So if any of you do know Kirby already then you surely know that he has been gifted with a special power that lets him suck up and ingest his enemies, then take on the abilities of the digested foe. Well it just so happens that knowledge is totally useless because in this game Kirby loses that particular special power in favour of something more textile.

The story goes like this: As usual Kirby the ever hungry is in search for a snack. He is wandering around Dream Land just minding his own business when he spots the tastiest looking tomato he’s ever seen. So without hesitation Kirby goes to eat it and in doing so, disturbs a strange looking monster made entirely out of Yarn.

Funnily enough his name is Yin-Yarn and he’s suddenly very angry at Kirby for stealing the tomato. Without warning he sucks Kirby up into a magic sock (which is actually a wormhole) to a new dimension in which everything and everyone is made of fabric (yes including Kirby). Without boring you with too many details right now, Kirby soon meets up with Prince Fluff who informs him that this evil Yin-Yarn has stolen some magic yarn that is very important because it literally holds Patch Land together. Kirby and Fluff join forces in an attempt to reclaim all the magic yarn and stitch Patch Land back up again, hopefully defeating Yin-Yarn along the way too. Oh yes remember that Tomato? Well it turns out that it was a magic tomato and after eating it Kirby can now transform into any object he can think of, very cool.

So that’s the story, but what’s the game then? Well Kirby’s Epic Yarn is a brand new platform adventure from the clever people at GoodFeel; they created Wario Land Shake It for Wii a couple of years ago. How do I go about describing this platformer?

Well if you’re familiar with Mario, Sonic and Donkey Kong then you’ll know that the general premise of these game is to complete a series of levels by successfully getting from the left most area to the right most . Along the way there are items you can collect, bottomless pits you can fall down, enemies that can harm you and perhaps environmental obstacles such as molten lava. Kirby’s Epic Yarn doesn’t stray too far from that formula but does add a few twists to the genre.

Firstly absolutely everything in the game is made of fabric, it can be hard to get your head around to start with but after a few minutes of playing it will all make sense. This enables some very interesting new physics play, one of my favourite examples is that in midair Kirby can transform into a parachute and gently drift across a chasm – if there is any wind he’ll be carried along by it.

Second and most controversially is that the whole concept of ‘lives’ and ‘dying’ has been scrapped. Unless you give up and quit a level it’s impossible to lose and you’re never forced to start back at the beginning and try again. This initially might sound like a backward step or making the game too easy but if you think about it for a moment, it’s actually a rather good idea. For years platform games have been designed to continually ‘kill’ the player until they’ve memorised the level. Here in Epic Yarn the real challenge isn’t just getting to the level end, it’s also about finding all of the collectables and finding enough beads to get a gold medal.

Thirdly Kirby’s Epic Yarn tries to use its scenery in a much more physical and interactive way than other platformers. Despite being a 2D sidescroller the game has a unique sense of depth to it. You see that zipper in the sky? Well if Kirby pulls the zipper across a whole new layer of the level that was previously hidden is revealed. Also if there’s a hole in the fabric Kirby can get inside in the same way as he could climb through a whole in your jumper – you even get to see his fat little body create an imprint as he moves in the background!

Oh yes I was meant to be talking about the game….well it’s tough to describe a platform game. I guess as I mentioned before, the main goal is to get from the start of the level to the end. In-between that is a cool mix of your typical platforming stuff like jumping about, bashing enemies and new stuff like transforming into a UFO or a giant missile firing Robot. Each level contains several hidden items as well as hundreds of beads to collect, these are very similar to the coins in Mario or Bananas in Donkey Kong Country. Depending on the number you collect by the end of the level you might get a Bronze, Silver or Gold medal. Remember I mentioned it wasn’t possible to die? Well in Kirby, if you are struck by an enemy or fall down a hole you will lose beads (yup sort of like Sonic dropping his rings), if you want to get a gold medal you’ll have to be very careful not to get hit and explore the level for every last bead you can find. Indeed this is where things get tough in Kirby.

Okay about these items. Every level (except bosses) has two items of furniture and a soundtrack CD to find. These are usually hidden slightly off the beaten track and will need some exploration and perhaps puzzle solving to find. The furniture can be used to decorate Kirby’s house on the overworld map as well as some empty apartment blocks in Quilty Square. If you decorate the empty flats well enough, new tenants will move in and offer Kirby some special minigames to play as a reward.

Kirby’s Epic Yarn is a great little platformer and reminds me quite a lot of LittleBigPlanet both in terms of graphical flair and gameplay. If you enjoyed LBP but wished it had that little bit of Nintendo magic then you will find it here. The main story will last just 5 to 7 hours but actually getting everything in the game will double that to around 10 to 14 hours. It would have been nice to see a LittleBigPlanet like online level community but sadly we’ll likely have to wait until Wii2 for that. The level design is very impressive and it really does appear like Kirby is moving around inside a fabric world. Everything from the super impressive textures to the way things thump on the ground really do make it ‘feel’ like fabric. There’s a great range of level environments; Water, Ice, Clouds, Lava, Grass and even Outer Space – all made of fabric, crazy but you’ll have to see it to believe it. Very understated but this is one of the best looking games on Wii and if you’re not paying attention, it will fool you into thinking it’s High Definition. Let’s not forget the music because it’s awesome, gentle toe tapping tunes very reminiscent of Mario, heck there’s even one song that really reminds me of “Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da” by The Beatles. All that goes by the wayside when it comes to my favourite element of Kirby’s Epic Yarn for Wii – the excellent story narration by Paul Vaughn for the European English version. His voiceover takes you back to the friendlier days of kids TV, shows like Postman Pat, The Wombles, The Clangers etc.

Kirby’s Epic Yarn may appear easy from the outset but a real gamer will find plenty of challenge hidden here, you just need to look beyond the cuteness. If you have a friend and want to play coop then bring them along for some extra fun in this rather cute and rather excellent platformer. 5 out of 5.

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Donkey Kong Country 64 (1999) was the last game in the series that was created by original developers Rare, its higher res visuals and massive levels ensured it was unique for being the first Nintendo 64 game that required compulsory use of the N64 (Ram) Expansion Pack. During the intervening ten years we’ve seen some other Donkey Kong games such as Jungle Beat; an unusual platformer that could be played with the GameCube Bongo controller. However none of these DK games really captured the essence of the Country series.

So it was a surprise to everyone when Donkey Kong Country Returns was revealed at last year’s E3 convention. Not only was it totally unexpected to see a return to this forgotten franchise but the game was being developed by Retro Studios, creators of the Metroid Prime trilogy. Donkey Kong Country Returns for Wii is brand new entry into the series that goes straight back to the roots of the original DKC game rather than incorporating the gimmicks from the later titles. Just like the original DKC game, our heroes Donkey and Diddy awake from the lazy existence of relaxing in the jungle to find that some nasty bugger has stolen all of their bananas.

The Kremlings aren’t to blame this time. A strange race of musical creatures known as the Tiki Tak Tribe are using their hypnotic powers to control the minds of the jungle inhabitants. We see everything from Giraffes to Elephants all becoming slaves to the relaxing rhythm, they then start carrying those precious bananas away into the sunset. As you can imagine, Donkey and Diddy are not best pleased and immediately give chase – thus our game beings.

I hope you’re ready for some of the toughest platforming action since Mario & The Lost Levels because this game is one unforgiving beast. Now I’m sure you’re already used to 2D platformers so I will not insult you (too much) by describing what you actually do. Initially you start just with Donkey as you progress through the level rolling and jumping across platforms, pits, spikes and other obstacles. Almost all of the enemies in the game can be defeated by a simple roll or a stomp on the head but later on you will encounter some that will need differing tactics.

When you encounter a DK barrel you’ll be able to join forces with Diddy Kong which will give you two major advantages. Firstly this doubles your hit points from two to four making things slightly easier. Secondly Diddy’s new jetpack comes in very useful because it allows the pair to hover in the air for a couple of seconds, this combined with a long roll and jump will result in some very long jump distances. A Donkey Kong Country game wouldn’t be the same if it didn’t feature some of its most famous features now would it? Barrel Blasting, Tyre Bouncing, KONG Letters, Minecart Crashing, Secret Hunting and not forgetting those Animal Buddies. In fact almost everything that made the original DKC title is here in Donkey Kong Country Returns.

It’s all very well copying and pasting stuff from the original but often it is what you add and what you take away that makes the most difference when creating a sequel. There are several changes in DKCR and let’s go over the main ones now! First up the two player tag team mode has been reworked and is now a fully fledged real-time coop system that is very reminiscent of New Super Mario Bros. As long as you have enough life balloons you can survive on a stage indefinitely by resurrecting each other. On the other hand things are much more hectic when the two characters are independent, the camera will be constantly zooming in and out to fit you both onscreen (Smash Bros style).

A new Rocket Barrel provides some serious fun which rivals the minecart rides in terms of difficulty. You need to safely steer the Kongs through a tricky obstacle course with only the power of thrust or gravity, kinda reminds me of the lava magic carpet stage from Disney’s Aladdin on the SNES. The Kongs also have some new moves to show off. I’ve already mentioned Diddy’s Jet Pack but that’s not all folks. You now have the power of blow. That’s right you can now crouch down and blow the petals off flowers to reveal a bonus, you can also blow out enemies that are covered in flames that would normally be too hot to jump on. Climbing has been improved too, previously the only things that you could climb before were ropes and vines. Now you will encounter patches of thick grass on walls and ledges, this really helps with additional vertical gameplay and the hiding of secret bonus rooms.

Oh I guess I should mention that Diddy Kong has a peanut gun, the funny thing is I didn’t realise this ‘til after I finished the game. I didn’t use it once! So who remembers the animal buddies? Yeah we know that they’re basically Yoshi from Mario but they were all so damn cute. Well there is some good news and bad news; Rambi and Squawks return but the rest of the gang don’t even get a mention. The lack of swimming levels mean there’s no Enguarde but why we don’t get to see Expresso the Ostrich and Winky the Frog is beyond me!

Last but not least comes the Super Guide; designed for those not as finely tuned to ball breakingly hard platformers as some of us. After around six failed attempts at clearing a level you will have the option of getting Super Kong (the CPU) to finish the level for you. This might be great for getting past a tricky level but you get none of the rewards, my advice is not to use it – I didn’t and I’m still alive aren’t I? If you need more lives or invincibility potion then you can just visit Cranky’s Store and spend some of your banana coins.

Many people have complained that there is no classic or gamecube controller support; I agree that it would have been fun to play it SNES style but I was more than happy with the WiiRemote and Nunchuck scheme. I found them intuitive and responsive enough and I think most people will be fine after a bit of practice. Much has already been said of the graphics of DKCR. The switch from prerendered to polygonal has been fairly successful, everything is lush and detailed to the max. The rumours are that there are six times as many polygons on screen than Metroid Prime 3, which to this day is still considered to be one of the Wii’s hottest looking games.

Alright I’ve been holding it off for as long as I can but we need to talk about the music. The OST from Donkey Kong Country is epic and loved by millions worldwide; Retro made a rather interesting choice to not create a new soundtrack but recreate and remix the original. In short it is certainly amazing to be listening to the classic tunes in this new game but it can’t go without saying that despite the huge leap in technology; these remixes just don’t compare.  Donkey Kong Country Returns for Wii is a really fun title and certainly one of the best 2D platformers on the system. There’s just something magical about the speed and subtlety of the level design, one moment you can be blasting breakneck through barrels and at other times you’re hopping slowly from platform to platform with pixel perfect precision. The variety of level types is great. The easier Jungle levels are the most like the original but as you progress right up to the deviously hard Factory and Volcano you will be testing your skills with moving platforms, fire, steam and gravity switches amongst other things.

I estimate that you’ll take around ten hours to finish the main game but you’ll then have to go back to find all of the hidden Jigsaw pieces and KONG letters if you want to unlock all of the game’s secrets. There is an image gallery, music gallery and even a whole set of hidden levels – which are even tougher than the main ones! If you’re ready for the toughest and prettiest platforming on Wii then like me you’ll go bananas over Donkey Kong Country Returns on Wii. What else but 5 out of 5?

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There’s not much to be said about the original Goldeneye that you won’t have heard elsewhere a million times before. Put simply it was the best first person shooter of it’s generation and totally changed the worlds perception of movie licensed video games. To top it off, it actually felt like a real James Bond game, there was plenty of stealth, action, guns and gadgets, not forgetting the two very polygonal Bond girls. What more could any self respecting teenage boy want?

