ball flies through the air, some of the men fall over and then everyone has a little rest.

Repeat.

Gameplay: Pick a play, put the ball in motion and then flail the wiimote around, hoping it does something.

Save System: Automatic save after each game.

Comments: I'm probably quite unusual in that I'm from the UK and yet I've played some form of American football. It's like finding an American who's played cricket - it doesn't happen much. Admittedly, it's only a low-violence 'touch' variant I've tried but I had to play it a lot when I was an exchange student in Illinois. I was unexpectedly good at it, too. My normal habit in team games of running away from the ball and keeping clear of trouble at the far end of the pitch turned out to be a winning tactic. The play would start, I'd leg it to safety, everyone else would charge at each other in an apparent desire to form a large heap in the middle of the gym, the ball would sail over the top of them and I'd clumsily catch it. Touchdown! I never entirely followed what was going on but, to this day, I still find American football strangely soothing to watch if I'm up late at night feeling unwell.

Basically, I have more clue about American football than many Brits. Even so, it's a while since I've been so befuddled by a game as with Madden NFL 10. Over the years, I've got bored by inaccessible games featuring micromanagement of the ecosystem in a small puddle, I've been laughed at by music games that have shown up my rhythm deficiencies, I've had my fingers tied in knots by action games with overly-gnarly bosses and I've risked RSI from any number of incompetently implemented Wii party games. I've very rarely, however, experienced a game where I've simply stared at the screen in bafflement and had no clue what was going on or what I was supposed to be doing. Honestly, I spent half my first game attempting to control the wrong team. The really weird thing was that my actual team's performance got worse after I realised my mistake...

There are plenty of options and modes in Madden NFL 10 but there's no proper tutorial. Since American football takes place in a series of short bursts where everything moves at once, it's hard to experiment with the controls and grasp what's happening. If you don't have a good idea what the real game involves, you'll be totally lost.

Beyond that, I can't make much comment. If you're an NFL fan, there's a lot here, including licensed teams, advanced controls and a host of multiplayer variants. If you're just wondering what American football is all about, though, you might be better off hunting out a previous version on the cheap or just staying up late and watching Channel 5.

Conclusion: A polished game of American football. (If that's what you want...)

Graphics: Not hugely detailed but very fast.

Length: More than enough American football to keep you going for ages.

Rating: x/5 where x is how much you like (and understand) American football on a scale of 1 to 5.

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  G.I. Joe (Wii)

Rated: 16+. This is somewhat ludicrous, however. It's a game involving lots of shooting but there's no blood, and defeated enemies discretely fade away. If the faceless, body-armoured adversaries were given a silver coat of paint and called robots, the game would most likely be a 7+. It's about as realistic as two eight-year-olds playing war with their action figures.

Story: Some secret military squad of good guys is after an equally secret organisation of bad guys. The bad guys have an army of goons; the good guys have a selection of big guns.

Put them together and...

Gameplay: G.I. Joe essentially involves running round shooting things (from a third-person point of view). Two players can work together cooperatively or one player can take on the horde with the help of a computer-controlled assistant.

Each character has their own standard weapon and can unleash special attacks every so often. More rarely, it's possible to power up for a brief burst of invincibility. Characters can hide behind cover and there are occasional vehicle sections.

Save System: Automatic save at the end of a level.

Comments: Even by the standards of movie tie-ins this is dreadful. The cover system is fiddly and ineffective, the vehicles are a pain to control and the levels are forgettable and linear. Those are only the minor issues, though.

On the easiest difficulty, it's essentially impossible to die - take too much damage and you disappear for a few seconds and lose some points. This works in the LEGO games because the puzzling and exploring is as important as the fighting. In G.I. Joe it simply means that pressing up on the control stick and holding down fire is enough to progress through most situations. Watching the screen is frequently unnecessary. If anything, the longer I spent with my eyes shut during a level, the better my score got...

On the next difficulty setting up, if your character dies, the other player has to progress on their own to the next checkpoint. In a single-player game, you switch control to the character formerly controlled by the computer. If the surviving character reaches the checkpoint, the other character is reinstated. If they don't make it, it's right back to the start of the level. Even if they die while fighting the end-of-level boss.

This is obviously hugely frustrating. There's nothing for it but a tedious trudge back along the same route using pretty much the same tactics. The game isn't hard but even one such defeat is liable to test your will to continue, particularly as it probably won't be your fault. The automatic targeting system almost invariably selects the explosive barrel you're standing next to rather than the enormous gun emplacement a bit further away which is filling you full of bullets. This is not good. It's possible to switch targets manually but the system often switches back if you move around or chuck a grenade. In the heat of battle, this sometimes isn't clear until you're dead. Grrr...

Then there's the awkward fixed camera angles to mention and the hopelessly uninteresting story and characters. Oh, and almost no use is made of the Wii's special controls as well. Shaking the wiimote launches a hand-to-hand attack and shaking the nunchuk causes a roll. That's it. Nonetheless, in a final touch of disaster, this is enough to mean the game doesn't even work with jOG - try running on the spot and your character somersaults around like a loony.

Sigh.

About the only thing G.I. Joe has going for it is that there aren't many similar games on the Wii. Anyone swayed by that argument, though, should head down to their local second-hand store and pick up an original Xbox and a couple of better games for a similar amount of money...

Conclusion: I suspect few people have sufficient fondness for the subject matter to bother slogging through this.

Graphics: Bland.

Length: Longer than your patience.

Rating: 1/5.

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  Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (Wii)

Rated: 12+. Given that the film is a 12A and much scarier and more violent, this is somewhat bewildering. Certainly, any child who can read the book is pretty unlikely to suffer mental trauma from playing the game (due to the content anyway - the repetitive gameplay is perhaps a different matter).

Story: Teenage wizard attempts to keep up with his school work as the world crumbles in the face of the return of He Who Must Not Be Named.

Events whizz along at dizzying speed, though, re-told through a scattering of computer animated recreations of scenes from the film. If you haven't got a fairly firm grasp of the plot beforehand, you won't have the foggiest notion of who anyone is or what on Earth is going on.

