Reviews

WiiWare Game Reviews

  • Review The Very Hungry Caterpillar's ABCs (WiiWare)

    Often imitated but never duplicated

    Everyone knows that caterpillars are excellent at education by munching, mostly because of the work of Eric Carle. 30 million copies of his book The Very Hungry Caterpillar have been sold worldwide since its release in 1969. Now, the distinct artwork and simple teaching style of the classic come to WiiWare in the...

  • Review Adventure on Lost Island: Hidden Object Game (WiiWare)

    Short and sugary sweet

    Playing Adventure on Lost Island: Hidden Object Game is a lot like eating a doughnut – it looks good, is very sweet and the experience feels nice. Before you know it, though, it's gone. ATeam definitely had a young audience in mind when making this game, with its winsome tone, brightly coloured graphics and simple gameplay,...

  • Review PHYSIO FUN Balance Training (WiiWare)

    A good step in the right direction

    Though most of the focus on the Wii's motion-based controls has been on their impact in gaming, what is more radical about Nintendo's approach with both the Wii and DS has been its success at positioning game systems as more than simply entertainment devices. Wii Fit stands as the biggest success story in this...

  • Review Racers' Islands: Crazy Racers (WiiWare)

    Crazy? More like lazy

    It’s relatively easy to guess what a game titled Racers’ Islands: Crazy Racers might be about. If you said "a crazy racing game in which you race across some islands," you’d be correct – assuming that by "crazy" you meant "rubbish." The aim was obviously to capture the hearts of the...

  • Review Fenimore Fillmore "The Westerner" (WiiWare)

    A cowpoke past his prime

    Fenimore Fillmore lives by the gun, namely Chekhov's Gun – the assertion that if in the first act you have hung a pistol on the wall, then in the following one it should be fired. In Fenimore Fillmore "The Westerner", this trope surely rings true, as most of the seemingly insignificant items you encounter...

  • Review Tales of Elastic Boy: Mission 1 (WiiWare)

    Elastic fantastic?

    While still creating a line of educational games on WiiWare, Lexis Numerique decided to work on a platforming series alongside it. Sticking with a similar graphical style clearly geared towards younger gamers, does this fare well against other games in the genre currently available? You play as Mooky, just one member of an entire...

  • Review And Yet It Moves (WiiWare)

    Vertigo has never felt so fun

    It seems that the Wii’s unconventional controller and competitively underpowered specifications have made the console quite attractive to smaller PC developers looking to break into the console space. Cave Story jumped from freeware to WiiWare with a fresh coat of paint and new modes and jams, Pearl Harbor benefitted...

  • Review A Monsteca Corral: Monsters vs. Robots (WiiWare)

    Pikmin-like play that packs a punch

    A Monsteca Corral: Monsters vs. Robots is refreshing, both in its quirky tone and its strategic demands. What starts off as a seemingly simplistic mechanic – guide a herd of creatures around to collect bubbles – eventually evolves into a surprisingly deep and thoroughly challenging affair. This is achieved by...

  • Review Space Trek (WiiWare)

    Space dreck

    Calaris's last WiiWare game, WarMen Tactics, was allegedly “created to reflect the realities of urban warfare." Not only did it completely and utterly fail to accomplish its goal, it completely and utterly failed to function as a working and playable videogame. The operations guide of its latest outing, Space Trek, describes...

  • Review Enjoy Your Massage! (WiiWare)

    Rubbed the wrong way

    Most of the time when you talk about hand-drawn 2D graphics in a game, it's a good thing. In the case of Enjoy Your Massage!, however, it's a hideous thing. The stock girl who you'll be rubbing down over and over again looks like she was whipped up in a minute with a Wacom drawing tablet, complete with a wobbly outline and one...

  • Review My Aquarium 2 (WiiWare)

    Go fish

    When Hudson released the original My Aquarium on WiiWare two years ago, it not only quickly made it to the highest reaches of the WiiWare charts but managed to hang around the top three for well over a year. Now, Hudson is trying to capture lightning in a bottle again with the release of My Aquarium 2. While there are a few new additions to...

  • Review Deer Captor (WiiWare)

    Oh deer

    Deer Captor is a blast from the past, a lazy rehash of a genre over two decades old that lets you blast stuff. The game doesn't look or feel particularly bad upfront - it has decent graphics, clean presentation and well functioning motion controls - but playing it is simply a bore, like you've been sold some watered-down version of those...

  • Review Fantasy Slots: Adventure Slots and Games (WiiWare)

    Eye roller

    The Wii has sold brilliantly, more than even Mr. Iwata dreamt, due partly to its let's-get-up-and-have-fun image. Here comes Fantasy Slots: Adventure Slots and Games to prove that sitting down and pressing one button just isn't as much fun as it used to be. With eight variations of the slot machine on offer, each with a theme ranging from...

  • Review Girlfriends Forever: Magic Skate (WiiWare)

    Thin ice

    Let's get right to the point: Girlfriends Forever: Magic Skate is bad. Really, really bad. What seems like a perfect combination of ice skating and dressing-up on the surface reveals itself to be so cripplingly simplistic that not even children would want to play it. At the beginning you choose one of the bug-eyed girls to play throughout...

  • Review Dive: The Medes Islands Secret (WiiWare)

    As much relaxing as it is fun

    Dive: The Medes Island Secret marks the second WiiWare release from developer Cosmonaut and a far more ambitious project than its first release 5 Spots Party was. This time around, players will get the opportunity to explore vast underwater depths in search of hidden treasures using the unique motion controls of the Wii...