A lot has happened in the world of video games in the thirteen years since; we’re two hardware generations ahead and console power is at an all time high. Well all except the Nintendo Wii that is. You can’t fault that success of the Wii when you look at it’s sales figures but that on it’s own doesn’t tell the full story. Many third party developers complain that the Wii is too underpowered for their latest engines and as such, porting from the 360 & PS3 is no easy task, and one that isn’t worth their time. Combine this with the Wii’s casual image and we have an unfortunate situation where core mature titles are somewhat of a scarcity on Wii. Thankfully though some developers see this as a chance to snag the hardcore Wii owners with little other competition in the market.

Goldeneye 007 is a brand new game from Activision and Eurocom, both companies have gone on the record to say that this is not a remake of the N64 classic, but a new game based on a re-imagining of the movie. One of the major changes you’ll instantly notice is the removal of Pierce Brosnan and the introduction of Daniel Craig. Out go most of the gadgets and the lashings of suaveness and in comes a tougher more physical bond who prefers to use his fists whenever possible. Just like the rest of us, Bond now carries a smartphone but instead of sending tweets all day he uses it to takephotos, track targets, disable alarm systems and communicate with M over at MI6. I don’t know about you but I wish my iPhone had a direct dial to Judy Dench, GILF!

The basic Goldeneye storyline is still in place but has been modernised enough to make it more relevant to society today; for example; the game features less reliance on the Cold War vibe that has littered Bond movies for years and instead focuses more on cyber warfare. The Russian military and the shady Janus crime syndicate still feature prominently but they’re less stereotypical than before. Previously the MI6 traitor Alec Trevelyan (agent 006) was a Russian spy, but this time around it appears that he is just an English agent like Bond but has simply become weary of his duties.
Why should he endanger his life to protect England’s rich elite bankers when they’re the ones that have helped put the world into recession? Of course with all the skills and knowledge acquired after serving in Her Majesty’s Secret Service, he is more than capable of planning the world’s greatest bank robbery. Can James Bond stop Alec from carrying out this heist and covering his tracks by blasting London with an enormous Electro Magnetic Pulse from the stolen Goldeneye satellite?

If you wanted retro first person shooter action then you’ve come to the wrong place, Goldeneye is a modern and up to date first person shooter. Many have compared the game to Call of Duty but that doesn’t tell the whole story. Call of Duty is well known for bringing direct storytelling to the forefront with a streamlined narrow experience focussing on one path and multiple set pieces. This modern Goldeneye uses those same style of set pieces and cut scenes to tell it’s story but in a less scripted way. Whereas many Call of Duty games seem to have a massive explosion around every corner and millions of continual re-spawning enemies, Goldeneye sticks to the stealthy roots we know and love.

Right from the start Goldeneye puts you just outside the familiar Verzasca dam, it’s quite possible to go in all guns blazing but you’ll alert more enemies to your presence. Generally Bond likes to operate quietly in the shadows and you’ll find the game a bit easier if you think like a real spy. Creeping up behind on unsuspecting baddies and taking them down quietly is much better than shooting a noisy weapon about the place. If you can remember back to the original Goldeneye then you may well recall that the levels were big and sometimes you’d explore an area only to find that there was nothing there anyway. Some people may describe that as a waste of space but for me it seems more realistic, why should you find all of your mission objectives along a predetermined straight route when you could just as easily sneak upstairs and locate a small office with those secret documents in? For me Goldeneye gives the player a greater level of explorational freedom, if you just follow the checkpoint marker then you’ll miss some interesting stuff and that’s the way it should be. You’ll be rewarded for taking your time and looking in every nook and cranny with better weapons hidden in locked chests, just shoot the padlock off and the goodies are yours.

The single player campaign is split into 4 difficulty levels:

• Operative is the lowest difficulty level and contains the main story missions.
• Agent features heightened difficulty and an extra couple of side objectives.
• 007 will tax you by increasing the difficulty further as well as adding even more objectives.
• 007 Classic is the same as 007 but is where the original Goldeneye fans will feel more at home because auto health regeneration is removed and the body armour pickups return.

Oddly enough before the game’s release most of the talk about Goldeneye Wii was about it’s multiplayer modes. Activison promised us a return to our heritage with awesome splitscreen local multiplayer, of course it’s fun playing online but there’s nothing quite like blasting your friends to pieces when you’re in the same room is there? So the very same deathmatch that attracted me to the original returns in all it’s glory here on Wii, up to four players can sit around with a quarter of a TV screen each and play headlong into the night without having to worry about laggy servers or migrating hosts every 10 minutes. If you can find three friends to come play Goldeneye with you then I promise you’ll have masses of fun here, almost every aspect of the game can be customised and there are plenty of deathmatch modes to choose from. To everyone’s surprise Eurocom didn’t go the easy route and leave Wii owners with no online mode, those with broadband can take the game online and experience a fully fledged multiplayer experience that you’d normally associate with the HD consoles. A full XP ranking system awaits you and just like with Call of Duty, the more you play the better the weapons you’ll unlock.

Whatever mode you play, Goldeneye features a range of control schemes for Wii supporting every peripheral except the Wii Balance Board. Those who have experienced Wii Pointer controls on shooters such as Resident Evil 4, Metroid Prime 3 or The Conduit will be pleased to hear that they too can point at the screen and shoot those Ruskies. As much as I wanted to use that control method I just had to default to a joypad, the sluggish framerate and auto aim assist conspire to ruin the default control system. You can also use the Wii Zapper, Classic Controller or even the Gamecube pad if you feel so inclined, but the best experience will be gained if you use the new Classic Controller Pro – this updated pad features better button and analogue stick placement as well as being much more comfortable to hold. It is with this that I personally suggest plumping for the Collectors Edition of Goldeneye that comes packed in with a discounted cost Classic Controller Pro, that is if you don’t already own one.

The positives:

Goldeneye on Wii looks terrific and is one of the most ambitious games to come out on the system do date, there’s real time lighting, explosion and smoke effects a plenty. The levels are huge and full of detail with no fogging and a very long draw distance, it’s certainly come a long way since the N64 original. The attention to detail is stunning and creates the most authentic Bond atmosphere to date. Everything from the voice acting of Daniel Craig and Judy Dench to the title sequence with the (obligatory) sultry naked female swimmers, set the scene perfectly. Not to mention the game is full of the same superb motion performance capture you’ve seen in games such as Resident Evil 5 and Uncharted 2.

The negatives:

Well I can’t complain about the effort put into Goldeneye at all, however my biggest complaint has to fall to games sluggish framerate. This can’t really be attributed to the developers though, they set out to create the best FPS on Wii and they’ve succeeded – however there’s only so much they can do with a CPU and GPU which are just a small step up from the Gamecube and Playstation 2. Goldeneye deserves to be running at a solid 30fps but for the most part it feels like we’re lucky to get 25, it doesn’t sound like much but it’s a noticeable difference.

Goldeneye for Wii is an essential purchase for all Wii owners who have been waiting for a real gamers game since they finished off Super Mario Galaxy 2. It’s true you could play a much better looking game on 360 or PS3 but if you want that authentic Bond experience then persist with Goldeneye and you’ll understand that graphics aren’t everything. Despite the flaws that come from being too overambitious on a platform that is underpowered, and yes seeing as you ask; I enjoyed the single player campaign more than the much more expensive Black Ops on my Xbox 360. Goldeneye scores a perfect 5 out of 5.

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Switching seamlessly between better 3D sections than Sonic Adventure and better 2D sections than Sonic 4, Sonic Colours manages to completely grasp onto what a new Sonic game should be and runs with it. The action is fast – super fast – but controllable and natural. The level design is unfortunately linear, but makes up for it by offering you a lot to look at and constant impulsive gaming. It’s a pretty game, especially for the Wii, and we don’t even need to ask whether the music is any good – it’s a Sonic game, of course it’s good.

The ‘Colours’ part of the title is all because of the Wisps, a multi-coloured alien species who are being pestered by that blasted Doctor Eggman. Isn’t he dead? Nope, he’s somehow still bumbling around, opening up a intergalactic theme park to cover his plot to enslave the Wisps. Sonic buddies up with the Wisps in order to save them. They can offer him power-ups when he rescues them from the fat doctor’s traps, and every colour gives a different power. In the Wii version, there are eight colours to pick up, and they all have great effects on gameplay. Cyan turns Sonic into a laser, Pink turns him into a sticky bomb, Purple lets him eat up anything in his path – oh man, even writing these down reminds me of how fun all these powers are. The highlight is the Yellow Wisp, who allows Sonic to drill down through solid rock to secret areas beneath him, just like a real hedgehog. Surprisingly, these gimmicks don’t ruin the game and they don’t make you cry over the packaging. They actually make the game better. GASP.

In order to save these good gimmick-generating plot elements, Sonic must explore eight themed planets. This results in a lot of typical Sonic fare, casino planets and green hill planets for example. Each level is an assault course of massive leaps, bouncy springs, robots to smash and rails to grind. Nothing out of the ordinary for the blue hedgehog. There’s over sixty levels on offer here, so there’s a decent dose of longevity to look forward to, although a few moments of bad level design let down the rest of the stages. Mostly this happens when the flow of the game slows down so Sonic can deal with a puzzle, which goes against pretty much everything Sonic Team should be aiming for. Difficulty-wise, most gamers will coast through a lot of the game, but that’s not to say you won’t be frustrated at times.

Something’s got to be wrong here. The 2D sections of the game are great, the 3D sections have ditched a lot of the frustrating elements of the earlier games, even the bosses manage to not completely suck. I suppose I could criticise the co-op multiplayer mode, which is awkward and boring and reminds of the silly ‘co-op’ gaming of Sonic 2, where speed + keeping two players on screen = a complete disaster. You can play with your Mii’s face plastered over Sonic’s body, so that should keep the kids happy, but other than that, this should be treated as a strictly one player experience. Sonic Colours could have done with a true special stage as these tend to be some of the better moments of Sonic gaming, but the chaos emeralds (and their reward, hint hint) are still here.

Sonc Colours was written very much for children and relaxed players who are not looking for a brain-busting challenge. The storyline is silly but written with its tongue intentionally well in its cheek. It’s intentionally self-deprecating, and occassionally genuinely hilarious. Sonic straight up telling Eggman that he’s being “lame” is brilliant, given the amount of crap he’s put with in the past.

It’s one of those rare adrenaline-pumping rollercoaster ride games, packed with instinctive controls and terribly fun moments, embracing the spirit of the moment and not hanging around to think about things too deeply. It’s not perfect – the gameplay slows down at times and difficulty spikes are a problem – but it has so many good ideas that it should fill all Sonic fans with optimism for the future. Show support for Sonic and pick this one up. Unless you hate fun or something. Good on you, Sonic – you get an 4 out of 5.

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Many of you may believe that keeping fish as pets is a very simple and hassle free thing to do. After all they don’t need to be taken for a walk like a dog and they don’t use your legs as scratching posts as would a cat. However if you really want to keep fish properly you’re going to actually need more care, skill, money and patience than you’d ever expect – keeping a solitary goldfish in a bowl of water just doesn’t count (and it’s cruel).

For one thing; before you even think of buying any fish you’ll need a good size tank, an air pump, gravel, water plants and possibly even a water filter. That’s just for cold water fish! Marine and Tropical fish require a water heater, water treatment and a 24hour backup power supply to prevent the water from getting too cold if the power cuts out. All in all it’s a tough business and not one that you want to jump right into without any preparation.

Well Hudson Software say they have the answer; My Aquarium 2 for Wii is a fully interactive piece of WiiWare software that places a virtual fish tank on your television screen. I don’t know about you but it sounds a whole lot easier, safer and less ethically troubling to me. My Aquarium 2 differs slightly over the original with it’s theme. This time out rather than have a collection of random fish we’re given a more unusual selection of Deep Sea fish and crustaceans, some of which live as deep as 4000m in the real ocean.

Just like before; you’re free to have several aquariums running at once and switching from one to another is as simple as clicking on it’s icon. The reason you’d want more aquariums is because just like real life, if you mix fish of uneven sizes together then they may very well eat start eating each other. Cannibalism may be fun when you watch a Zombie movie but it’s totally different when your Wii tells you that some huge ugly fish has just eaten all the other little fish in the tank for breakfast. Whilst we’re on that topic, no fish simulation would be complete without the ability to feed the little buggers. Thankfully you have an infinite supple of fish biscuits and fresh worms (yummy) to keep the inhabitants of the tank well fed, don’t feed them too much though – fish obesity can be a real problem and could cost a fortune in therapist fees.