Gameplay: Most of the gameplay revolves around three mini-games:

• Potion making. Choose and pour ingredients with the wiimote in order to finish the recipe within the time limit.
• Broom riding. Point the wiimote at a trail of stars on the screen to travel in the correct direction.
• Duelling. Wave the wiimote and nunchuk in different directions to fire spells while dodging incoming attacks.

Beyond that, there's not much besides wandering the halls of Hogwarts to locate hidden crests using a mix of exploration and spell-casting.

Save System: Frequent autosaves.

Comments: Most movie tie-in games aren't very good but have the excuse that they were rushed to meet the release date of the film. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince is different. It's not very good but there really isn't any excuse. The book has been out for years and Electronic Arts have five previous Harry Potter games behind them, meaning they've had a while to plan and haven't exactly been starting from scratch. The movie was even held over for several months, allowing plenty of opportunity for polish.

Clearly, however, there's been no long-term vision devoted to the series because Half-Blood Prince is little more than three mini-games coupled with a virtual tour of Hogwarts. Mix a potion, run down some corridors, play Quidditch, fight a couple of duels, run down some corridors, fight another duel, mix a potion, run down some more corridors. Repeat.

The potion making at least uses the motion-sensing controller well, as you pick up, shake and pour ingredients and then fan the flames under the cauldron, but the hardest part is trying to match the stylised pictures and colours in the recipe with the actual versions around the cauldron. It all wears rather thin very quickly.

The broom riding is initially exhilarating until you realise how little control is possible over events. It's merely a case of pointing the wiimote at the centre of glowing stars as they rocket towards you. There is, however, a modicum of extra fun (and difficulty) to be had by holding the thing like an actual broomstick. (Although you may want to close the curtains before putting the wiimote between your legs and waggling it.) Since nearly all the flying takes place in and around the Quidditch pitch, it gets repetitive even more quickly than the potions.

Duelling is more interesting but the controls aren't particularly accurate. In the heat of battle, movements can be entirely misinterpreted, leading to shields instead of fireballs. In the end, it tends to boil down to dodging about until the enemy is open to a stun and then running in to spam them with a succession of Stupefy spells.

There's not much else to the game. Hogwarts is open to explore but the story is nearly always advanced by making a potion, playing Quidditch or duelling. It's like they made a Harry Potter version of Zelda or Grand Theft Auto and forgot to include the missions. Thus, what would pass for a handful of side-quests in other games becomes the main event.

Collecting the crests hidden around the school involves a little bit of puzzling and spell-casting. Finding them all is more hard work than fun, though. There's plenty of traipsing along endless corridors required to complete the story as it is. Shaking the wiimote at everything which glows to harvest mini-crests to trade for proper crests becomes tiresome after five minutes. On the plus side, it's impossible to get lost, thanks to the ability to summon a friendly ghost to lead you to whatever destination is required. This cuts down on plenty of frustration.

Ultimately, Half-Blood Prince is sadly lacking and doesn't even have the charm of Night at the Museum 2. It's fairly harmless, however, and works well with jOG, making a rental worth consideration if you're a Harry Potter fan who fancies some mindless exercise (but the combination of frantic arm-waving and running on the spot this brings to duelling makes closing the curtains absolutely essential...)

Conclusion: A very small collection of mini-games connected by a very large number of corridors and a selection of dubious cutscenes.

Graphics: Hogwarts looks nice but its inhabitants don't. Dodgy animation, non-existent facial expressions and poor voice acting combine to unfortunate effect.

Length: Short. The main adventure can be fairly easily completed in 5 hours, even with a bit of sight-seeing along the way. Collecting the bulk of the remaining crests and badges probably adds two or three fairly laborious hours to that.

Rating: 2/5.

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  Tiger Woods PGA Tour 10 (Wii)

Rated: 3+.

Gameplay: Golf. Absolutely loads and loads of golf. Honestly, imagine any type of competition or mini-game you can think of involving hitting a small white ball with a club - if it doesn't involve killer whales, it's here.

The game is played by selecting the club you want to use, the type of shot you want to hit and taking aim with the d-pad. After that, it's a case of swinging the wiimote like an actual golf club. Speed and accuracy affect where the ball ends up and it's possible to curve the trajectory by altering your grip on the wiimote. When putting, a grid of moving arrows shows the undulation of the greens to help you aim your shot.

Various different options are available to alter the complexity and difficulty. On the easiest settings, the controls are simplified and the game shows you where your ball is going to go. On the hardest settings, shot and club selection become an arcane science and a mis-hit leads to disaster.

The game is compatible with the Wii MotionPlus add-on which tracks position of the wiimote as well as direction and speed. In theory, this should add extra realism.

The single-player career mode involves a full calendar of PGA events. Multiplayer options include normal golf for 2-4 players and a party mode of golf mini-games. There's also online multiplayer. On top of that, there's crazy golf, 2-player Capture the Flag, target practice and even Frisbee golf.

Save System: Stupid. Some of the modes don't allow the game to be saved at all, so if the phone goes halfway through your eighteen holes, then you're stuck. Others can be saved at any point but it's impossible to have more than one round in progress at a time. If you've saved the game in the middle of a one-player career round, there doesn't seem to be any way of starting a multiplayer game without finishing off the one-player game or wiping it. There doesn't even seem to be a way for two different people to have separate one-player rounds on the go.

This is madness.

As far as I can see, the only method of overcoming this problem is for each member of the household to have their own SD memory card to store their saved game on and to copy it to and from the Wii at the beginning and end of their play session. This isn't convenient and it has huge potential for catastrophe. Not exactly ideal.

Comments: Tiger Woods PGA Tour 10 is one of the first games designed to work with the Wii MotionPlus unit but I still don't have one. Happily, however, unlike Grand Slam Tennis, it's still a great game without it. The control options allow everything from fun pitch-and-putt for casual players to a marathon career challenge for hardened golfers.

With so many previous games in the series, there's a vast accumulation of modes and features, making it huge value for newcomers. The only downside is that the controls don't always feel as accurate as they should be - it's very easy to massively over-hit putts on harder settings and the Frisbee mode is prone to all kinds of spasms. It's as if the series has gone as far as it can without a more accurate wiimote...