  • Review Heavy Fire: Special Operations (WiiWare)

    Rat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-buyer's remorse

    There’s certainly no lack of lightgun games on Wii; in fact, one of the more vocal complaints about Wii shooters is that too many of them are on-rails. It’s a silly thing to complain about given the dearth of them in previous console generations and the relatively high quality of the Wii’s...

  • Review Hoopworld (WiiWare)

    Fouled by the W-word

    Streamline Studios' HoopWorld has been a long time coming. Originally announced as an Xbox Live Arcade title back in 2005 and looking like an odd Power Stone/sports hybrid, it's finally seen release on WiiWare in slightly scaled-back form as a 3-on-3 arcade basketball game. There's a hokey backstory to do with primal energy or...

  • Review Furry Legends (WiiWare)

    More floaty than furry

    We've seen the rolling platformer idea explored several times over the years to varying degrees of success, but with the release of Furry Legends, Gamelion is attempting to inject a whole new level of playability into the standard formula and make things more interesting through the use of creatively-designed levels and a host...

  • Review Balloon Pop Festival (WiiWare)

    Good enough to pop open your wallet?

    With the increasing number of puzzle games furiously leaping to Nintendo’s online stores, it makes for a pretty fascinating battle for supremacy. The latest to make the jump is Balloon Pop Festival, an interesting combination of Bejewled and Puyo Puyo with a family friendly presentation and enjoyable gameplay...

  • Review Zenquaria: Virtual Aquarium (WiiWare)

    Not too deep

    With a rather good and successful aquarium simulator already available and a sequel underway, it seems rather futile of Nintendo to release a version themselves at a slightly higher price. Created by Paon of DK King of Swing, Jungle Climber and Barrel Blast fame, Zenquaria's primarily toted feature is the ability to swim around an...

  • Review Toribash (WiiWare)

    Worth a bash

    Already freely available for PC, Toribash has landed on WiiWare with a 1,000 point price tag and a lot to live up to. A turn-based fighting game, this title is seemingly impenetrable at first despite a series of tutorials that teach you your first basic moves: how to jump, to kick and to decapitate your opponent and throw their head out...

  • Review Pearl Harbor Trilogy - 1941: Red Sun Rising (WiiWare)

    The dawn of a promising new WiiWare franchise

    Pearl Harbor Trilogy - 1941: Red Sun Rising, one of the most anticipated WiiWare games of the year, wowed observers with screenshots that seemed far too impressive to be possible in a downloadable Wii title. In a field mostly populated by mini-game collections with simplistic graphics, Pearl Harbor...

  • Review Cruise Party (WiiWare)

    Party pooper

    Enjoy Gaming’s Cruise Party is a collection of four gambling games: video poker, blackjack, roulette and slots. In Video Poker, each player’s five-card hand is visible to all, with the exception of the Bank’s hand, of which you are only privy to one card. Your one and only goal is to wager whether your hand will be better than the...

  • Review Jett Rocket (WiiWare)

    WiiWare gets pushed to the limit in this fun 3D platformer

    It’s clear that Shin’en Multimedia knows their way around WiiWare. After delivering the lovely Art of Balance, the German studio’s follow-up is a platformer with unparallelled looks on the service. Jett Rocket looks excellent, yes, and we’re happy to say that it plays well too and...

  • Review Pong Toss Pro - Frat Party Games (WiiWare)

    The drunker you are, the better.

    Nothing compliments a good buzz like tossing tiny ping pong balls into a group of plastic cups. In fact, Beer Pong has become quite the popular party game over the years, so much so that JV Games released their own version of the game for the WiiWare service back in 2008. Despite receiving extremely low review scores...

  • Review The Tales of Bearsworth Manor: Puzzling Pages (WiiWare)

    A beary good game

    We've already seen the first Tales of Bearsworth Mansion release make use of a tower defence-style gameplay mechanic, but now Square-Enix is mixing things up a bit with Tales of Bearsworth Manor: Puzzling Pages, the second game in the series and a game that uses the same bear-tossing element of the first release but takes things...

  • Review The Tales of Bearsworth Manor: Chaotic Conflicts (WiiWare)

    A bear-knuckle ball

    For anyone that's played video games for an extended span of time, the name Square-Enix has long been synonymous with epic role-playing adventures and in-depth strategy battles. So when you see the company release a rather offbeat spooky-themed storybook adventure on WiiWare, your first reaction is likely one of bewilderment. But...

  • Review Bejeweled 2 (WiiWare)

    Swap 'til you drop

    If you've gone anywhere near an electronic device capable of playing games in the past decade, odds are you've heard of PopCap's addictive puzzle series Bejeweled. This WiiWare release of the sequel marks the developer's first foray onto a Nintendo home console and is a worthy version, but it doesn't bring a lot new to the table...

  • Review Yard Sale Hidden Treasures: Sunnyville (WiiWare)

    A good find

    Hidden object puzzles are big money these days, drawing in unsuspecting players with tales of relaxing but addictive gameplay. WiiWare has already seen the disappointing "Aha! I Found It!" Hidden Object Game but now Konami is here with a new challenger, Yard Sale Hidden Treasures: Sunnyville, and it's got a few tricks up its...

  • Review Arcade Sports (WiiWare)

    Jack-of-all-trades, master of none

    Perhaps better named, “Bowling Alley Sports”, Arcade Sports is a collection featuring pool, air hockey, and of course bowling. All of these games are available elsewhere on your Wii, but here you can get all three for one download. We’ve seen plenty of minigame collections on the Wii before, but is this...