Of course there’s no forgetting about the ability to customize your tank; everything from the style, lighting, features and plant-life can be customised. If you want a gloomy looking tank then that’s no problem, those with design skills on the other hand can use the Wii Remote to place objects like rocks, coral and novelty ships and air pumps into position. Each sized tank has a capacity level which you can’t exceed so don’t go trying to shove too much into your first tank, spread the stuff around nicely and keep things interesting.

Last time out My Aquarium for Wii featured WiiConnect24 and Forecast Channel integration and once again they’re both back. Real time weather changes occur in sync with the Wii’s weather app and if you have any My Aquarium 2 owning friends then the ability to view each-others online tanks could get you both really excited.

When it comes to the pinch My Aquarium 2 for Wii does what it promises but no more than that. There is still little fun to be had with a virtual aquarium unless you are a real fish lover. Aside from the small description of each fish there is also not too much to report on in terms of education either. The graphics and sound of My Aquarium 2 for Wii are average to say the least, perhaps I’ve been spoilt by the HD version on the PS3 but for whatever reason things look muddy, blurry and very pixelated on a high-resolution screen. Those with standard definition TV’s may fare better but don’t go expecting too much.

Sadly I can only really recommend My Aquarium 2 for WiiWare to those who really did enjoy the original or those with passion with virtual fish. Even with 5 DLC packs available for download by the end of the year I can’t see it being enough to keep my excitement level up. 2 out of 5.

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Related: Best Wii games for Christmas 2010, My Aquarium review

PokéPark

PokePark Wii: Pikachu’s Adventure for Wii is the latest adventure for everyone’s favourite yellow Pokémon; Pikachu. Join Pikachu and friend on an adventure like never before, that’s right a Pokémon theme park full of fun games and challenges. If you know a child that loves Pokémon then they’ll love PokéPark for Wii.

Just Dance Kids

Just Dance Kids for Wii is the latest game in the series and this time you won’t find any music here for old fogies like me and you. 40+ hit picked and choreographed especially for younger gamers; any children that love to boogie will really enjoy Just Dance Kids Wii.

Babysitting Mama

Yes Babysitting Mama is the stereotypical game for young girls who love dolls and who already have been cajoled into thinking that they want babies. Damn you television! Babysitting Mama for Wii is from the same people who brought us Cooking Mama, expect lots of fun little minigames with a babysitting theme.

Bakugan Battle Brawlers

Bakugan Battle Brawlers: Defenders of the Core for Wii is just the title for the robot and dragon loving kid in your life. Why? Well because it’s full of giant Robotic Dragon machines that battle eachother. What more could they possibly want?

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

Harry Potter, that’s another thing that kids love. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows for Wii is the brand new video game adaptation of the latest Harry Potter movie. Fun for every little Wizard or Witch in your family.

Related: Top kids Wii games, Nintendo Wii buying guide for Christmas

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Well get ready to react in that very manner because Jett Rocket for Wii is a 3D Platform Adventure game which takes great inspiration from Nintendo’s Gamecube classic. Before things get too silly I’ll point out right away; Jett Rocket is not as good a game than Sunshine – but that doesn’t mean it’s bad either, let’s find out more in this Jett Rocket WiiWare review.

Jett Rocket is a peaceful ecological superhero who looks a bit like Ben 10 crossed with GI Joe. Not everyone cares about the environment and it appears that the evil Power Plant Posse have invaded a peaceful planet called Yoroppa. Not only have they installed horrible fossil fuelled power plants all over the once beautiful planet; they’ve left lots of horrid robots guarding them all too. Just as you or I would, Mr Rocket vows to clean up this mess once and for all and promptly gets down to the planet’s surface to sort matters pronto.

So far you’re probably wondering about the afforementioned similarities to Super Mario Sunshine; well wonder no more. You may remember that in Sunshine Mario had a three function water pack called Fludd? Well Jett Rocket can’t quite afford expensive tech like that but don’t worry, he does at least have a standard jet rocket pack and if it means he can float about the place does it really matter what fuel it uses?

Ok so both games feature a rocket pack but what else do they have in common? Well each of the three world locations (Tropical Island, Snowy Artic and Toxic Swamps) are distinctively themed and split into levels. At the start of each level you’re given a quick scan of the horizon in a mini cut-scene which usually (in combination with the level name) gives you a clue of what your goal is. From here on it’s down to you and Mr Rocket to get the job done.

Completing a level is usually a simple case of running around solving some basic puzzles such as hitting switches, throwing bombs into containers or finding hidden batteries to power a stone cannon (weird eh?). On your way you need to collect as many Solar Panels as possible because these are your ‘Power Stars’ to unlocking the next world. Jett’s ship needs as much power as possible and the only way to power the transporter is to install those solar panels pronto. Now Jett doesn’t quite have the move set or aerobatic fluidity of Mario so you can forget about cartwheels, backflips and what not because you’ll mainly be running around doing the odd bit of jumping, smashing and floating with your jet pack. Nevertheless apart from the stiff robotic feel to Jett and his movements (even though he’s human), exploring the area does trigger that 3D Mario feel much more than you’d expect. Of course at the end of each world is a boss, none of ‘em are super tough but not they’ll not be walk in the park for you either.

Now let’s not get over ourselves here; Jett Rocket will not worry Shigeru Miyamoto and the Mario legacy but for once this is an example of a non-Nintendo developed 3D platformer that doesn’t just fall flat on its face.

If you just give the game a chance then Jett Rocket will give you that nice warm Super Mario Sunshine glow for a few hours, probably enough to whet your appetite for finishing off those missions you’re stuck on in Super Mario Galaxy 2. The control system is a basic Wiimote and Nunchuck affair, Jett is controlled with the analogue stick and jumps with a press of the A button (and floats with A held down), attacking comes in the form of swishing the Wiimote motion style and it works well. I’m no Wii Waggle advocate but this is very inoffensive and suits me just fine.

Jett Rocket features fairly decent graphics and audio; neither will stun you into a fiery oblivion but don’t forget that squeezing anything gorgeous into the 40MB WiiWare storage limit is a tough task for anyone. The levels are pretty enough and the special effects are good enough for any self-respecting game lover, it’s all crisp, smooth and does the job. For me a game with no slowdown and a half decent game camera goes a long way to being playable, Jett Rocket easily manages this and more.

For just 1000 Nintendo Points you can have a good dose of retro 3D platforming action. Gamerscore junkies will be pleased to see that there are plenty of achievements to earn as well. Of course being a Wii title they don’t really mean anything (they’ll not appear on your Xbox 360) but it’s certainly nice to see some effort towards WiiChievements, especially when Nintendo aren’t bothering. Fun stuff indeed! 4 out of 5.

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Related: Super Mario Galaxy 2, Free Nintendo Wii Points

You take control of Flo who pretty much has to do everything in her restaurant minus the cooking. You’ll be seeing customers to their seats, taking their order, giving them the bill and then clearing up their plates when they leave. That’s the basic gameplay out of the way but it’s not as easy as it sounds. Once your restaurant starts getting busy with many customers arriving in quick succession you’ll find keeping up with the orders a real task. Flo is the only waitress and if you don’t keep the customers happy and seen to quickly then their happiness hearts will quickly decrease.

If all their hearts disappear then that means trouble for your chances of passing the level as well as dampening your high score. Your woes can easily continue with one simple mistake such as putting a party of two on a six seater table, thus not having enough seats for a party of five or six. Guess what happens if you’re carrying a dirty plate and a freshly made meal to the washing bin at the same time? Yes that’s right; the fresh food goes in the washing bin along with the dirty plate. Now the chef has to remake that order which can add a significant delay to the customer. All of this and more will drive you insane with fury but Diner Dash is so addictive that you’ll want to keep playing.

Finishing every level (unless you are playing endless time mode) requires you to reach a set number of points before closing time. Almost every task you complete gives you points but sadly you’ll need to put in extra effort to achieve an expert rating. This means matching the colour of a customer’s clothes to a particular chair to get bonus points as well as performing multiple chains. Chains require you to perform the same task multiple times in a row for an increasing multiplier score but as soon as you switch chores the multiplier resets to zero. Things are getting a bit tough and so you are given a little bit of help in the form of additions to your restaurant. Such additions include a drinks machine which can help satisfy customers waiting to receive their food and a podium which will let you recharge the heart meter of people waiting for a seat in your restaurant. The downside is that serving drinks and standing at the podium saps time you could be spending serving the customers already seated.

If you get stuck trying to make a success of Flo’s restaurant career then maybe you’ll want to attempt to play Diner Dash with friends. You can head online play hard head to head match with others via the Nintendo WiFi connection.

Diner Dash for Wii is a basic yet addictive casual title. Costing just 1000 points on the WiiWare shop channel means it’s not too expensive compared to a disc based game. The visuals are bright and colourful but don’t look as sharp as the HD console versions, perhaps even a little blurry in comparison. The music and sound effects are basic too, bippy boppy tunes that will get you by but not make you interested in owning the soundtrack. The simple and intuitive one button control scheme means almost everyone will be able to pick up play and enjoy Diner Dash. With no motion controls it also means that for a change you won’t need to wave your arms about like a madman.

Diner Dash for Wii brings nothing new to the table but is a nice little game you can load up at any time for a spot of time management fun. 3 out of 5.

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Related: Diner Dash for the Xbox 360, Hysteria Hospital Emergency Ward review

So what is Military Madness for Wii all about? Well the first thing to mention is that Military Madness Nectaris for Wii is a remake of the classic 1989 Turbografx-16 game that most of us never played back in the day, either because we didn’t own the Turbografx or that we were born years after the game came out. Whichever the excuse; Hudson Software and Backbone Entertainment have resurrected the franchise and you now have no excuse not to get into the action; but before that – the story:

There are two factions battling for supremacy on the moon in the year 2156 and as with any War we need to look into the past to understand why it started. Due to an ever increasing population and therefore a total lack of space to build anymore luxury villas on the Spanish Rivera; somebody had to find a way to free up a bit of space on Earth and do it quickly. With Ethnic Cleansing (or to give it it’s correct name; Genocide) being out of popularity the only other option was to move all of the World’s criminals to a new hyper prison newly built on the Moon.

But wouldn’t you know it, there was another reason why cheap labour being sent up to the Moon seemed such a good idea to those on Earth. There just so happened to be a wonderful, powerful and valuable new element under the Moon’s surface which needed to be mined, refined and sent back to Earth right away. Jump forward a few more years and we find that the prisoners have managed to revolt against their captors and have managed to take over the moon and use that aforementioned new mineral to start developing a massive super weapon that could destroy the Earth.

So it’s time for you as leader of the Earth’s Military to put a stop to this mess by flying to the moon and engage in a series of turn based battles to defeat those nasty baddies.

Military Madness is a strategy game set in the future on the Moon. For the most part the setting doesn’t matter because you’ll really only be concentrating on one thing: numerous amounts of futuristic tanks shooting at each other against a bland grey Moon backdrop. Nectaris for Wii is split into two straightforward modes; a Single Player Campaign and Multiplayer. In single player mode you start with a series of small enclosed maps with normal difficulty and then when you’re done with those you can move onto some larger more advanced maps.

The goal of each map is to defeat the opponent by either capturing their home base or destroying all of their units. Both require quite different tactics so which you’ll choose to do is entirely up to you, your play style and how well you are doing at the time. Each map typically starts off with both forces on opposite sides of the map with their units spread out around their home base. To confuse things a little I must explain that each of those units is actually a placeholder for up to eight actual units. To put it another way, instead of having a cluttered map the number of onscreen units is limited by grouping eight individual units into one big unit. These units never separate into their individual parts but individual ones can be destroyed when you enter battle – I’ll come to battle in a moment. Teams take it in turns to move all, some or even none of their units. Units can only move set distances and this will also vary depending on the type of ground. Flat ground is easy land based units will only move slowly across rough land and slopes.