Oh, hang on...

Conclusion: If the idea of playing golf in your living room excites you at all, then go out and buy this. The only thing likely to be better than Tiger Woods PGA Tour 10 is Tiger Woods PGA Tour 10 with the addition of MotionPlus.

Graphics: Less than you might hope for from the Wii but better than you've probably grown to expect. The courses are perfectly presentable and the create-a-golfer options are staggeringly comprehensive.

Length: Will last you until well after Tiger Woods 2011 comes out.

Rating: 4/5 without Wii MotionPlus (although the save system will drive you to distraction if you plan to share the game with anyone else).

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  Grand Slam Tennis (Wii)

Rated: 3+.

Story: You're an up-and-coming tennis player attempting to win the four Grand Slam tournaments.

Gameplay: Create your own player (complete with daft haircut and designer gear) then go play tennis by swinging the wiimote. Timing dictates which direction the ball goes. A combination of button presses and angle of swing determines the type of shot played. Using the d-pad sends you towards the net or baseline. The Wii moves you automatically towards the ball unless you attach the nunchuk to do it yourself.

The Wii MotionPlus unit can be used to give more accurate control.

Save System: Regular auto-save. (Not that you're likely to achieve anything much worth saving.)

Comments: The main feature of Grand Slam Tennis is that it's the first game to utilise the new Wii MotionPlus accessory. This clips into the nunchuk port of the wiimote and allows the Wii to reproduce proper 1:1 movement. A normal wiimote detects how fast it's being moved and in which direction but Wii MotionPlus introduces position detection. With WMP, the Wii can tell where the controller is, not just what you're doing with it. This should make the hand movements of your character on screen follow your own perfectly. Thus, in a tennis game, shot selection merely becomes a question of holding the wiimote in the correct position.

Except I don't actually have a WMP unit, which makes this review somewhat tricky. Then again, if you're thinking of renting the game, you probably don't have one either. Also, even if you do buy the game with a bundled Wii MotionPlus, you're unlikely to have extra units for multiplayer. It's still worth knowing how the game plays without WMP.

The short answer is that it's really hard.

Frustratingly, punishingly, exasperatingly hard.

Even on the 'easy' difficulty setting.

In my first hour of playing, I won two games. (That's games, note, not matches.) On easy. Nonetheless, this left me sweating and with a worrying pain in my elbow. I gave up trying to play the game in any fashion approximating real tennis. I sat down, rested my arm on a pillow and flicked the wiimote with my wrist. This didn't make much difference to my success rate but I felt it reduced the likelihood I'd need surgery afterwards.

There's more depth to the tennis than in Wii Sports but the difficulty is off-putting. It's easy to hit the ball but computer opponents return any kind of standard shot without fail and so rallies go on forever unless you take big risks. This normally ends in ignominious defeat rather than success.

The only break from the tennis is to play more tennis, either against legendary players or with 'amusing' altered rules. There are no mini-games to practice skills. This is bizarre, since even Wii Sports has some and in many ways they're the best bit. Despite all the licensed players and tournaments, without WMP, Grand Slam Tennis doesn't really offer much more than the game you got bundled with your Wii. It's also more annoying.

Conclusion: Rather than renting this, you'd be as well to dust off Wii Sports, unless you really, really have to play against Andy Murray at Roland Garros instead of your mum's Mii in Nintendoland.

Graphics: The stylised, cartoony graphics are pleasant and do the job well. Creating your own ugly no-hoper with poor fashion sense is always fun.

Length: Until your elbow starts to feel sore.

Rating: 2/5.

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  BOOM BLOX Bash Party (Wii)

Rated: 3+ in terms of content. Children under seven seem to struggle with the controls, though.

Story: There isn't really even an attempt at a story this time round. The levels have circus, space, pirate and hero themes and are populated by wacky animal blocks but nothing ties them together.

Gameplay: BOOM BLOX Bash Party is probably best described as a puzzle game. The majority of levels consist of arrangements of blocks that have to be demolished in a certain way. For instance, it might be a case of removing all the point blocks from a tower without knocking off the penalty blocks or of destroying a castle to make the gem blocks inside hit the ground. The means provided for achieving goals varies from level to level. Balls and bombs can be thrown, chemical blocks explode when combined and a floating hand allows blocks to be grabbed and pulled.

Throwing is done by aiming with the wiimote, locking the cursor by holding a button and then flicking the wiimote to launch. Grabbing is accomplished by locking onto blocks and moving the wiimote as if pulling the block about. Some levels involve light-gun style shooting, others allow blocks to be fired like sling-shots by pulling back on the wiimote.

Save System: Automatic save after every level.

Comments: I just re-read my review of BOOM BLOX from last year. I was sorely tempted to change the title, add in a few phrases containing the words 'more' and/or 'extra', re-post it and then slope off for a cup of tea and a few chocolate digestives.

Of course, that would have been bad and wrong but it's hard to avoid the fact that BOOM BLOX Bash Party is very similar to BOOM BLOX. (I decided just to cut-and-paste a few bits here and there...)

BBBP provides a virtual recreation of the joys of knocking down teetering stacks of bricks by throwing stuff at them. It's great fun lobbing a baseball at just the right angle to knock two chemical blocks into each other so they explode and set off a chain reaction of demolition. The large number of different bricks and objectives keeps the experience fresh throughout, with everything from crazy golf to zero-G levels. Fortunately, the concepts remain simple even when the levels are complex, so anyone can pick up and play. Also, the developers have a much better idea what works this time around, so there are far fewer of the fiddly Jenga inspired 'grab' levels.

The structure of the game has been opened up so that it's usually fairly easy to complete a level well enough to unlock the next one. It's also possible to progress by simply paying Boom Bux collected during the game. This takes away lots of frustration but attempting to get a gold medal on every level still maintains plenty of challenge.

