Reviews

WiiWare Game Reviews

  • Review Big Bass Arcade (WiiWare)

    Cast from the past

    Just six months back, Big John Games released Big Bass Arcade on DSiWare, offering up pick-up-and-play fishing action on the go. While the game certainly did what it said on the box, the overly simplistic design left us wanting a bit more content-wise. Enter Big Bass Arcade on WiiWare, a revamped port of that game offering updated...

  • Review Pinocchio's Puzzle (WiiWare)

    Pinocchio goes to pieces

    Chances are, when you're deciding to pick up a puzzle game for your console of choice, you don't think of actual jigsaw puzzles. They just don't fit easily into the genre's landscape. Popular puzzlers like Tetris and Angry Birds have an immediacy to them that encourages quick play and gratification, while a real jigsaw...

  • Review Step Up! (WiiWare)

    Don't step to this

    The Wii is a great console for combining a love for gaming and fitness. Casual workout titles like Wii Fit offer laid back activities like yoga and jogging, while third-party titles like EA Sports Active offer up more rigorous cardiovascular routines. But what about WiiWare? Sure, retail offerings are great, but Nintendo's...

  • Review Gnomz (WiiWare)

    Fun with a capital Z?

    When we first started playing Gnomz, we were excited: here's a game that's joyously silly, bizarre and simple enough that anyone willing to pick up the controller could play it and have an absolute blast. The graphics are colourful. The soundtrack has a giddy urgency to it. It's got a good sense of humour. WiiWare's Angry...

  • Review Fish Tank (WiiWare)

    An unrequested fishin' surplus

    We know what you're thinking: "yawn... another colour-matching puzzler." And you'd be forgiven for shrugging and moving on. If you do that, however, you'll be missing out on a game that's quite good on its own, and a multiplayer experience that absolutely bursts with frantic fun. Fish Tank is a game that's...

  • Review Horizon Riders (WiiWare)

    Well balanced?

    Horizon Riders is definitely a Wii-exclusive experience. A game that makes use of both the Balance Board and Wii Zapper, Sabarasa's on-rails shooter is tailor-made for the console. If you are one of the millions that bought Wii Fit, consider yourself in for a treat, as the game makes good use of the peripheral and really shouldn't be...

  • Review escapeVektor: Chapter 1 (WiiWare)

    Virtual world, real quality

    After the delightful Pop (and its various offshoots), it seemed a bit like Nnooo was taking a break from game development. The studio released several applications through DSiWare, and while they were quite good, gamers might be forgiven for assuming that the company's future releases would gravitate more toward...

  • Review 101-in-1 Explosive Megamix (WiiWare)

    101 reasons to avoid this

    One hundred and one games. It's a tempting proposition isn't it? It's unlikely that as an average consumer you will play, let alone purchase, one hundred and one games in a whole year, so when Nordcurrent comes a-knockin' at your door and offers you exactly that many titles for the low, low price of 700 Points, you'd be...

  • Review MotoHeroz (WiiWare)

    In pole position

    If there's one letter of the alphabet that, when included at the end of a title should instantly tell you not to buy that game, it's the letter “z”. The quality of a product with a name that has the linguistic audacity to inappropriately replace the sensual sweeps of a sexily shaped "s", is for the most part awful:...

  • Review Paint Splash (WiiWare)

    A blast, easel-y

    Painting is a lot of fun, and as it happens, it's even more fun with a group. Why it's taken so long for a game studio to realise this is beyond us – and it was beyond the man behind Paint Splash and father of three, Uffe Flarup, as well. That's why he created Kidspaint, a homebrew application that let families everywhere enjoy...

  • Review Trenches Generals (WiiWare)

    Fun with guns or suicide mission?

    The blood. The smoke. The little exploding cartoon men. War is Hell. Recreating the feel of battle with a cartoony spin is Trenches Generals, the latest spin on the tower defence subgenre, updated from the recent iOS version for WiiWare with updated AI, levelling-up system, content and more. But is this an explosive...

  • Review Aya and the Cubes of Light (WiiWare)

    A game with gravity

    If there's one system on the landscape of modern gaming that has an abundance of quality 2D platformers with a novel twist, it's the Wii. Kirby's Epic Yarn, And Yet It Moves, Donkey Kong Country Returns, New Super Mario Bros. Wii – all superb side-scrollers that mix the classic play mechanic of precision movement in an...

  • Review Flight Control (WiiWare)

    Near miss

    The secret of Flight Control's incredible success on iOS devices was that it was perfectly suited to the platform it launched on. It very simply transposed the immediacy of direct touch controls that iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch benefit from within a game that is superficially nothing more than drawing lines on a screen. Yet the key phrase...

  • Review Kyotokei (WiiWare)

    Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery

    Horizontal shoot 'em ups have become quite scarce in recent years, even on the WiiWare and DSiware services, so when one does pop up from time to time, fans of the genre tend to sit up and take notice. With Kyotokei, Microforum have crafted a fairly basic shoot 'em up that borrows heavily from such classic...

  • Review Monochrome Racing (WiiWare)

    Unintelligent design

    One of the best modes in the Micro Machines games was undoubtedly “Head-To-Head”, in which the goal was to reach the furthest edge of the screen while pushing an opponent to the opposite side. The balance of risk and reward resulted in a nail biting play experience where one mistake would cost you dearly, the most talented...