Let’s take a look into the strengths and weaknesses of these units:

• Walking Armour – Super tough but slow. Very effective against land and air based units.
• Transporters – As the name suggests these can transport other units around the map at high speed. They’re rubbish in battle though.
• Tanks – You already know what Tanks are. Very strong, but a tad slow.
• Aerials – These are very fast and agile but not the toughest by any means. It’s best to keep moving these around attacking in short bursts.
• Infantries – The weakest but also the most useful. Human’s in armoured spacesuits with jet packs capable of flight. These are the only units which can capture an opponent’s home base.
• Technicals – Unlike the other units these can attack and then run away afterwards. Quick and agile but very weak too.

When it comes to attacking other units it all comes down to RPG like stats. Although the main factor in any battles is the unit(s) strengths and weaknesses, there are other things to consider. If friendly or enemy units are directly surrounding in the battle then that will alter the stats. Another contributor is if units are on flat, unstable or higher ground. Ideally you want to surround an enemy with several of your units trapping them on lower ground; this will give you the upper hand even this will not save you if you send a weak unit up against something very strong. Units can be repaired in factories but they will lose a movement turn whilst under repairs and at any time the factory could be captured by the enemy if not guarded.

The Military Madness Multiplayer mode is very similar to the single player campaign featuring just a few gameplay tweaks not really worth mentioning here. The good news is that you and up to three others can battle each-other locally or online. Sadly just like my experience of Military Madness on PS3, the Wii game also features a distinct lack of people playing online in random matches. This isn’t too bad if you have friends with the game but it may turn out you’ll be playing offline more than online until more people buy the title.

Interestingly enough the WiiWare version of Military Madness stands up very well against its higher def sibling on the PS3. Sure Military Madness on Wii is in low definition but unless they were running side by side you could probably not tell the difference. Everything looks near identical to the game on PS3 just without being displayed in high res. It’s just a shame that the moon maps are very bland (understandably I guess) and the units all look more or less the same. Sometimes the similarity in appearance was to my own detriment; a couple of times I got a bit mixed up and sent in low powered units up against tough ones. Apart from the bland visuals and a lack of analogue or pointer controls I was very impressed of the Wii port of Military Madness and award it 3 out of 5.

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Related: Military Madness: Nectaris for the PS3, Onslaught Wiiware review

Ok so it might be a bit mean to label Pikmin New Play Control for Wii as a straight re-release as they have made alterations to the game. But have Nintendo put enough effort into this venture to make it more worthwhile than finding a cheap second hand copy of Pikmin for Gamecube and playing that instead? It’s time to take a look in this Pikmin for Wii review. Pikmin is one of those rare breeds; a successfully implemented strategy game for a console. Joypad controllers are great for many game genres but typically fail when asked to act as if they were a PC mouse. This has generally resulted in poor user experiences in the few strategy games that have ever made their way to console systems, even those that feature analogue stick.

So if you were around a few years back when Nintendo first presented Pikmin to the world; you too may have thought they had bitten off more than they could true by creating the world’s first strategy game primarily involving coloured flowers. You take of control Captain Olimar; a strange little spaceman whose ship has crash landed on a newly encountered planet. Much to his dismay; thirty rather important pieces of the ship have scattered across a large area and without them he will not be able to leave orbit. That sounds bad enough until you realise that he only has enough air in his spacesuit to last exactly thirty days as well. Normally you’d think Olimar would be done for but hold on a minute. What is that strange sprout sticking out of the ground?

So the intrigue gets the better of Olimar and he can’t resist pulling up the sprout to find out what sort of vegetable would be growing underneath. But what do you know; instead of finding a healthy addition to his ‘five a day’ he instead has discovered a living breathing flower with very cute eyes. The flower can’t talk but seems friendly enough and is certainly happy enough following Olimar around the place and so is dubbed a Pikmin.

Olimar soon comes across a giant pod (which he calls an Onion) and with the help of his new Pikmin friend soon discovers that this is in fact, some sort of breeding facility for the Pikmin species. When a Pikmin takes a seed capsule from a nearby flower and offers it up to the Onion like a sacrifice; the Onion pop outs seeds which fall to the ground creating new Pikmin sprouts. Yes I know it sounds like a cross between The Wicker Man and Gardeners Time but Pikmin is actually a bloody great game and here’s why:

Your goal is to locate a minimum of 25 of the thirty missing ship parts within the 30 day time limit; with the help of three Pikmin species (Red, Yellow and Blue) you will need to negotiate many natural locations and battle intriguing enemies. So what’s the deal with the different coloured Pikmin?

• Red Pikmin are immune to fire
• Blue Pikmin can breathe underwater
• Yellow Pikmin can carry/throw explosive rocks

To reach the missing ship parts you’ll need to use the skills of all you Pikmin individually and sometimes in tandem. An example would be of sending Red Pikmin into battle against a fire breathing enemy so that Yellow Pikmin can travel past to collect some explosive rocks which can then be used to blast down a barrier. Simple sounding stuff but at any one time only 100 Pikmin can be out of their respective (blue, red and yellow) Onions at once; will you take 33 of each colour out on your travels or venture out with just one colour each time? As you can imagine; you’ll find yourself a whole host of clever situations that will see you battling against reaching your next ship part whilst protecting the Pikmin from harm

Whilst there are three Pikmin species to encounter, there are also three growth stages to take advantage of too. The longer a Pikmin sprout stays in the ground before being pulled the bigger and stronger it will become; neatly presented by either a shoot, bud or full flower goring out of the Pikmin’s head. Despite its simple nature Pikmin is quite a complex game underneath that requires thought just like any other strategy game. Going gun hoe into any situation will see you lose Pikmin quite quickly, you need to take care of your flower friends and that includes putting them to bed at night. Any Pikmin left outside of an Onion during the hours of darkness will be eaten by giant bugs; and after nurturing them from birth it’s something you’ll always find distressing (well I do anyways).

So what was all the New Play Control stuff? Well; of course originally Pikmin on the Gamecube used the Gamecube controller. I do happen to have played the original and feel that Nintendo did a great job in mapping the game to the pads analogue sticks and buttons. Pikmin New Control for Wii does away with that and now uses the Wii Remote and Nunchuck. With the accurate pointer system; Pikmin for Wii becomes an even more joyous game to play than it did before; you still control Olimar with a joystick but now being able to point with near mouse cursor like accuracy where you’d like your Pikmin to go makes so much sense.

Apart from the new control scheme Pikmin for Wii and 16:9 Widescreen support; Nintendo haven’t added any other bonus content for fans who have already played Pikmin before. With a lifespan of around 10 to 15 hours may sound a little short but I still loved playing through the game once again and the new play control made it a much more rewarding experience. I can’t deny the graphics have dated a little over the 10 or so years since its original release but Pikmin New Play Control Wii still is top notch game worth of 3 out of 5 despite its lack of new features.

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Related: Tatsunoko vs Capcom Ultimate All Stars review, Digimon adventure online games

It’s great to see that rather than disappear into obscurity onto PC message boards, the indie movement has instead moved onto the home consoles; something I wouldn’t have thought possible with such domineering companies such as Nintendo; Microsoft and Sony ruling the console roosts. So whilst nowadays I’d wager that zero games appearing on the Wii, 360 or PS3 were developed in somebodies bedroom. We at least still have some great talent producing low budget games that don’t spawn from the gaming equivalent of factory farming. Yes I’m looking at you Ubisoft and your range of shovelware all ending in Z.

Ok so what has this got to do with Max and the Magic Marker? Well probably not too much besides the fact that Press Play; the developers behind Max and the Magic Marker for Wii are one such indie development group. Unable to get their title picked up by a big publisher, they stuck it to the man and decided to publish it themselves digitally through the Nintendo WiiWare service.

If you’ve played other indie games on WiiWare such as World of Goo then you’ll instantly feel at home after booting Max and the Magic Marker. This isn’t just because like 2D Boy’s Goo filled masterpiece that the graphics are somewhat kiddie; no it’s because you can instantly tell that care has been taken every step along the way in making this game. This isn’t something you just see with your eyes but feel when you start to control Max and his Magic Marker. The story of Max and the Magic Marker goes like this; Max is a young red haired child who loves to draw. Out of the blue one day he anonymously receives a new drawing pen; without thinking anything of it he rushes to work on a new piece of art featuring a purple Monster. To his surprise the Monster suddenly comes to life, then starts to run amok through Max’s other drawings.

Now of course you and I would solve this problem by putting all of the drawings through the paper shredder but Max is much more imaginative and has simple yet far better plan. Max draws a picture of himself using his new magical marker thereby allowing him to come alive in the world of his drawings and chase after that purple Monster. Will max manage to defeat the Monster and return home safely with only the use of his Magical Marker? Well I know the answer but I’m not going to spoil that now but what I can say is that I really enjoyed this game. Time to look a bit more in depth isn’t it?

You take control of the aforementioned Max with your Nunchuck and his Marker with your Wii Remote in this colourful magical adventure spread across three worlds. If like me you played Drawn to Life then you too may have been disappointed that you actually were tending to colour in shapes rather than really draw unique aspects to the game. Max & The Magic Marker is a little different in that you only draw things to assist you getting Max to the end of the level safely. So these could be staircases to reach higher platforms, weights to tip a seesaw, bridges to cross chasms or even basic platforms. I’d agree in saying that it sounds rather basic but this is actually just where the fun starts.

Simply drawing a few bridges isn’t going to impress anyone, no matter how well the Wii Infra-Red pointer control has been adopted. Max must collect globules of ink as he progresses throughout each level, the more ink he has the bigger your drawings can be. For instance, to reach a collectable up high you will might need to build a large staircase but if you didn’t collect every ink container that you passed you may find yourself with not enough ink to make it tall enough. This obviously corresponds further into the game when drawing a long bridge; there’s just no way to cross a large gap with only a small bridge right?

Well wrong actually, large gaps are no match for Max and his Magic Marker. At any point the a level you can press the A + B buttons together to warp out of the picture back into the real world where the real Max is on hand to physically draw on the paper (rather than being in game). This confusing trans-dimensional concept actually makes a lot of sense when you think about it and even if it doesn’t make sense, well it’s damn useful. Here instead of drawling inside a live living piece of artwork you can draw onto it statically before warping back in. What does this mean? Well to put it simply it means that when facing a large chasm and not much ink you can draw half of the bridge you require, make Max run across it and jump towards nothing and then hit the A and B button to warp out. Here you erase the old section of bridge and draw in the missing half so that when you warp back into the game Max lands safely. Clever stuff.

I could go on further about what to expect but that would only spoil a rather unique adventure which you should experience yourself. I’m sure that other fans of World of Goo, Lost Winds and Braid will really feel comfortable with this game. All that’s for me to say is that Max and The Magic Marker is a sensational concept title which maybe a little short but more than makes up for it with some crazy platforming antics; clever physics based puzzles and just a clever down to Earth charm about it. Max and the Magic Marker for WiiWare scores an almost perfect 4 out of 5

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Related: Cocoto Platform Jumper review, Manic Monkey Mayhem review

So there’s Tuna Tossing, and there’s Mud Sliding. That’s like sledging except instead of snow there’s mud and instead of a sledge there’s you. You can indulge yourself in a spot of Lawnmower or Furniture Racing if you’re looking for a Gran Turismo killer. There’s something called Fierjeppen which has something to do with holding on to a pole? You might want to ask Wikipedia about that one. How about some Log Cutting, Cheese Rolling or (wait for it) EXTREME IRONING. Wait, is this list for real? Card Boxing and Ice Golf? Very funny guys. You nearly had me.

This is certainly not going to be a serious sporting exhibition, so turn away now if you’re not interested in stupid, light hearted games. We’ve seen mini-game collections like this countless times before, especially on the Wii, and they’ve produced some rather odd stuff: dancing Bombermen and defecating Rabbids for example. There are only ten here which instantly puts the collection in a negative light compared to Mario Party 8 and the like and it lacks the hook or gimmick that kept Rayman Raving Rabbids and Warioware interesting.

You should get your first taster of the games in Tour Mode, which sees you and your wacky character (you know, fat dudes, anime chicks and people with afros) travelling the world in search of the perfect log to cut. Party Mode is where the action is though, this is where you can kick back and have some quality multiplayer time, even if you will be giggling at how absurd the whole thing is and going “Wait, what?” every five seconds.