Creating your own levels has been made easier and it's now possible to submit levels for them to be made available to everyone online (not merely people whose friend code you have). This means there are hundreds and hundreds of levels already available to download, play and rate. The process is surprisingly quick and easy - I was trying out something decent within seconds. If anything, BOOM BLOX Bash Party is a better advert for user-generated content on consoles than Little Big Planet, despite all Sony's hype.

The only real issue with BBBP is the cheap, soulless presentation of the single-player game. The animal blocks range from ugly to evil and have less charm than even the most minor character in any of the LEGO games. Quite how this happened with Steven Spielberg involved is a mystery. I can only imagine it's too increase the satisfaction of blowing them up and then dropping a big tower of blocks on their heads... This isn't a problem in the multiplayer, though, and that's where the real longevity lies. My boys have been busy for a while with the co-operative levels and the competitive levels can get extremely vicious. For three or four players, there's very little to beat it.

Conclusion: One of the best puzzle/party games on the Wii returns with more levels and extra features which make it a definite step up from the original.

Graphics: Basic but vibrant. The occasional judder that featured in the first game seems to have been eliminated.

Length: Medium.

Rating: 4/5.

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  Night at the Museum 2 (Wii)

Rated: U.

Story: In the original Night at the Museum, Larry Daley (Ben Stiller) takes a job as a night guard at the New York Natural History Museum, only to discover that the exhibits come to life after dark thanks to the power of a magical Egyptian tablet.

In this one, the exhibits get shipped off to the Smithsonian and some nefarious wax-works, including Napoleon and Al Capone, take the opportunity to seize the tablet and attempt to unleash a mystical army to conquer the world. The tablet becomes broken into pieces and Larry must reunite it to reverse the spell and save the day.

Gameplay: This is a third-person adventure. You must guide Larry round various museums, hunting for the pieces of the tablet. You can run, jump and climb and occasionally use vehicles. The magic of the tablet gives Larry's keychain whip-like abilities for swinging across gaps and long-distance grabbing. Each piece of the tablet gives Larry's flashlight a new power. These powers include fixing things, making machines work, bringing paintings to life and controlling animals. Utilising these powers allows progress through the museums. For instance, a picture of a door can be turned into an actual door, while a rhino can be used to charge down a gateway. Hostile wax-works have to be avoided or somehow defeated using the flashlight.

There are also plenty of hidden items to collect and a few side quests to complete.

Save System: Progress is automatically saved at checkpoints.

Comments: Working on a videogame tie-in to a movie aimed primarily at children must be something of a thankless task. Pity the poor developer who goes to a party, gets asked what they've been working on and has to admit it's Night at the Museum... 2... on Wii. Anyone who has a clue is going to assume it's a low-budget rush job with gimmicky motion controls tacked on. Everyone else is going to ask what it was like meeting Ben Stiller.

Imagine having to admit that even the guy modelling Ben Stiller's face didn't meet Ben Stiller:



Such situations must be particularly frustrating in cases where the developers have managed to produce the foundations of a decent game but not had the proper time and resources to realise that potential. Sadly, their only consolation is that the final quality is unlikely to make much difference to sales figures anyway - grans and eight-years-olds don't read internet reviews...

Yep, Night at the Museum 2 has some good ideas and the initial level raises hopes of a Zelda-style adventure where you gradually unlock new powers and use them to solve complex puzzles while exploring large, open environments. Unfortunately, it quickly transpires that the largest level is only about five rooms big and nearly all the puzzles involve running a few feet to a big glowing spot on the floor, switching on your flashlight and invoking the correct power. In case you're easily confused, your satchel glows to let you know you can use a power and a handy voice-over from one of the characters tells you which one would be best. Just to make doubly sure, you have a flashlight power which can be used specifically to find out which other flashlight powers you can use in a particular spot. Oh, and if that isn't enough, you have a map which tells you exactly where to go and what to do. (Sadly, there are no hints to help you if you've misplaced your wiimote, can't remember where you live or have forgotten your own name...)

There are some platforming sections where life gets a bit more tricky but that's mainly because of poor design and unresponsive controls. The vehicle sections are noticeably less polished than the rest of the game but are thankfully very brief.

The game isn't a total disaster, however. Nothing is dreadfully broken and it's strangely satisfying being told you've finished 'a quest' every few seconds, making the whole experience reasonably amiable. Use of motion-sensing is limited to a bit of flicking and pointing, which actually works quite well. The writing and cutscenes give the game a certain charm and help maintain attention. (This is presumably because they've been copied closely from the movie, so they won't be as entertaining if you've seen it already. On the other, if you haven't seen the film, the game is going to spoil a lot of it for you.)

Night at the Museum 2 is suitable for children but the puzzling is easier than LEGO: Star Wars, while the platforming can be much more fiddly. A bigger issue is the game's length. The back of the box claims there are 14 levels but that's rather a stretch and counts every loading screen as the start of a new area. There are really only 9 levels, and a couple of those aren't much more than five minutes long. In fact, it's possible to complete the game 100% without breaking a sweat in under four and a half hours. That includes searching every obvious nook and cranny for collectibles on the first run through and then doing at least a third of the game a second time in order to hoover up a few remaining bits and bobs.

All in all, Night at the Museum doesn't do anything particularly successfully and has very little longevity. It's unlikely to keep the kids busy for more than a long afternoon. Nonetheless, it's likable enough and works well with jOG, so it's maybe worth a rental if you aren't planning on seeing the film any time soon and want some mindless distraction while doing a bit of light exercise.

Conclusion: At least it doesn't have gimmicky motion controls tacked on...

Graphics: Would be slightly underwhelming on the PS2.

Length: Very short.

Rating: 2/5.

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  Disaster: Day of Crisis (Wii)

Rated: 16+ (which, to be honest, is extremely harsh for some gore-free shooting and a bit of mild swearing).

Story: You are Raymond Bryce, the only guy on the planet with worse luck than Jack Bauer. While working for a crisis management team in a West Coast US city, Ray discovers that the sister of an old friend has been kidnapped and he sets out to rescue her. His day starts with terrorists, then moves on to earthquakes, floods, hurricanes, tsunamis, a grizzly bear and the threat of nuclear detonation. About the only thing not after him is a plague of locusts.