  • Review Burn the Rope (WiiWare)

    A game that'll rope you in

    Step one: create a simple, fun and addictive activity. Step two: throw in an interesting twist. Step three: build on that foundation with something that adds variation and challenge while channelling the essence of what makes it fun. These are the steps to making a great puzzle game, and it's that first task at which many...

  • Review Successfully Learning German: Year 5 (WiiWare)

    Erledigt

    The final outing for the Successfully Learning German WiiWare series is now among us and it's business as usual for the Tivola-developed edutainment tool. As with earlier entries, Year 5 makes no attempts to actively teach participants anything new, instead providing interactive exercises for students of a particular level to practice the...

  • Review Bobby Carrot Forever (WiiWare)

    At last

    Few titles have successfully combined the puzzler and adventure genres like Chip's Challenge and its ilk. Bobby Carrot Forever is one such derivative, removing the Sokoban-influenced box-pushing and building on a foundation of collectible items and manually-set traps. But is it good enough to make you hop or would Bobby have been better off...

  • Review Just JAM (WiiWare)

    Your own personal mixing board

    Although the music/rhythm genre has fizzled a bit recently, we are still seeing a few releases here and there. And while Just JAM is nowhere nearly as deep or engaging as a Guitar Hero or Rock Band title, it does put quite a bit of musical direction in the palm of your hands via the Wii Remote and Nunchuk, but with a...

  • Review Successfully Learning German: Year 4 (WiiWare)

    A dezent learning tool

    As the overall level of education across the world rises, the pool of talented young people becomes much deeper, wider and more competitive. Consequently we've seen a general increase in home tutors, after school classes and educational software. Of this latter method of out-of-school learning, very few have the capacity to...

  • Review 3D Pixel Racing (WiiWare)

    Even the pixels can't save this one

    Long-time gamers have a unique love affair with the pixelated visual style of yesteryear, so it comes as no real surprise to see developers like Silicon Studio, creators of PlayStation 3 game 3D Dot Game Heroes, have success melding the nostalgic look of pixelated sprites with the modern visual capabilities of...

  • Review ANIMA: Ark of Sinners (WiiWare)

    Time to repent

    Recent history in the WiiWare platform hasn’t seen an over-abundance of must-have, exciting releases. There is little surprise, then, that the release of ANIMA: Ark of Sinners was met with some optimism. With trailers giving an impression of an old-school Castlevania style of gameplay, a lot of gamers’ interests were piqued. The...

  • Review Big Town Shoot Out (WiiWare)

    John Marston died in vain

    You're stuck in traffic on a rainy day. Positioning yourself between the cars ahead and behind you, avoiding collision with the merging vehicles, occasionally reading street signs; these things don't require skill so much as a sort of passive awareness. It's not your first time in traffic. You know the drill. It's a test...

  • Review Successfully Learning German: Year 3 (WiiWare)

    Hier gehen wir wieder

    By now you probably have a fairly good grasp on whether or not Tivola's array of educational games is for you, and Successfully Learning German: Year 3 does absolutely nothing to change the series template. If you're still desperately grappling with the language then this second instalment of Wii-based linguistic training might...

  • Review Snail Mail (WiiWare)

    Not quite worth its salt

    It's a fact: the postal service in is at a crossroads. In many regions, it can't even stay afloat. Email has replaced letter writing, bills are paid online, and even physical packages are being trusted more and more frequently to privately-owned couriers. So how can the postal service become profitable again? By raising...

  • Review Successfully Learning German: Year 2 (WiiWare)

    Nicht so toll

    Tivola's continued attempts to teach the world basic mathematic and linguistic skills continues apace with Successfully Learning German: Year 2, marking another appearance from vampire Freddie, the world's least qualified teaching assistant. If you've played a previous Successfully Learning game you'll know what to expect, but if not...

  • Review FAST - Racing League (WiiWare)

    FAST and furious

    It's been a long time since the last F-Zero game. The last one to make its way to the West, F-Zero GP Legend, was released outside Japan in 2003, and we haven't heard a word from the series since, other than its character inclusions in Super Smash Bros. Brawl. While we wait for Nintendo to finally announce something, we're more...

  • Review Overflow (WiiWare)

    Say it ain't flow

    Overflow is possibly the most frustrating game you'll play all year. You'll be frustrated at the countless times you'll fail a level for reasons you don't even understand; you'll be frustrated at the finicky pointer controls that you're forced to use; you'll be frustrated at the camera, which doesn't always scroll up and down as...

  • Review Gabrielle's Ghostly Groove: Monster Mix (WiiWare)

    Don't give up the ghost

    Gabrielle's Ghostly Groove: Monster Mix. You really only have to read the title to figure out who the intended audience is for this game: younger gamers. Kids. And that's not intended to be a jab, by the way; gamers often use the “kids’ game” moniker as a way of implying shallow game design, but that's not an entirely...

  • Review MDK2 (WiiWare)

    Maniacal. Deadly. Killer.

    If we had to sum up Interplay's MDK2 in one word, we would choose "old-school." With a silly sense of humour, unforgiving difficulty and enough bullets to take down a small country — or in this case, alien invasion — MDK2 is a "game for gamers" through and through. And while it shows its age a...