You’ve got a Wiimote in your hands, so you know what these games are going to want from you. Ice Golf and Furniture Racing are the most “normal” of the mini-games, being gimmicky golf and racing games respectively. Cheese Rolling is a strange mix of Boules and cheese. Extreme Ironing expects you to pretend you’re actually doing the ironing, which isn’t fun, even if you are pretending to fall out of a plane. Mud Sliding involves moving your character through targets as he plummets towards a muddy bottom, and mostly the others require a waggle or a spin of the Wiimote to get your avatar into action. These aren’t exactly inspired gameplay mechanics and it seems like Sega have put very little creativity into them instead of choosing to offer workable, somewhat fun, but very standard games.

This would be ok if there were as many games here as there are on Carnival Games or Mario & Sonic but there are not. Unless you’re heavy into your multiplayer this game will be over for you in a week.

That’s the problem here. The game is fun enough, the graphics aren’t terrible and your friends will be happy to join you playing while you wait for something good to come out. But there’s not enough depth or charm to keep anyone playing for long. I would love to say this was a missed opportunity, but the concept itself isn’t that exciting to begin with. Maybe if some more thought had gone into the mechanics, or if there had been lots more games, Wacky World of Sports wouldn’t pale in comparison to half the Wii market and receive a lacklustre score of 2 out of 5.

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Related: Carnival Games Wii review, Grand Slam Tennis review

Tags: Wacky World of Sports, Wii, Sports, Sega, WiiSports

If you’re unfamiliar with American Football I will try to explain the rules in the most basic fashion I can. The goal is to run and pass the ball towards the opposing goal line to score a touchdown, your opponents will try very hard to prevent you from doing so by knocking you to the ground. To keep possession of the ball you need to progress a minimum of 10 yards every 4 turns, if you fail possession swaps to the other team they become the offence and you become the defence. Obviously just like any sport there is a lot more to it but that should give you an idea of what we’re looking at here.

EA have once again tried to balance Madden as best they can between new users and previous players of the franchise on Wii. New or Casual players can play the game with little or no effort thanks to generous CPU assistance and the ability to just point and click at the screen to perform actions. Core players can jump straight into the action with full control using the Wii Remote and Nunchuck to control things. Motion controls are available to all players for passing the ball and performing field kicks but fundamentally control is quite straightforward without tons of arm waving.

As you may expect you can choose to play single matches against the CPU or other (up to 4) humans. Multiplayer has always been a favourite of Madden players and thankfully this still remains true here on Wii, 2 players is really the ideal but if you have extra friends they can help out in a special Huddle Up mode that can see them assist you invisibly like a Godly force.

For the real Football fans amongst you then trying to win the Superbowl is what counts and Madden doesn’t let you down here either. Now up to 4 players can play together in this mode but typically Superbowl mode has been a single player affair and that’s how I played it. Now sadly I can’t pretend I really enjoyed my time because when it gets down to it, all of the matches against the CPU feel very much the same. Unless I was playing using the advanced control scheme it felt to me as if the game was playing itself. Whilst Madden 10 does feature a full NFL roster with real NFL players the new graphic style does away with next gen photo realism. I don’t mind this but I doubt real fans will be able to recognise their favourite players on Wii and may have to look into the Xbox 360 or PS3 versions of Madden 10 for that.

When you are under full control of your team things get very complicated; choosing runs and formations is something for the true Madden players because I quite frankly can’t tell the difference between any of them. In all the games I played and won I simply either passed the ball and ran through the middle of the defence or let the Quarterback throw it upfield to a waiting player. Of course the CPU was trying to and often succeeding in intercepting the ball or making me fumble, but when they came to play my team was quite easily able to prevent them from scoring which soon made play switch to me being Offence once again. This isn’t to say that Madden 10 is easy; if you play by the rules and understand what you’re doing the game actually becomes harder because both teams are being quite tactical. However it just feels that not really knowing what you’re doing makes you fall into a style of play that allows for easy wins.

This does mean that new players can still win the trophy playing by their rules and tough players can attempt to win it by playing the game for real. What I don’t understand is how EA envisaged pictured families playing together in a happy way.

Let’s assume Dad and Son who have playing Madden games for years come up against Mom and Daughter who have never played it at all. Mom and Daughter play using the All Play mode with CPU assistance which in turn gives them a chance of winning and (after a couple of goes) maybe even a win. So if Dad and Son with all their skill do actually lose they will be quite annoyed at being beaten by the ‘cheating girls’, probably then storm off in a hiffy. This makes me think that adding such an extensive easy mode in a game really only suited for true Madden fans is a waste of time.

If you really like your American Football then Madden 10 for Wii won’t disappoint you; all of the teams, commentary and plays you’d want are here. If you do own one of the more powerful consoles you will probably appreciate the broadcast quality visuals a lot more than a couple of Wii specific features that may attract attention. Being able to point at a player with the Wii Remote to pass really does give you that directorship feel and puts you closer to being the quarterback than ever before, but it’s not such a standout feature.

If you want even more to explore then there are many mini games and practice modes available to hone your skills. I went into the mini games expecting them to be a bit Mario Party but I was wrong, again this is ok for NFL fans but your kids will wonder why these mini games are no fun.

Oh and before I forget you can now take Madden 10 online and play with random people or friends who own the game also. I’ll be honest and say I wasn’t able to find a random game and I don’t know anyone who owns it. However I assume that playing someone online is similar to playing them locally but without being able to seen them laugh or cry.

Madden 10 for Wii looks and feels ideal for an NFL lover who has taken a break from the series and wants to head back into it gently without investing many hours into learning the full complexity of the next gen versions which are more like simulators than games. 4 out of 5.

Get Madden 10 for the Wii now
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Rental: Rent Madden 10 for the Wii – free rental trial from Gamefly.com
Offers: Use our February 2010 Godaddy.com promo code to save money on web hosting and domains – watch the godaddy discount coupon video for more details, using the February 2010 CCS coupon code valid for February 2010 ‘AFGAME15′ gets you 15% off orders over $75 and ‘AFGAMEFS’ will get you free shipping on orders over $30, use the Squarespace coupon ‘WEASEL’ for 12% off the lifetime of your account.

Related: Madden NFL 10 video review, Madden NFL 09 video review

Tags: Madden 10 for the Wii, Madden, NFL, EA, Wii

As you can imagine when I heard Codemasters were developing a brand new Formula One game I wasn’t too displeased. The strange thing about F1 2009 for Wii is that instead of being released to coincide with this year’s F1 Season as you’d expect, it has in fact come out after the fact. If I’m honest I would have preferred to play this game alongside the season on TV and not afterwards when we’re already hearing details about the 2010 season starting next March.

As mentioned just a moment ago, I have been partial to Formula One game or two in the past but will not hide the fact that in retrospect they have been somewhat disappointing. I don’t think that anyone has gone out of their way to make a bad Formula One game but the fundamental problem I think is that F1 is a very difficult sport to simulate. Not only are the basic physics of the sport (such as aerodynamics) very challenging to recreate accurately, designing realistic AI CPU controlled opponents is near impossible as well. Both of these and more (or the lack of), tend to result in a F1 game which feels like an arcade title rather than the proper simulation you’re expecting.

So let’s get back to F1 2009 for Wii. Firstly if you’ve been waiting for a next gen F1 game that puts you so close to the cockpit of an F1 car that you can smell the exhaust fumes of the car in front then sadly you’ll have to wait a bit longer. If you have just been waiting for a fun spot of F1 gaming on your TV then we do certainly have a contender here.

F1 2009 Wii is all about the racing; to start with you can either create a profile then head into career mode trying to become a top F1 racer. Or you can race a standard championship/single race and drive it with your favourite F1 driver; mine is Kimi Raikkonen but yours is probably Jenson Button or Lewis Hamilton. All of the drivers and teams who started the 2009 season are here but fans of Luca Badoer who substituted for Felipe Massa will not be able to race with him.

I don’t think there is anything particularly unique about the championship mode that hasn’t already been explored in countless other F1 games. You pick a driver, race every race and see if you can win the season, if not try again. So let’s gloss over that; the same goes for picking a single race. Boring. Career mode is where you’ll have the most fun so let us start there.

After creating your profile you are an upcoming racer who is looking for his (or her) chance to drive in Formula One. From the offset I was invited to test for a seat with two teams, Red Bull and BMW. You are pitched with beating a set time around the Melbourne circuit; if you do then you’ll shortly get the chance to join the team at the expense of a real F1 driver. Once you are in the team the pressure is on; you will be given requirements and expectations of race wins etc. Whilst I didn’t drive too bad for my team I can imagine that poor results see you getting the sack. All of this is presented to you via a virtual email account which you can check before and after ever race, here you’ll get the latest news and views from the team but also headlines from the press regarding your performances. This is cute but I’d ideally have liked the option to send an email back to my team telling them to eff off or give me a faster car but as you can imagine this in an unlikely feature of any game outside ones imagination.

Taking a break from racing as a ‘real’ Formula One driver you can head into the Challenges arena; here you are pitched with a nice selection of short yet fun F1 style racing challenges to play through. For each you are awarded a rating based on your performance, the best being A of course. Some of my favourite challenges include a terrifying drive around Spa in the pouring rain on slick tyres and racing to checkpoint after checkpoint in an almost OutRun like affair. Whilst it was fairly easy to get an A rating on most of the challenges there are a few which are very tricky and even I, the ultimate gamer, still can’t manage to get the highest mark on. Something to keep me entertained for a bit longer to come I’m sure.

Something else that will longetitify Formula One 2009 for Wii is the inclusion of what is probably the best multiplayer F1 experience to date. The chance to compete with another player in a full season split screen on your Wii; yes I know this would have been a much better online experience but that’s a criticism to come later. What makes this a real treat is that unlike past multiplayer F1 games I’ve played in my life, this one has a smooth framerate attached. As you can imagine having to draw and calculate two F1 circuits and up to 39 cars on screen at once (well almost) is a big task of any platform let alone Nintendo’s humble Wii with a relatively slow CPU and GPU pairing. Right enough of the geek speaks for a moment, time to get back on track (pun not intended).

Another nice feature of F1 2009 is that you have a whole host of control options; those who love the Mario Kart Wii Wheel will be pleased to hear that they can certainly have a go at motion F1, traditional gamers can stick to the Wii Remote and Nunchuck or Classic Controller setups but real core drivers can shell out on Logitech’s official Nintendo force feedbacked steering wheel for the ultimate realism. I don’t have the fancy Logitech Wheel but do have the rest and came to the conclusion that the Remote and Nunchuck felt the best even though the classic controller offers analogue acceleration and breaking. Sadly the awful shoulder buttons of the classic controller spoil what would have been my first choice of controller (why no Gamecube pad support though). Whatever your flavour you should be able to handle an F1 car like a pro and if not, you can turn on a number of helpful driving aids which will result in a much easier car to drive.

While I mention how easy cars are to drive I would like to give the game credit on being fun yet fairly realistic. Once you take away the driving aids and raise the AI level things become mush trickier and winning a race becomes a much harder prospect indeed. Real F1 teams may recall that 2009 saw the introduction and subsequently the end of KERS; this was described as a push to pass system which would allow a driver 3 seconds of extra speed per lap. Even though only a handful of teams actually used the system and all but two managed to use it well, every car now has access to the boost button here. In short this means that when you come to overtake a car you can hold the C button for an extra bit of oomph, yes it feels like cheating but if everyone else is doing it – you need to too!

Because this review is heading into ridiculous word length I should come to some sort of conclusion and rather quickly.

F1 2009 for Wii is the best Formula One game I have ever played; now whilst they sounds like high praise it isn’t actually quite that grand. This is because I haven’t played very many good F1 games at all, however there is a lot to like about F1 for Wii. Firstly it plays pretty well and that makes enjoying it a whole lot easier, secondly being able to experience a decent racing game besides Mario Kart on the Wii is a bonus. Thirdly the game for the most part looks great, obviously detail is quite low to keep things smooth on Wii but every track is recognisable and when you bump or go up/down a hill you really feel like you are. Also it’s great to finally have a go at driving around some of the new circuits such as the Singapore night race, Abu Dhabi and Bahrain.

Yes there are a few issues; the menu screens are annoying and bland, the music is awful and the Pit Stops are CPU controlled and seem to take much longer than the pit clock suggests. Worst off all though is when in single player mode you notice slowdown issues even when no other cars are near you. Some of the circuits and stadiums appear to be too detailed for the Wii’s own good and cause the FPS to drop down at times. However this happens rarely and isn’t that bad, it’s just very odd that in multiplayer the slowdown disappears; it must have something to do with the huge drop in graphic quality, resolution and car detail in two player mode.