Gameplay: This is an odd one. It's a third-person adventure game where you wander round relatively confined areas searching for survivors to rescue and trying to find the way forward. You can jump and pull yourself up onto ledges but it's hardly Tomb Raider. Supplies, such as ammo and first aid kits, are hidden in crates you have to smash.

You don't get to shoot while exploring, though. When the bad guys show up, the action switches to a first-person lightgun style affair, where you point and fire with the wiimote. You can duck into cover but the game controls when you move forward. Good marksmanship earns points which can be used to buy new guns, upgrade existing ones and access shooting ranges.

There are also driving sections where you tilt the wiimote to steer as you avoid all manner of obstacles while attempting to outrun whichever cataclysmic disaster Ray is currently fleeing from.

As if this wasn't enough variety, there are also a number of wiimote-waggling minigames that come into play when aiding survivors. These include putting out fires, bandaging wounds and performing CPR. Successful rescues earn points that can be spent between stages to enhance Ray's abilities.

Completed stages can be replayed to gain more points, rescue any missed survivors and attempt a bonus challenge where hidden placards have to be collected.

Save System: The game can be saved properly after each stage but quitting to the main menu allows the last checkpoint reached to be saved as well. This is useful because some stages are half an hour long but it could be a problem if multiple people are working through the game at the same time - there only seems to be one mid-level save slot.

Comments: Imagine a straight-to-DVD action movie with added volcanoes and tidal waves and you'll have a pretty good idea of the plot of Disaster: Day of Crisis. The first sections are peppered with melodramatic cutscenes full of clunky dialogue that are particularly tedious if you've watched the video montage before the title screen, since this gives away most of the plot. Before long, however, everything becomes so cheesy and implausible, it's hilarious.

As far as the actual game is concerned, almost every aspect, from the graphics to the design, seems ripped from stuff that came out nearly ten years ago. It's SOS, Time Crisis and Stuntman all jumbled together with a distinct lack of polish. If it was on PS3 or 360 it would be laughable.

And yet, somehow, it works.

The developers clearly used the time they could have spent improving the script thinking up genuinely interesting stuff to do with the unique features of the Wii instead. Locating and saving the survivors is great fun, with the waggling actually adding to the experience for a change. Radio messages come in over the wiimote speaker, the shooting is entertaining and having to shake the controllers frantically to escape a tsunami adds to the immersion. The only issue is with the driving sections - the tilt control is good but the checkpoints are too far apart, leading to some frustration.

None of the gameplay elements on their own is done well enough to compete with other games but the mix produces something charming and original. Compared with so many other Wii games, Disaster is a delight.

Conclusion: Ugly, daft and archaic but still the best fun I've had on Wii in ages. Definitely worth a rental if you like adventure games and 24. (Works even better with jOG.)

Graphics: Reminiscent of an early PS2 game, complete with jagged edges, dodgy camera and dreadful textures. The moments when Ray has to munch on hamburgers the size of his own head are a particular highlight. It's a game you definitely have to love for its personality.

Length: Medium, provided you take the time to rescue all the hostages and investigate some of the extras.

Rating: 4/5.

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  jOG (Wii)

Cost: The RRP is £20 but it seems to be selling for £25 most places.

Contents:

• A pedometer with an attached wire to plug into a wii remote and a socket in which to insert a wire from a wii nunchuk.

How it works: The pedometer clips to your belt while playing normal Wii games and counts the number of steps you take. Stop jogging and the Wii no longer receives signals from the thumbstick on the nunchuk. In many games this means your character stops moving and suffers a horrible death. You have to jog or die...

Or you can just tap the button on top and play in peace as the pedometer ceases doing anything at all.



Object: To get some light exercise without leaving the house or becoming bored.

Game length: Until you decide you could really do with a sit down.

Comments: Put simply, jOG is a device that forces you to jog on the spot while playing Wii games and, to be honest, that sounds a little daft. After all, if you really wanted to run on the spot in front of the telly, you could just do it while watching CSI and save yourself twenty quid.

Except, of course, there's little chance of you doing that in reality. You're going to lie down on the sofa after five minutes with a beer and a packet of crisps. By affecting the game, jOG forces you to keep going. Yeah, you could switch it off but that feels more like cheating than sitting down for 'a little rest' and, besides, building up a step count high score is quite compulsive.

That said, there are certain games where jOG is rather pointless. Quiz games, racing games, Guitar Hero and anything else which doesn't use the thumbstick aren't going to bring much exercise. Also, it's pretty tricky aiming accurately with the wiimote while jogging. The manual suggests playing as if jogging while holding a tea tray in an effort to keep your hands steady. Personally, I like to think of it more as the world's first Riverdance simulator.

I've mainly tried jOG with Disaster: Day of Crisis which works very well. The sections involving running about are regularly interspersed with cutscenes and lightgun style sections. This means regular breaks from jogging. More than that, having to actually run while pegging it from a virtual volcano does add to the feeling of immersion. The only problem occurs with one minigame which involves aiming the wiimote at a particular point on screen for several seconds while twirling the thumbstick. Achieving this while jogging is beyond me. Perhaps Michael Flatley could manage it but I keep having to flick jOG off for a few moments.

LEGO Batman, where use of the thumbstick is almost constant, is much more of an effort. Two levels of that and I totally need to lie down on the sofa with a beer and a packet of crisps in front of CSI...

Oddly, jOG probably works best with games which are the complete opposite of the short challenges of Wii Fit. A half hour burst of a long adventure where you get to run around exploring is likely to provide a decent workout. Games such as Okami, Bully, Zelda and Resident Evil 4 are the way to go. Unlike the Wii Fit balance board, jOG gives you the chance to exercise while playing proper games and so will potentially keep you interested for longer.

