Reviews

WiiWare Game Reviews

  • Review Mister Bumblebee Racing Champion (WiiWare)

    Buzz kill

    With a few exceptions – Excitebike: World Rally and Heracles: Chariot Racing chief among them – WiiWare is pretty thin on family-friendly, well-received racing titles, so the thinking behind Mister Bumblebee Racing Champion is clear. Sadly, the best thing about this game is likely to be its title. The key twist here is that all the...

  • Review Reel Fishing Challenge II (WiiWare)

    Hook, line and stinker

    Reel Fishing Challenge II is, by definition, the follow-up to Reel Fishing Challenge that hit WiiWare last year and as such is basically just more of the same. Fans of staring at full-motion video backgrounds and boring, lame fishing mechanics, rejoice! Everything about it just feels lazy, and the fact that it's essentially a...

  • Review Zoo Disc Golf (WiiWare)

    A discgrace

    Let's get this out of the way immediately: Zoo Disc Golf is a game that should not be played by anyone under any circumstances. Zoo animals playing disc golf may sound like a pretty awesome idea, but Zoo Disc Golf is a mess from top to bottom. It takes your ten dollars, chews it up, regurgitates it and spits back at you one of the worst...

  • Review Ben 10 Alien Force: The Rise of Hex (WiiWare)

    Even Steven

    The idea of a boy capable of transforming into wildly different forms, each with special abilities, is ideal fodder for game design: Kid Chameleon did it nearly twenty years ago, but Ben 10 Alien Force: Rise of Hex revives the template with a few welcome tweaks. In case you're unfamiliar with the titular hero, Ben Tennyson possesses a...

  • Review Robocalypse: Beaver Defense (WiiWare)

    Dam good

    Robocalypse: Beaver Defense has all the red flags of a stinker: a "crude humour" warning right when you boot up, a cartoony theme possibly chosen to draw in unsuspecting youths and a genre in which it's easy to cut corners. You might want to think twice before passing this one up, however, as this dam's actually quite sturdy. The...

  • Review Art Style: Penta Tentacles (WiiWare)

    Tentacular spectacular

    The Art Style series certainly stands out as one of the safer bets in Nintendo's stable of downloadable software. These are puzzle games with a minimalist aesthetic and focus on simple gameplay; it's like the Tate Modern of gaming only with content and a price point that's accessible by everyone. Though given an unfortunate...

  • Review Voodoo Dice (WiiWare)

    Bad mojo

    Developed by Exkee, the guys behind the rather average ColorZ, Voodoo Dice is a puzzle game in which you control a large yellow die, attempting to reach the end of every stage in order to earn gemstones used to proceed further into the game. Of course, it's not a matter of simply rolling over to the exit: each level has various dice-related...

  • Review Viral Survival (WiiWare)

    Fun with viruses that doesn't involve Mario or vomiting

    Viral Survival is a compilation of five single-player arcade games with a loose petri dish theme tying them together. In each game you control a little chunk of DNA (that looks an awful lot like a magnifying glass) as you zip, wind, shoot and jump your way to a top score, which is then...

  • Review Lead the Meerkats (WiiWare)

    The meerkat sim you've been waiting for?

    Meerkats have long suffered the reputation of being lazy sods who just lay around in the jungles of Africa eating bugs all day thanks to a certain film from a certain company with a certain round-eared mascot. Of course people who actually have an interest in wildlife (and form their impressions of the world...

  • Review Robin Hood: The Return of Richard (WiiWare)

    Another porting disaster

    WiiWare has already seen a few ports of iPhone games, but this one in particular has to take the cake as the laziest of all. A shooting gallery game based around the legend of Robin Hood, you must protect the people of Nottingham from the seemingly endless hordes of knights running around. As this is a Wii game we're talking...

  • Review Art Style: light trax (WiiWare)

    Racing takes a puzzling turn

    After a year-long DSiWare detour, the Art Style series has returned to WiiWare with one of the series' most action-oriented entries so far. It may look like a simple racer, but as the Art Style series has proven time and time again that looks can be deceiving. light trax is an updated version of the Japan-only bit...

  • Review Blood Beach (WiiWare)

    Total misfire

    Usually when a game is released with so little marketing it's enough to raise suspicions about its quality, but enough excellent WiiWare titles have emerged seemingly from nowhere over the years to make us reconsider those age-old presumptions. Then along comes a title like Blood Beach to remind us exactly why they existed in the first...

  • Review BIT.TRIP RUNNER (WiiWare)

    Running down a dream

    The BIT.TRIP series is one of the shining stars of Nintendo's WiiWare service. The simplicity of the game mechanics would work well on the 30-year-old 8-bit consoles to which they pay homage, but it's the intelligence of design and music-rhythm aspect that makes them so addictive. BIT.TRIP RUNNER is the latest entry in the...

  • Review Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney - Trials & Tribulations (WiiWare)

    Phoenix Wrong

    Capcom's Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney series on DS has become a popular staple of the system over the past few years, combining a novel-style courtroom presentation with many of the unique gameplay functions of the DS system itself. The end product has been a very engaging gaming experience that allows players to feel like a part of an...

  • Review Chess Challenge! (WiiWare)

    The “challenge” must lie in making a good chess game

    From the makers of Sudoku Challenge comes Chess Challenge in all of its public domain glory. In our earlier review of Silver Star Chess, the first chess game on Wiiware, we advised to wait “until a better version of the game comes along later.” Is Chess Challenge that gold star chess game...