Overall I’d say this is a must by for Wii owning F1 fans, 360 and PS3 owners who don’t own a Wii can probably wait until next year when F1 2010 is scheduled to be released on all formats.

I award Formula One 2009 for Wii a competent 3 out of 5 and praise Codemasters for a good first effort at F1 gaming, however this grace is short lived because I expect a solid 60FPS, 480p and online mode in next year’s edition if I’m not to be disappointed.

Get Formula 1 F1 2009 for Wii now
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Related: Mario Kart review, MySims Racing

Tags: Formula 1 F1 2009 for Wii, Formula 1, F1 2009, Wii, driving, racing game

Virtua Tennis 2009 is one of the first games designed for use with the Wii MotionPlus, and clicking this add-on to your Wii remote really seperates the men from the ball boys. Using the Wii Motion Plus demands a greater sense of attention to where you’re throwing your racket and the accuracy of your shots, while using the virgin remote is a lot more forgiving. There is no requirement to use the add-on, it’s completely optional and the game plays perfectly well without it, but a hardcore player might want to use it to crank up the realism a little bit. Not to mention the difficulty.

Virtua Tennis 2009 for the Wii is a pretty game, full of the bright colours of summer, but the game engine requires some tweaking. It seems to strain under its own weight at times, the animation occassionally jumping or glitching and your avatar misfiring on his shots once in a while. This is irritating because of the laziness it seems to reveal. Does Tennis not require the degree of flawless attention to detail that soccer receives in its FIFA and PES games?

Like Wii Sports before it, Virtua Tennis is best served with a friend by your side, with both of you trying not to knock each others’ block off with your wild attempts at professional shots. Playing online is a decent enough distraction, but the glitching amplifies here when it attracts its loving mate, the Lag, and they team up to provide a whole new challenge. And not a good one, either. The online leaderboard is hard to get excited about, but hey, if you like comparing yourself to the rest of the world, it’s really, really cool.

Of course, some of us can’t afford internet connnections, and it’s not feasible to kidnap someone of equal gaming skill to you and tie them to your tumble dryer so you always have someone to play with, so pretty soon you’re going to have to go solo. You can spend hours pouring over your own character, tweaking their hair and eye shadow colours or whatever, but you’re going to spend even longer playing the Career Mode. It’s lengthy. War and Peace lengthy. It has a gradual sense of increasing difficulty so it will be a long time before any frustration sets in, and how much you will appreciate this will depend on how relaxed you want your gaming experience to be. An experienced player might grow tired of the hours of amateur opponents, while a casual player will probably find the pace and the quality of his opponents enjoyable. Whichever way, you get a lot of game for your money here, and there are tougher cookies later on in the game. Oh, by the way, you don’t have to make your own player if you’re not the creative type, there are plenty of Tennis legends like Boris Becker, Venus Williams and Andy Murray available.

Saving the best until last, we now look at the mini-games. And what crackers they are. Taking the physics and skills required in Tennis and sinking them head-first into a crazy world of arcade-style gaming is genius. Twelve games are available (well, unlockable, so you’ll have to put time in) and they’re all brimming with fun. You can play a wild over-sized pool game, or fight against pirate ships, or feed animals, all via the medium of Tennis. These are great games and are almost worth the asking price themselves.

So, whether you’re looking for an extended Career Mode or just a quick bit of fun with a pirate ship, Virtua Tennis 2009 caters to you. The only problem is that it does not stray very far from the template of Virtua Tennis 3 before it. It’s more of the same, basically, even though it is just that little bit better and packs a superior control system. Is this a bad thing? Depends if you bought Virtua Tennis 3 or not, or if you liked it enough to want a very faithful sequel. Nobody can make that decision for you. For new joiners to the series or those who go “There’s a new Virtua Tennis game out? Cool!”, this game is recommended if you’re after some competent, comprehensive and occassionally crazy Tennis fun. This game receives a score of 4 out of 5.

Get Virtua Tennis 2009 now
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Related: Virtua Tennis 2009, Grand Slam Tennis

Tags: Virtua Tennis 2009, Wii Motion Plus, Virtua Tennis, 2009, Wii

Rather than throw another gloss of paint on top of the Onslaught engine like they did with their child friendly shooter Water Warfare, Hudson have delivered a rather strange first and third person shooter based on human Evolution for one or two players.

You take control of a small monkey like creature who has to battle against strange primeval creatures in a bid for evolutionary survival. Rather than a gun to shoot up the world with, your monkey throws nuts (yes nuts) towards enemies such as; Giant Mushrooms, Lizard Men, Flying Insects, Dinosaurs and even Piranha type fish. You can also pick up a couple of bonus items which are randomly dropped from fallen bad guys; there is a handy power weapon which can kill quite a few enemies at once and a handy fire rate booster which obviously makes you shoot faster. If you’re an old school gamer it may feel you’ve played Shootanto before, this isn’t because it’s a remake or a rip-off of some classic game; no.

Shootanto really feels like it was developed in the 1980s for the Arcade because you’re asked to do two things at once. Instead of just giving you a crosshair on screen like your typical FPS you also see your character onscreen at the same time and it moves independently of where you point your Wii Remote gun style at the screen. You need to move your character left and right with the Nunchuck to avoid the enemies and their projectiles. I’m reminded of the rather hectic multitasking game ColorZ. Thankfully though you won’t need six hands to play Shootanto like you would with ColorZ.

Each evolutionary period features two static screen levels; after you clear one stage of enemies and scenery you move onto a much harder second stage which features a boss as its climax. The bosses are much harder to defeat so save up those power weapons to make it a bit easier. So as previously mentioned you start off as a monkey but you do progress up through a caveman throwing spears up to a medieval human archer with a bow and arrow. Certainly things improve as you progress and so far things sound great but sadly I’ve now got to mention what is wrong with Shootanto.

My first complaint with Shootanto Evolutionary Mayhem is that it looks totally horrid, when I first started playing I thought my Wii was suffering from heatstroke.

Everything from the poorly designed and animated enemies to the scenery is blurry and moves at a substandard framerate, it looks like a 16bit Sega Genesis game stretched to fit the higher screen resolutions of the modern day Wii. I don’t mind real retro games looking a bit rough around the edges but it’s a lot harder to handle from a brand new game even if it costs just $5/500points from the WiiWare store. Gameplay wise it’s pretty boring too, there just isn’t that much variation to the gameplay at all, it’s just ten minutes of constant trigger pulling until you finally get a bit of rest bite between levels. Yes things are thrown up a little later on when enemies can walk about in the foreground after climbing up ladders but it’s a novelty that soon wares off. Elsewhere the presentation isn’t much better with music that hurt my ears and a lack of any type of online high score table which would at least make things a bit more interesting. You can’t ever fault a bit of coop and playing in two player mode is always going to be more fun but I still didn’t feel that Shootanto was anything more than a game thrown together by the interns or work experience kids working at Hudson whilst they’re real designers work on much better games such as Alien Crush, Deca Sports and Star Solider.

At 500 WiiPoints Shootanto isn’t that expensive but I’m afraid even at that price I can’t recommend it when you can have so much more fun with on-rails shooters such as House of the Dead Overkill and Dead Space Extraction on Wii. Shootanto Evolutionary Mayhem on WiiWare scores a very poor, must try harder next time, 1 out of 5.

Get Shootanto Evolutionary Mayhem now
Rental: Rent Shootanto Evolutionary Mayhem – free rental trial from Gamefly.com
Offers: Use our Go Daddy promo code to save money on web hosting and domains – watch the godaddy discount coupon video for more details, using the December 2009 CCS coupon code valid for December 2009 ‘AFGAME15′ gets you 15% off orders over $75 and ‘AFGAMEFS’ will get you free shipping on orders over $30, use the Squarespace coupon ‘WEASEL’ for 12% off the lifetime of your account.

Related: Manic Monkey Mayhem Review, Ninja Captains Review

Tags: Shootanto Evolutionary Mayhem, Wii, WiiWare, Hudson, Shootanto, Shootanto Mayhem

Your goal in campaign mode for what it’s worth is to complete around 30 levels of (mainly) Banana throwing. This could be a simple one on one duel against another Monkey or even a Deathmatch with up to six other monkey bots. Instead of using pistols you throw bananas at each other in a similar fashion to the aforementioned Boom Blox. You use the Wii Remote as if you were really throwing a banana at someone. After choosing a direction with IR Pointer you then have to hold the A button down and then swing your arm to simulate your throw without forgetting to let go of that A button again at the end of your swing. For all but a couple of the game modes the goal is to defeat the other monkeys by hitting them two or three times with a well-placed shot. Be warned this isn’t just target practice against static targets, the CPU controlled guys will be throwing bananas at you as well as each other. To survive you’ll have to learn to lean away from an oncoming projectile by holding left or right with your DPad but sometimes even this isn’t enough. As other monkeys are defeated you can spring jump yourself over to their platform and then onto another with the B buttion, this can be a great way to dodge a missile or two but while you’re in the air you can’t throw and you certainly can’t defend yourself from a well-timed banana hitting you just as you land.

Now I mentioned coconuts before didn’t I? Well if throwing bananas on their own isn’t fun enough then yes sometimes you’ll also be able to throw the much harder and more damage dealing coconut at you foes. Not only this but if you’re very lucky you can find another special weapon which is in all but name a bazooka that fires bananas, these travel much faster and more direct towards your opponents.

Ok that’s the overall basic gameplay and covers the campaign mode but thankfully there is a bit more to the game than just that:

• The Greatest Ape mode throws you into a battle scenario against all the other monkeys but this time everyone has just three lives and a limited number of bananas from the offset.
• Minute Monkey gives you just 60 seconds to successfully hit as many other monkeys as you can with your weapon, you can jump or dodge as much as you like but you’ll use up valuable throwing time.
• Ape Team is the least exciting and simply splits everyone into two teams, blue and red. Whichever team scores the most at the end wins.
• Pass The Parcel (multiplayer only) sees you throwing a box of lit TNT between each other until it explodes; the last monkey standing wins the game.

Whichever mode you love the most the great news is that you can play multiplayer with up to three other players on the same Wii console or head online and challenge your friends or random opponents. As you can imagine split screen fun is always a laugh but there is something also quite satisfying against knocking someone from the other side of the world into submission, sadly due to this being a new WiiWare game you may have trouble finding random opponents at certain times, hopefully this will change when more people buy Manic Monkey Mayhem.

This brings me neatly onto the controls. Whilst I love the Wii Remote I can’t deny that the accelerometer isn’t a perfect system to track motion controls, after all that’s why Nintendo themselves have added Wii MotionPlus. It turns out that throwing bananas long distances is much easier than throwing them further away. Whenever I tried to gently throw a banana to a nearby enemy I end up either not putting enough power through my arm and it not even registering a throw or over compensating too much throwing it too far. However this is a limitation of the controller and not the game, I experienced much the same in Boom Blox for Wii.

I wasn’t expecting too much from Manic Monkey Mayhem for Wii but I was pleasantly surprised after playing through it. It’s a low budget game created by a small but talented group of people and even without the next gen graphics and sound that some of you would be hoping for, it’s presentable enough with a nice selection of game environments and character models/animations. The main campaign does get tricky and should last a few hours but be careful of arm ache, if you do have some friends to play with then I can see you having fun in multiplayer but don’t be fooled into replacing staple multiplayer games such as Mario Kart Wii just yet. At 1000 WiiPoints I think it’s little expensive for a gamer without anyone to play with but gamers with family or friends may just find themselves spilling out for some fresh multiplayer action.

Manic Monkey Mayhem scores a good 3 out of 5.

Get Manic Monkey Mayhem now
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Rental: Rent Manic Monkey Mayhem – free rental trial from Gamefly.com
Offers: Use our December 2009 Godaddy.com promo code to save money on web hosting and domains – watch the godaddy discount coupon video for more details, using the December 2009 CCS coupon code valid for December 2009 ‘AFGAME15′ gets you 15% off orders over $75 and ‘AFGAMEFS’ will get you free shipping on orders over $30, use the Squarespace coupon ‘WEASEL’ for 12% off the lifetime of your account.