The pedometer itself is reasonable quality and has a battery to retain your 'score' while not in use. It doesn't count or show a display without an operational wiimote attached, though, so it's no use while not playing a game. (There's a PS2 version with what appears to be a wireless pedometer which is much more self-contained.)

jOG almost certainly isn't the answer to childhood obesity. I suggested my boys try it out and they started taking a sudden interest in quiz games, racing games and Guitar Hero. Likewise, it clearly isn't going to get you fit without a healthy dose of will power and a stack of great games. Nonetheless, it could help. I keep finding myself looking forward to using it. Suddenly games are fun and virtuous.

The only real issue with jOG is the price. Not so very long ago, Kellogg were giving away pedometers with the purchase of a couple of boxes of Bran Flakes. This being the case, £25 for a pedometer with an extra bit of wire and an electronic cut-off switch seems a bit steep. Still, it's a lot cheaper than a gym subscription and you can use it without leaving the house.



Conclusion: Jogging on the spot has never been so enjoyable.

Pros:

• Makes exercise fun.
• Can make games more fun too.
• Works with plenty of titles.
• Clips easily, has a good length of wire and the off button is in an accessible location.

Cons:

• Expensive.
• If you have downstairs neighbours they may not be thrilled.

Rating: 4/5.

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  Trivial Pursuit (Wii)

Rated: 3+ but play requires strong reading skills and a good deal of general knowledge - under-12s don't have much hope.

Gameplay: There are three modes:

• Classic multiplayer: This is essentially a computerised version of the standard Trivial Pursuit board game. Travel round the board answering questions in categories such as History or Entertainment. Get a question right and you get to take another go. Each of the six categories has a special square which earns you a coloured wedge for your playing piece. Victory is achieved by collecting one of each type of wedge, returning to the start and answering a final question. Unlike the board game, the questions are multiple choice, can involve maps and pictures, and have a time limit.
• Facts and Friends multiplayer: This is Triv made fast and more competitive. There's only one wedge of each colour and players win them by earning enough points in a particular category. Points are awarded for answering questions correctly and for guessing whether other players will get answers right or wrong. Once a category has been won, the corresponding spaces disappear and the board shrinks. Once all the categories have been won, wedges are converted to lives and the overall winner is decided by quick-fire questions everyone has to answer at once. Special squares add further complications, bringing such things as double points and allowing wedges to be stolen.
• Single player: This is the Classic game with an added point system so you can play on your own for a high score. There are also achievements to be collected for doing well in different ways.

Save System: Automatic saves at regular intervals and the option to save and quit between questions.

Comments: As a board game, Trivial Pursuit shouldn't really work. It's long, frustrating and frequently involves sitting around for ages with nothing to do while someone else has a lucky streak. There's little interaction between opposing players. Kids and OAPs are usually at a disadvantage. It's not so much a pastime as a chance for those who know too much to show off.

And yet... I have many fond memories of playing Triv.

At family gatherings, it's the one game an entire room full of people can participate in and feel they are contributing. The range of questions means a team consisting of a granny, an uncle and an obscure cousin of indeterminate age have a good chance of wiping the floor with a gaggle teenagers who think they know everything because, let's face it, they really don't know who starred in Brief Encounter nor where the 1976 Olympics were held. The whole point of the game is to listen to them earnestly debate the possibilities for five minutes and then guess Munich anyway.

This computerised version of Trivial Pursuit misses the point. By introducing time limits in an attempt to speed the game up, it takes away much of the opportunity for team play. There's simply not long enough to go through to the kitchen and ask your mother-in-law what song Cliff sang to win the Eurovision Song Contest.

Another advantage of the board game is that most people in a team don't need to be anywhere near the board. Thanks to the picture and map questions in the computer version, however, everyone has to be sitting where they can see the telly. Not only that but the small text size makes it necessary to be closer to the screen than normal to avoid eye strain.

Disappointingly, there are no sound or video clips or anything much beyond a few pictures to expand the concept beyond the restrictions of the board game. If you want a classic game of Trivial Pursuit you'd be as well buying a normal set.

That said, the Facts and Friends mode does make the game faster and more fun in ways that would be difficult without a computer. Everyone takes turns in quick succession and there's never a lengthy, frustrating hunt for that final wedge. Team play is impossible, though, and the extremely tight time limits in the endgame mean only fluent readers have a chance.

The single player game is reasonably fun for half an hour but its long-term appeal is limited to those who really like high scores.

On top of all this, there are a number of minor niggles. For instance, it's very easy to press the wrong button when sliding a slider and so mess up an answer with no chance of taking it back. Conversely, it takes several button presses to actually roll again when landing on a roll again space. This is infuriating. Thankfully, at least the annoying voice-over guy can be switched off.

Conclusion: A basic and somewhat broken version of Trivial Pursuit. It seems designed for flatmates rather than families.

Graphics: They do the job but little more. The text is too small, it's not always possible to see the whole board, it can be difficult to tell yellow and orange apart and there's no option to use Miis.

Length: A Classic game can go on for a couple of hours with four players. Facts and Friends can be whizzed through in forty minutes. Pictures, maps and even questions can start reappearing after only a few games.

Rating: Judged purely on it's Trvial Pursuit merits, it's a 3/5. As a game in its own right, it's a 2/5.

Labels: computer game review, wii

 
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  Nerf N-Strike (Wii)

Rated: 7+.

Story: You've been enlisted to a secret organisation and must undergo a training programme which involves shooting robots with Nerf guns. Score higher than the other candidates in all the tests and you're in.

Or at least that's what the sinister robot who recruits you says...

Gameplay: Point the wiimote at the screen to aim a cursor. Press B to shoot.

There are around twenty different tests, about a third of which are shooting gallery challenges - shoot all the red robots as they appear, for instance, or hold off an onslaught of robots flying towards you in waves. There are also three standard lightgun game sections where you traipse automatically through grey corridors, firing on any robots which show up.

Some of the tests are much more imaginative, though, requiring such things as knocking balls into goals. The best bits are the block challenges which mimic BOOM BLOX - hit various blocks off a platform without dislodging the gold ones or blast a path clear to a goal block through a tower of other blocks.

Save System: Automatic save after each event.

Comments: Every so often I get sent stuff to review. Some of it is obviously brilliant, other stuff takes a while to grow on me but seldom am I presented with anything where my initial reaction is to view it as a work of genius.