  • Review Kung Fu Funk (WiiWare)

    Kung Fu Fail

    No wonder people hate the Wii. It's been four years since the world's first real stab at a motion-based console launched, bringing the excellent Wii Sports along to define the grammar of the innovative controller. It didn't take long for me-too developers to begin pumping out cheap minigame compilations that totally ignored why Wii...

  • Review Brain Drain (WiiWare)

    A drain on your brain... or on your lifespan?

    Brain Drain asks you to look at a pattern of objects, then scrambles those objects and tasks you with the job of unscrambling them. It's rather like having your Mom throw all of your stuff on the floor and then tell you to pick it up. Some people enjoy this sort of treatment, masochists and puzzle fans...

  • Review 5 Arcade Gems (WiiWare)

    Gems? More like paste.

    The term "arcade" has seemingly come to be synonymous with a game that has a "pick-up-and-play" feel to it, just as arcade games of old. Of course the motivation of manufacturers of these arcade machines was to encourage players to drop coins on games they hadn't seen before, in the hopes they would enjoy...

  • Review The Will of Dr. Frankenstein (WiiWare)

    You don't want to inherit anything from this!

    Enjoy Gaming seems to enjoy bringing us smaller versions of games they've released at retail. System Flaw Recruit was their first time doing this, and now they've done it again. The Will of Dr. Frankenstein is a prequel to The Island of Dr. Frankenstein, a Wii game that has, curiously enough, been...

  • Review Zombie Panic in Wonderland (WiiWare)

    Beware the zombies of luuurve

    Love and zombies aren't normally associated with each other — except possibly a love of eating brains — but in Akaoni Studio's Zombie Panic in Wonderland the titular enemies are all about hugging people to death in the fairy-tale setting of Wonderland. In the main Story mode you'll find yourself in the role of...

  • Review Learning with the PooYoos - Episode 2 (WiiWare)

    Another little game for your littlest ones

    Game consoles are perhaps too grown-up for your pre-kindergarteners to fully understand, and it doesn't help that there aren't many games geared toward very young children in the Wii Shop, but Lexis Numérique is slowly working to change that. Learning with the PooYoos: Episode 2 is a continuation of the...

  • Review Fishie Fishie (WiiWare)

    All-you-can-eat fish feeding frenzy

    Fish have been a staple of games ever since Herman Melville adapted Moby Dick for Babbage's legendary Difference Engine and the posthumous sequel, Moby Dick 2: Queequeg's Revenge, was published for the PDP-11 . Certainly on WiiWare we've seen some real blockbusters centred around our finny cousins, prompting many...

  • Review Grill-Off with Ultra Hand! (WiiWare)

    You get what you pay for

    For a video game rewards programme, Club Nintendo is dishearteningly light on actual video games. Apart from arguably overpriced Game & Watch DS collections and a year-end bonus for Elite members in the form of Doc Louis' Punch-Out!!, rewards have mostly been items such as posters and playing cards. But now, for a mere...

  • Review WarioWare: D.I.Y. Showcase (WiiWare)

    A nice little added bonus.

    We've just recently seen the release of WarioWare D.I.Y. for the DS system which lets players design, play, and share their own unique microgame creations. But for those who feel like enjoying even more of the same, not to mention the ability to play and share their creations on their television screens, Nintendo has just...

  • Review Diner Dash (WiiWare)

    Warmed-up leftovers

    From the description you might think Diner Dash is a throwaway mini-game: guide office block refugee Flo through her dream job of running her own chain of restaurants with gameplay centred around seating customers, keeping them happy and getting big tips. It's best not to write it off as it's actually quite a fun game (think...

  • Review Cave Story (WiiWare)

    Now this is more like it!

    The independent gaming scene has always been a flourishing part of PC gaming over the years, but very few people were ready for the splash one indie game designer's title would make on the industry when he released it in 2004. It took Daisuke Amaya, aka Pixel, five long years to complete Cave Story, but its unique...

  • Review Triple Shot Sports (WiiWare)

    Shooting pain? Get relief fast - don't play!

    In the promotional literature, developer Code Monkeys claim that Triple Shot Sports is "the most advanced recreational shooting game available for WiiWare." Well, with its presentation of Olympic shooting events it's certainly unique, but the only thing we found to be really "advanced"...

  • Review Rage of the Gladiator (WiiWare)

    Rage, rage against the dying of the light

    They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery and Ghostfire Games' Rage of the Gladiator makes no bones about paying homage to Nintendo's classic arcade boxer Punch Out!!, using similar mechanics based around recognising enemy attack patterns to battle through a bevy of foes. Whilst its shoes are...

  • Review Military Madness: Nectaris (WiiWare)

    Tactical Mutually Assured Destruction

    They say the moon is a harsh mistress — especially when it's home to prisoners building a super weapon to destroy Earth! This is the setting of Military Madness: Nectaris, a tactical strategy game which originally appeared on the Turbo-Graphx-16 as Military Madness (and in its native Japan as Nectaris). This...

  • Review Dart Rage (WiiWare)

    These darts be angry

    Dart games have traditionally been pretty plain affairs. Pub Darts on WiiWare was as basic as it could get and left us with a bland and forgettable taste in our mouths. Developer JV Games may not have left the best taste among WiiWare connoisseurs after some beginning duds in Frat Party Games: Pong Toss and Incoming!, but their...