Related: Boom Blox Bash Party Review, Bomberman Ultra Review

Tags: Manic Monkey Mayhem, Manic Monkey Mayhem, Monkey Mayhem, Wii, WiiWare

Zoo’s originally were a way for regular folk to see the weird and wonderful animals from around the world, whilst that is still the case nowadays Zoos are having to take on a different more preservational role. As you may know the by-product of taking over the world has been to make most of the planets wildlife to almost extinct. What has all this got to do with My Zoo from Hudson Software? Well probably not too much but my point is that I like wildlife and so the idea of having my very own Zoo inside my Wii sounds kinda fun. Let’s see if the reality of it is any good in my review of My Zoo for Wii.

My Zoo for Wii is another title from Hudson available exclusively on the WiiWare store for just 500 points. You instantly become the head zookeeper and are tasked with loading up the four environments with different species of animals including Lions, Pandas, Elephants, Bears and more. You should ideally place them in one of the three ideal natural African looking settings but you do have the choice of letting them live in a children’s bedroom. Each location can have a maximum of three single species animals but if you want to have babies you need to make sure to have a male and a female as well as leaving the space for a third free. After you’ve brought your animals into your area you then have to pick a name. Now it’s the tough bit, caring for them; this includes feeding them, petting them and cleaning up their enclosure. If you don’t turn on you Wii for a few days you may well find out that they have been taken away by the owners of another Zoo because you didn’t take care of them properly. This in itself is a good lesson for the kiddies, remember, a dog is for life not just for Christmas folks. It is important to keep a check of the stat bars to make sure they are happy and not left hungry.

When you’re happy with your animal’s upbringing you can release them into the wild which will free up space for a new set of animals for you to care for. You’ll do this a few times before you run out of stock animals and then you can head online and purchase new species for 100 Wii Points each. This should extend your playtime a bit further.

Graphically watching all of the animals is lovely, they are rather good looking models and they are beautifully animated. The problem is unlike real animals I just didn’t get that attached to these virtual creatures and they seemingly didn’t get attached to me either. Hudson has appeared to miss out on any sort of interaction or natural emotion and as such it all feels a bit stale. Of course I don’t want a PetZ style game where you dress Lions up in party hats and play ball games with them but I did expect to achieve some sort of bonding with the animals. Sadly every time you go to the enclosures it feels like you’re just watching the same few repeating animations all of the time, there doesn’t seem to be the level of individual animal personality you find when you watch nature documentaries on TV.

Whilst My Zoo for Wii is a unique title and I love the idea of people learning more about animals I just don’t think this game achieves very much. It isn’t that much fun to play and it’s not very educational either, I would advise anyone to just spend some time watching the Nature Channel on TV and donate the $5 it would cost to a Nature Preservation society of some sort.

My Zoo for Wii gets a disappointing but functional 2 out of 5.

Get Wiiware Points now
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Offers: Use our Godaddy coupon codes for December 2009 to save money on hosting and web domains – watch our GoDaddy coupon code video for more details, using the CCS discount code valid for December 2009 ‘AFGAMEFS’ will get you free shipping with any order over $30 and ‘AFGAME15′ will get you 15% off any order over $75, use the Squarespace coupon ‘WEASEL’ for 12% off the lifetime of your account.

Related: EyePet review, My Zoo release date

Tags: My Zoo, Wii, Wiiware, Zoo, Hudson

Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Winter Games could be considered a sequel to last year’s title but I’d describe it as more of a complimentary game. Because it doesn’t feature any of the original mini games from the previous Mario and Sonic game you could easily own both without worry. Now I’ll own up and admit to you I didn’t like the original Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Games as it was full of over the top waggle controls; but I’m more than willing to give Sega a second chance in my Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Winter Games review.

Just as with Sonic and the Black Knight; this game features a truly stunning FMV intro; sadly that level of graphic fluidity doesn’t carry on into the rest of the game but more on that later. If you played the previous game you’ll already know to expect to be able to control your favourite characters from the Mario and Sonic franchises in genuine recreations of the games and locations of the upcoming Olympic festival. This time we’re in snowy Vancouver with a whole host of chilly mini games on offer; Skiing, Skating, Snowboarding, Skeleton, Bobsleigh, Hockey, Curling and many more. As you’d expect there are three main ways to play this Olympic themed party fest; first your typical story mode (Festival) where you on your own or with some buddies can play through an entire Olympic festival in search for those gold, silver and bronze medals. Secondly you can just pick an event in single match mode you can just pick your favourite game and attempt to beat your records. Finally though Party Mode gives you all of the fun events from the story mode but stripped down into your typical Wii Party format, which funnily enough is great for parties.

For me most of the fun of Mario and Sonic at the Winter Olympic Games for Wii came from the festival story mode. This mode gives you and your friends the opportunity to head through a great selection of Olympic events in competition against popular Sega and Nintendo characters. To spice things up even further Sega have cleverly split up the Olympic festival into days in which you’ll sometimes be taking part in training, sometimes events themselves and even some special Dream Events. Now as it is this time around all of the events in this game are actually very fun in themselves; but these Dream Events must be my favourite. The reason I love the Dream Events is that they are a total warp away from the Olympic environment, instead Sega have mixed up classic Sonic and Mario game themes into the sports. Great examples are Dream Ski Cross where you Ski through a Super Mario Galaxy style level and Dream Alpine which lets you Ski through a snowy Green Hill Zone esque Sonic level. There are Sonic Rings and Mario Coins all over the place and even those item crystals from Mario Kart get an appearance. These are perfect additions which will bring smiles to the faces of core gamers among players who maybe feel the party game theme is below them.

Obviously the fun doesn’t end there; every time you take part in an event you will earns points to spend in the shopping area. There are literally hundreds of things to buy; everything from new items of clothing and equipment to decorative stickers to glitter your boards with.

Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Winter Games is a very enjoyable single & multiplayer experience; unlike the previous game the controls are light, accurate and use the motion controls perfectly. Instead of asking you to wave your arms about like crazy giving yourself terrible arm ache, almost all of the games require gentle waving and leaning motions with the occasional forceful movement. I can’t explain how much off a relief it was not to have to throw my arm about and get hit in the face with the Nunchuck cable. Now that FMV intro I mentioned is indeed gorgeous but sadly the ingame graphics don’t quite live up to it; the character models are fine but the environments are a little lacking. Another grumble is that slowdown can affect multiplayer games when lots of things are on screen. My biggest complaint however is that the sprawling arena crowds are made up of horrid 2D low res character sprites which looked like they’ve been ripped right out of the 2D Mario and Sonic games and plonked right into this 3D engine.

Graphical grumbles aside, Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Winter games is my favourite third party causal game on Wii. You won’t have more fun playing games with your family on a Sunday afternoon unless you already own Mario Kart Wii or Wii Sports Resort. An almost perfect 4 out of 5.

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Related: Sonic and the Black Knight Review, Mario and Sonic at the Summer Olympic Games

Tags: Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Winter Games, Mario and Sonic, Olympic Winter Games, Wii, Mario, Sonic, Olympics, Party

If you’ve played Mario Party or Rayman Raving Rabbids you should know how a party game on the Wii plays. Instead of a deep gripping adventure set in a dungeon or open world urban cityscape; Ninja Captains gives you a loose storyline to tie 20 minigames together; this is what I like to call The Story Mode. Here you’re introduced to the four sleek Ninja Cats that you and up to 3 friends can control. The storyline takes place as the Ninja Cats try to save the world from a giant mouse that has knocked over the Statue of Liberty and is wrecking more havoc around New York. The trouble is that as soon as they start, they’re whisked away to the other side of the world and will have to try their best to get back as quickly as possible. To do this they travel from city to city and must compete in a minigame to proceed to the next. They’ll visit iconic places such as England, France, the Artic, Japan and Australia (amongst others). Right a party game should be judged on its games and that’s what I shall blather on about next.

The front of the Ninja Captains Wii game box says that there are 20 games; I didn’t actually count to verify but I have played them all. To start I will admit that there is a fair bit of variety to the games; Hair Cutting, Fishing, Rock Climbing, Balancing Crockery, Dancing, Surfing and Shuriken throwing are just some of the better ones you’ll encounter. They all last under two minutes and for the most part are fun for a group of 4 kids. The CPU will control any Ninja’s not being control by humans. Younger gamers or those playing solo may be frustrated by some of the minigames using lots of imprecise waggle control which may result in many attempted retries. One nice feature is that after a few retries the game will ask if you’d like to switch to baby difficulty; even I had to do this to complete one or two of the games. Something I found quite strange was that many of the minigames featured no background music and lacked atmosphere. Amidst the huge array of similar party games already on the market, Ninja Captains’ games really do not stand out; however one thing in its favour is the humour and quality of the animated story moments. Rather than go for your typical budget priced FMV sequences, Ninja Captains features dozen of rather stylish hand drawn animations that set the mood rather well and make you chuckle. As you play through and complete each mini game it is then unlocked in Party Mode; all this is that from then on you don’t need to play the story mode through again and can choose your favourite games and skip the ones you don’t like. Most of the games are at least a little fun but all will involve you waving the Wii Remote and Nunchuck around, if you prefer stationary games this is not for you.

If you’re a parent of some younger players between 3 and 6 years old this may well be a good introduction to games on the Wii; the lack of depth and hassle in between games should keep their concentration. Sadly the poor controls and requirement for a Nunchuck doesn’t make Ninja Captains as approachable as it should, I found that I had to make some rather hard arm gestures to get the game to respond and ended up with some arm ache – not something you’d want younger kids doing I’d have thought. The presentation of Ninja Captains for Wii is a little hit and miss, good graphics and sound do feature but hidden amongst some cheap looking 3D models, textures and off the shelf library sound effects.

If you’re on the market for a collection of mini games for the kids to keep them busy for a cold winters weekend then Ninja Captains on Wii is a safe bet; just don’t be surprised that they’ll probably want more Wii party games within a week or two. I award it 3 out of 5.

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Related: Pirates vs Ninjas Dodgeball review, Wii party games

Tags: Ninja Captains, Ninja, Wii, Minigames, Mario Party

• ColourZ – A precision based puzzle game for those with maximum dexterity, or three arms.
• Water Warfare – Probably the only first person shooter designed for kids and grownups that still play with Water Pistols.
• World of Goo – Not only a great lesson in physics for the kids but a brilliant piece of storytelling all wrapped up in gooey goodness.

One of the most popular genres of game to grace WiiWare is of course the Puzzle Game. The notorious puzzle title we all know and love is Tetris; a basic game involving Blocks falling from the sky which when correctly placed together form Lines and disappear. Since its most famous release on Nintendo Gameboy we’ve see thousands of variants. Now it must be said that most of these have fallen by the wayside because they usually overcomplicate things too much or just don’t have that addictive Tetris quality. So why mention Tetris? Well Magnetis from the outset features blocks falling from above and so must be compared somewhat to the classic Russian title. Let’s find out more in my review of Magnetis for Wii right now.

Magnetis is a rather interesting puzzle game for Wii. As I mentioned it involves blocks falling from the sky but there is a lot more to it than that. To spice things up these aren’t regular blocks. These blocks are electromagnetic. The idea of the game is similar to Tetris in that you need to keep clearing lines and not let your blocks reach the top of the screen and seeing the game over message. There are three basic types of blocks, conductor blocks which form the middle part of a circuit and the two opposite electro magnets (one for the left and one for the right). All of the blocks fall down in random pairs which remind me of dominoes; as they fall from the top you can switch them over from left to right until they land. The minimum you need to create a circuit is a left and right magnetic block but to score some serious points in the game (and last more than 2 minutes) is to build a long chain of conductor blocks and place the correctly pointing magnetic blocks on either side. So yes we have a basic premise of creating a small completed circuit which when created clears from the screen lowering the block count, giving you more playroom until things build up towards the sky once again. This on its own can be tricky when things speed up as you progress levels, if you like things more complicated then you can look forward to a further two differing colours of magnet blocks which create alternate coloured circuits. As you can probably guess, it’s not wise to attempt to create a circuit with mismatching electric colours; all you’ll end up is a fused circuit and a load of dead blocks which from then on are a dead weight blocking valuable playspace.

If you want to rack up a high score you’ll need not only to clear plenty of circuits but perform combos too; here you need to plan ahead so that when your trigger circuit disappears the blocks above fall down to complete a further circuit, thus getting extra multipliers. I could go into more detail but it’s time to look at the other modes. As well as playing the traditional ‘endless’ mode you can also go against the clock to beat your high score or with a limited block count. Both are best for shorter sessions because if you’re good at the standard mode you could be there for some time. Now if you have friend who wants to come along for the ride then Magnetis’ multiplayer mode is quite fun. You can choose from a two player cooperative match where you take turns controlling the blocks up to a four player battle riot. You can’t beat a bit of four player competitive gameplay and the better you do the more nuisance blocks appear on their screen, lovely. Sadly there is no online play so you’ll have to get your three friends to huddle around your TV but that’s a perfect excuse to get some beers in isn’t it?