Actually, my first reaction with Nerf N-strike was to wonder why the postman was giving me a funny look. After he'd gone, I realised the parcel had this sticker on it:



No wonder he was worried.

Still, I opened it up to discover this:



It's a plastic gun which fires foam darts. With the press of a button, the dart mechanism can be removed and replaced with a wiimote (not included!). It's both a fully-functioning Nerf gun and a computer game controller. Genius! Someone somewhere is either very clever or getting a ten-year-old boy to design products for them (or possibly both).


The gun with the firing mechanism removed and a wiimote inserted.

Surprisingly, the Wii game that comes bundled with the gun isn't the complete pile of steaming nappies you might expect. The developers were obviously given a budget of tuppence but they've applied some imagination to make up for the limited options and bland graphics. The block shooting tasks in particular are a great idea and require some thought as well as accuracy. Overall there's a good mix of things to do and the game is fun and seldom frustrating.

Sadly, having to sit around shooting endless waves of robots in a warehouse isn't so good. Also, the bits where Nerf N-Strike mimics typical lightgun games, guiding you along corridors while you target enemies, are functional rather than inspired. The main problem, however, is that the single player game is very brief. It can be completed in under three hours (although unlocking all the weapons and gaining gold medals in every event will take longer). Adding proper high-score charts and more levels to the challenges would have taken little effort, so it's a shame they weren't included.

Multiplayer is where the longevity lies. Most of the tests can be played by four people simultaneously competing for the highest score. Up to ten events can be queued up to create a tournament with points awarded for player position in each round. Some of the events are absolute mayhem and they have the advantage of being easy to explain. Anyone with even the most basic knowledge of a wiimote can be ready to play in the time it takes for an event to load. If you've got visitors (whether adults or children), this is a great way to pass half an hour.

You can buy extra guns separately (RRP £12.99) but you don't need them. Since the cursor follows the movement of the gun instead of showing exactly where it's pointing, using a wiimote on its own works just as well (like in the target range in Wii Play). Holding the gun is more fun but it's a little heavy after a while. Oh, and be warned, I had to explain at great length to Sprog2 (almost 7) why we couldn't simply fire the real darts at the telly...

Of course, if you're trying to decide between this and the technicolor zombie blasting of House of the Dead: Overkill then you're really not going to opt for Nerf N-Strike. For children, the competition is much more limited. Nerf N-Strike isn't as polished as Link's Crossbow Training but it's less frustrating and has multiplayer.

Also, it comes with a Nerf gun.

Now, if only the postman didn't think I was a terrorist...

Conclusion: Feels like some training levels looking for a proper game to be part of. It's still fun, nonetheless, and has a riotous 4-way multiplayer which sure as heck beats playing Wii Bowling again.

Graphics: Grey arenas, corridors, rooms and warehouses. A handful of robots. Lots and lots of different Nerf guns.

Length: Very short.

Rating: 3/5.

Labels: computer game review (vol.4), toy/game review, toy/game review (vol.5), wii

 
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  Facebreaker KO Party (Wii)

Rated: 12+.

Gameplay: Choose from one of a dozen comedy stereotypes (nerd, cool black guy, psycho Russian, etc) and enter boxing tournaments which are merely a succession of bouts against the other characters.

Although the fighters are depicted in 3D, the fights are essentially two-dimensional. You move left and right using the thumbstick and then waggle the wiimote and nunchuk furiously to attack, while occasionally stabbing at buttons to block and throw. You can punch high and low and mix up a selection of quick, hard and special attacks. These attacks have a scissors/paper/stone relationship.

Fully draining an opponents health bar results in a knock-out. Three knock-outs wins the bout.

Save System: Auto-save after each bout.

Comments: Considering the Wii comes bundled with a game that offers not only boxing but four other sports as well, a stand-alone boxing game needs to be pretty special to justify its existence. To this end, Facebreaker adds some flashy graphics, comedy and a deeper combat system. Unfortunately, in ditching Wii Sport's first-person perspective for a standard side-on beat-em-up view, the game loses most of the connection between the player's movement and the action on the screen.

Yep, that's right, get READY to WAGGLE!

There is some strategy to the fighting but often everything moves too quickly to clearly spot what's going on. Sadly, the single-player game provides little incentive to persevere and get to grips with the system. Multiplayer games, meanwhile, turn into a frantic display of arm-flailing as participants struggle to grasp the mechanics. Since the game is obviously intended as party entertainment, this is a problem. It seems Facebreaker's main purpose is as something to play if you've got friends round and they've had enough to drink to make Wii Tennis a danger to your light fittings.

Two people can play a wacky variant with added power-ups and minigames. Four people can take part in a tournament. Only two players can actually play at once, however, and as the bouts can become protracted, the remaining players are liable to be sitting around for a while. Bear in mind that they'll spend this spare time rifling through your DVD rack looking to see what else there is to play...

Conclusion: Mildly amusing for not very long.

Graphics: The fighters look impressive and the animation is good but there's not much else to it.

Length: Very short.

Rating: 2/5.

Labels: computer game review (vol.4), wii

 
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  Skate It (Wii)

Rated: 7+.

Story: The city of San Vanelona has been hit by a series of natural disasters. All is not completely lost, however, since this has handily created some excellent impromptu skate parks. Practice your skills, get filmed pulling some tricks and then join the professionals, performing acts of skateboarding derring-do around the world.

Or, if you're as uncoordinated as me, wrap yourself round a railing and then bump down some stairs on your face. Over and over again.

Gameplay: You must skateboard around large levels, completing challenges to unlock new events and locations. Challenges usually involve racking up a certain number of points by landing enough tricks within a time-limit, in an unbroken run or on a particular piece of scenery.

There are three available methods of control.

• The wiimote can be used on its own, rotating it to steer, tipping it forwards and backwards to tip the board, and flicking it and waggling it to do tricks.
• The nunchuk can be attached to the wiimote, allowing the thumbstick to be used for steering.
• The wiimote and Wii Balance Board can be used together. Steering is achieved by leaning and tricks are pulled by putting weight on a particular part of the board. The wiimote's buttons are used for things like kicking off and braking.