Magnetis for Wii is fun and low priced puzzle title offering great single player fun and a solid offline multiplayer mode. Yes its roots like heavily in Tetris but Magnetis brings some originality to a very crowded puzzle market. For just 500 WiiPoints this an absolute bargain of a game and if it wasn’t for the N64 era graphics and sound could have been released as a budget priced disc title. You can’t go wrong with this 4 out of 5 game.

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Related: Cocoto Platform Jumper Review, Rubiks Puzzle World review

Tags: Magnetis, Puzzle, Wiiware, Tetris, Wii

Learning with the PooYoo’s is a cartoon-styled educational series for children aged 3 and up. It’s available exclusively on Nintendo’s WiiWare digital download store which you can find after connecting your Wii to the Internet and heading into the Wii Shop Channel.

Learning with the PooYoo’s is being released episodically which gives it that air of a weekly television show. If you’re kids are already glued to the TV this shouldn’t upset their rhythm too much. So what are these PooYoo’s anyway? Well the PooYoo’s are a colourful race of cartoon beings which partly resemble regular fluffy animals such as Rabbits, Cats and even Elephants. Now I’m no expert when it comes to educational games. Yes I did own a couple while I was growing up but they hardly got my attention when I had Super Mario Bros and Sensible Soccer to keep me busy. The good thing about aiming an educational game towards the younger crowd is that they’re too young to be distracted by real games. Here in the world of the PooYoo’s the kiddies can start off by learning to distinguish shapes and colours and as they progress to the slightly harder difficulty are then introduced to words and numbers. The whole game is professionally narrated by an encouraging female voice and with the help of the PooYoo’s jumping around your child should easily raise a smile. All they have to do is point and shake at the screen with the Wii Remote when requested during activities such as popping Balloons of a certain colour. It’s very simple but much more interactive than a typical educational show on TV.

Overall Episode One of Learning with the PooYoo’s for Wii seems a unique and fun casual educational title. There are only a handful of activities to choose from but being able to raise the difficulty as your child gets older is a nice touch. On its own this isn’t going to turn your child into a genius but as part of a good home style and nursery schooling I think it could be a little beneficial.

Whilst graphics and sound aren’t the most important thing for a game aimed at such a young audience it’s nice to see that a lot of care has been taken to create a very nice looking and sounding experience here with the PooYoo’s. The only negatives I can mention are a lack of 16:9 widescreen support and that there is no two player mode to keep twins happy. For just 500 Nintendo Points from the Nintendo WiiWare store this seems a bargain for any parents keen to get their kids doing some basic home learning when they’re home from Nursery school.

Learning with the PooYoo’s for Wii scores 4 out of 5.

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Related: Water Warfare Review, Sea Life Safari review

Tags: Learning with the PooYoos Episode One, Nintendo Wii, Poo Yoos, Learning with the PooYoos, Episode One, Learning, Poo Yoo, PooYoos, Wii, Educational games for the Wii, Nursery

In Animal Crossing for Wii the premise of the game is to live a stylised virtual life in a virtual town filled with cute animal inhabitants. After arriving in your new town you get to choose from four small but cosy new homes and local shop owner Tom Nook will supply you a with an interest free mortgage. The problem is you’ve arrived with no money (the currency in Animal Crossing is Bells) so paying off this mortgage without any dosh is going to be difficult. Thankfully the local shop owner Mr Nook is kind enough to employ you as a delivery person for one day. This part time job entails you taking a handful of items to some of the other villagers for delivery; not only is this good practice for managing your inventory system but it’s also a good chance to meet some of the locals and learn the town layout. If you get a little stuck you can call up the map at any time to help you find where a particular character’s home is located. After just a few deliveries Tom Nook has no more work left for you. With no Job Seekers Allowance to claim you will quickly have to find a source of income. Sadly for me this is where Animal Crossing started to become a bit stale.

Instead of continuing the job theme you can simply earn money is quite silly ways. Fruit that falls from trees and Sea Shells washed up on the shore can all be sold to Tom Nook for a good amount of bells. Of course you’re not going to be able to buy many of the rather sweet items to furnish your home with right away but a few days of scrumping will easily see you earning thousands of bells. So what can you do with all this money? Well firstly as I just mentioned you can buy hundreds if not thousands of items for your home. Almost anything you could ask for is here; Chairs, Couches, Tables, Lamps, TV’s, Radios, Stereo Systems, Wallpapers, Carpets, Plants and many more. Obviously cool items are more expensive than rubbish ones but all can be sold back to Tom Nook when you’re done with them. My main issue with this system is that new items appear daily and fairly randomly – you don’t get to buy what you want when you want Amazon style here. Secondly you can spend your money creating new clothes designs but this is a tad boring. Thirdly and probably most excitingly, you can head to the City to check out the new shops and attractions. So yes, to The City! This is probably the most striking difference between Animal Crossing City Folk and its Nintendo DS counterpart, instead of just pottering about in your own solitary town (or those of your friends via WiFi) here you can live the high life and spend some quality upmarket time. Not only can you watch a show at the theatre here in the City but you can also visit an auction house, get a makeover at a beauty parlour and even buy strange pieces of art and furniture from a stolen goods racket. Yes it’s cool to visit the City a few times and meet a whole load of new people just walking around the street but after a while it does just get as boring as your own town.

To give you at least something to do in the game you will find yourself part of a giant and probably never ending collection em up. A batty old Owl has decided to open a museum in your town but forgot all about actually coming up with exhibits. Unless you want to walk around an empty museum all day you’re going to have to do his dirty work. And so the fun begins. You and your trusty set of tools (a spade, fishing rod and butterfly net) will be kept very busy looking for fossils, fish and insects to stock the museum with. I wouldn’t mind if you got some reward for helping the Owl out but everything you take in is just a donation. Maybe if you do find every single collectable you’ll get a silly item for your house but stuff that, it could take me years to find everything.

Fundamentally Animal Crossing for Wii is a nice game; it’s pretty to look at and is simple to play. This is all well and good but because Nintendo have seemingly set out to make the most casual and relaxed life simulation game of all time, there is just no incentive or challenge to play it at all. Yes you can go online with the WiiSpeak microphone and chat to your friends, even visit each other’s towns, but I can’t see that holding your entertainment for that long (I have neither the microphone or friends to test this with). Animal Crossing for Wii is a well presented but rather boring game which boasts 99 percent more potential than actual fun delivered. Even though it’s aimed towards younger gamers and housewives I just can’t see either audience being that enthralled in it.

Unusually for a first party Nintendo Game I can’t see any choice but awarding this a very low, 2 out of 5. I really hope Nintendo go back to the drawing board for the next Animal Crossing game.

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Related: Mini Ninjas Review, Lets Tap Review

Tags: Animal Crossing City Folk, Animal Crossing, City Folk, Wii

Rygar: The Battle of Argus is based on Greek mythology (yes, like God of War). The story is about as old as the gods too with Rygar battling in Argus in order to rescue a princess, who has been captured by the dastardly Titans. On his way to Tartarus, the home of the Titans, he must explore the colloseums and tombs of the ancient Mediterranean, plus Hades and cities in the sky to boot. Sounds like a bit of a mission but luckily he has brought along his gift from Zeus, the Diskarmor. I don’t know what he does for food, maybe he packed some sandwiches.

The Diskarmor is a shield that can be used for long-range attacks (yes, God of War, I know!) and can be upgraded throughout the course of the adventure with magic stones. You can unlock various powers for it including some special effects laden Summons. All in all it’s a fun weapon that’s more than capable in the backside-whooping department.

In case you haven’t got it by now, the gameplay is a lot like God of War and for those who don’t know, this means you will be running about a third person environment, hurling your weapons at armies of hideous beasties and powering up with their remains. It’s a feast of explosive, satisfying brawling, with your shield busting skulls like crazy and the bodies of mythological creatures dropping dead around you like mythological flies. It packs in more “Ohmigod-did-you-see-that?” boss battles than God of War managed, and they’re pretty creepy so make sure you play with the lights on!

There’s nothing wrong with Rygar in the slightest. The action pours syrup thick and it’s as rewarding as a certain other game I could name, and in reality there is not as much similarity in overall gameplay as you would first think. They’re both different games, if similar in style and setting, and a fan of one should love the other. Besides, Rygar did come first. While we’re on the subject, let’s take a look at Rygar’s biggest weakness: its age.

This is a straight port of a game that is the better part of a decade old and it shows. The Wii is not fantastic when it comes to sexy-looking graphics, but even Nintendo’s flagship can do much better than this. The graphics are not terrible, in fact some are pretty stylish, but they could have done with a polish. It is old, but not quite old school, and it runs and looks like a game struggling to keep up. Its approaches to gameplay are tried and tested, and perhaps a little too long in the tooth for a thrill-seeking gamer. However, with a little work, a passionate action-adventure fan can hopefully get over the antique game engine and enjoy Rygar like one would enjoy an old film. You can say a lot about its varied, exciting levels that overflow with fun things to do and critters to slice to pieces, and there truly is never a dull moment. It’s just more than a little gutting that we’re expected to pay full price for such an old title which has made no effort to keep up.

I’m going to give this game a comfortable 3 out of 5, although I would like to invite Tecmo to give this another go. A properly polished remake of Rygar which keeps the original’s charm and intelligent level design but takes into account what’s available in the gaming world today – well, that would be a must-buy.

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Related: God of War, Rise of the Argonauts

Tags: Rygar The Battle of Argus, Rygar: The Battle of Argus, Rygar, Battle of Argus, Wii, God of War

As the adventures spill out onto the Wii, you will take control of sixteen characters from the franchise (12 Joes and 4 Cobras) as you deal with the aftermath of the film’s story. You will travel the world, including Egypt, a rainforest and the North Pole, in the pursuit of justice and really big explosions.

I think we all know by now that graphics have never been the Wii’s strength, and normally that’s not a problem. But the most striking thing that leaps out of Rise of the Cobra is the rather amateur look to the game. The words ‘PS1 era’ leap up the throat and promise to make a full assault on the teeth. That might seem a bit harsh as some of the environments look pretty in a basic kind of way, but the whole style comes across as fairly old school. It’s a run ‘n’ gun shooter in a 3D environment, like a modern Ikari Warriors or Commando or something. It’s not all 20th Century though – like in Halo, you can hop into tanks and punish your enemies, and like Gears of War, you can take cover and roll around like you’re some kind of bloody hedgehog. Of course, neither of these elements are incorporated or used as creatively as they are in the games the ideas originally come from.

While G. I. Joe makes some attempts to be interesting, the action stays at a consistent flatline through the hours of warfare available. The camera, which thinks that it’s being helpful by flying around like a Zelda fairy, can trip you up at times, making the vehicles troublesome to drive and setting you up for attacks from Cobra soldiers.

I could criticise G. I. Joe for a lack of originality, but there are so many war games piling up these days, all of them treading on each other’s toes and pick-pocketing ideas, that picking this one out is unfair. The problem here is not a lack of new ideas; what did you expect from a movie tie-in? It’s the poor implementation of the ideas that it has. I wouldn’t have cared if Double Helix Games had given us a cartoony clone of Gears of War if only they had managed to code the ‘cover’ element properly. The same applies to Halo, or CoD, or anything else that they looked at for inspiration. As it is, the controls are unwell and inconsistent, and even something as simple as the auto-aiming system is buggy and doesn’t help you out in the blur of battle. Very little works, and when it does, the outcome is average.

The story, if such things interest you, plods along via passable voice acting. I can’t see anyone really being “into” G. I. Joe (or Action Force, for that matter) enough to buy this game based on a story that serves as little more than an excuse for a string of missions and has no bearing on the events of the movie or the franchise in general. The character sprites are small and poor, and the action might hold the interest of a young teenager, if he was actually into the film and knew the characters’ names off by heart. A lowly 2 out of 5 for this one.

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Related: Review of GI Joe The Rise of Cobra, Bionic Commando review

Tags: G I Joe Rise of the Cobra, Electronic Arts, Wii, Action Man, Wii