Save System: Autosave after completing tasks. The save file takes up around 125 blocks of the Wii's internal memory, though, compared with 1 block for most games. You may need to clear some space.

Comments: When the controls for the Wii were first demonstrated, gamers the world over dreamed of myriad possibilities: sword fights and light-sabre duels, torch pointing and drum playing, billiards and basketball. All kinds of things.

Unfortunately, the wiimote isn't actually up to most of these things and plenty of games limit themselves to using the buttons with a touch of gimmicky waggling thrown in. Apart from shooting games, two years on, Wii Sports, Wii Play and Wario Ware remain the best examples of the wiimote being put to good use. As for the Balance Board, the most entertaining use for it I've heard of since Wii Fit came out is in Rayman Raving Rabbids TV Party - that apparently allows me to toboggan down a virtual mountain using only my bottom to steer.

Fun as that sounds, I suspect it's not really the zenith of intuitive and accessible gaming that people were expecting. Suffice to say, no one seems to have delivered on Nintendo's early promises for the Wii...

Woh, hold on a minute. Look at this! Skate It has three different control methods and they ALL use the Wii's various controllers in imaginative ways. Tilting the wiimote backwards and forwards and seeing the skater on screen react accordingly recaptures the magic of playing Wii Tennis for the first time. Leaning this way and that on the Balance Board to steer, then pressing hard to jump and flip, is fantastically fresh and exciting.

Well, for a bit...

The problem is, whichever way you play, Skate It is at least twice as hard as any other skateboarding game. Using the Balance Board is about four times as hard. Just skating in a straight line can be hard work and tricky. Pulling off stunts at the same time without either a real or virtual injury, is almost beyond my worn and exhausted housedad body. I can't imagine children much under twelve coping with it at all.

More than that, the controls can be imprecise. Performing specific tricks consistently (either by foot-pressing or frantic waggling) is next to impossible. Luckily, this doesn't affect gameplay much, since in most challenges, any old trick will do.

You can skate around looking for the challenges but it's much easier choosing them from the menu and jumping straight there. Handily, you can also set a marker at the beginning of a good line and teleport straight back with ease if you mess up the run. Together, these things cut down on frustration considerably but make the game feel disjointed. There's no great compulsion to master the controls and keep going.

Nonetheless, if you have a Wii, a Balance Board and a gnarly teenager in need of distraction, then Skate It is worth a look. If you don't know a manual from an ollie and you're a little lacking in coordination you might want to stick with a rental or avoid it entirely.

Conclusion: The most thoughtful use of Wii controls yet... but you'll need to like skateboarding quite a lot to persevere.

Graphics: Good enough. There's a long draw distance and the animation is fine. Unfortunately, some of the locations are bland and ugly.

Length: That depends. If you got into, you could spend a long time perfecting your tricks. It's just as likely you'll give up in despair after half an hour, though.

Rating: 3/5.

Labels: computer game review (vol.4), wii

 
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  Need for Speed Undercover (Wii)

Rated: 12+. According to the box, this rating is due to bad language but I can't say I noticed any. One thing I did notice, however, was having to constantly take out police cars by dropping scenery on them or nudging them into on-coming civilian vehicles.

Apparently, this is legitimate behaviour if you're an undercover cop...

Story: You're working for the FBI to infiltrate an international crime syndicate via the street-racing scene. This involves breaking pretty much every vehicle-related law known to man.

Gameplay: Lots of driving at high speed through urban environments and on freeways. There are standard missions, such as races and competing against the clock, but there are also others involving such things as outrunning the police, taking down bosses and delivering stolen cars with minimal damage.

It's possible to drive around town looking for missions but, thankfully, this isn't compulsory. A couple of button presses can take you directly to the next race.

The game supports the Wii wheel but you can still use motion-sensing to steer without it. If you prefer to use a control stick, the nunchuk, GameCube controller and classic controller are all supported.

Save System: Autosave after every mission.

Comments: At first glance, it's hard to work out who this Wii version of the latest Need for Speed is aimed at. The relatively mature content means that kids will be better off with Mario Kart. The ugly graphics mean that teenagers will complain it's not a patch on Burnout Paradise on their mate's 360. Anyone who's a fan of racing games in general is liable to laugh at the way cars bounce off corners and opponents seem to slow down to let the player past.

So who's left?

After careful consideration, I've decided it's dads who want an occasional shot of driving recklessly on their kids' console once they're all safely tucked up in bed. Particularly dads who've had a beer and really can't be bothered to use the brake button.

Need for Speed Undercover is a racing game for those who are easily bored or defeated by racing games. The brief races, easy difficulty and constant variation make it addictive. The daft plot, some simple car upgrading and a few live-action movie sequences involving Maggie Q add some direction. The result is simply more entertaining for those lacking commitment than other, more serious, games like Gran Turismo and Project Gotham.

That said, it's certainly not a classic game by any stretch of the imagination. The graphics are ropey and the free-roaming is mostly pointless. The artificial intelligence of the other drivers is simply bizarre - racers seem almost unable to drive while police cars somehow manage to keep up, no matter what you do, until you drop a pylon on them. In most missions, your car is ludicrously indestructible; in a few, a handful of scrapes mean failure. (This was hugely frustrating until I realised I could change to the 'Easy' difficulty setting at any time.) The script makes The Fast and the Furious look almost competent.

Still, if you want shiny, polished racers requiring skill and perseverance, you should go buy a 360 anyway. If you just want to waggle a Wii wheel about crazily once the kids are in bed, this is quite fun.

Conclusion: A racing game for those who like the idea of driving fast but simply aren't very good at it.

Graphics: Poor. This is partly so the game can cope with moving through the open city at high speed but it's not like there are any pedestrians or there's even that much traffic. The set-piece sequences where you destroy objects to throw off a chase look particularly creaky. It all suggests that this is a quick conversion of a PS2 game. The Wii can do better.

Length: Medium.

Rating: 3/5.

Labels: computer game review (vol.4), wii

 
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