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Review: Donkey Kong Country Returns
Reviewed ennui. Developed by Retro Studios. Published by Nintendo
So it must be time for controller1.com’s annual review of a Wii game. This year, it’s Donkey Kong Country Returns, brought to us not by Rare but by Retro (formerly makers of Metroid). A spiritual follow-up to the beloved SNES games produced by Rare during their ascendancy, DKCR is a 2.5D side scrolling platformer in the vein of New Super Mario Bros from 2009. Wii-mote held sideways? Yes. Lots of shaking the controller? Yes. Superguide in case you suck too much? Yes.
You’re Donkey Kong and you’re pissed off with the world. You just want to run left to right; jump over things; pound on the ground to destroy nearby objects or daze enemies and most importantly, collect bananas. You’re a big ape and there’s a little monkey on your back some of the time. Just like in the original SNES titles, you can have Jr. on your back. He gives you a little jet pack boost when you’re in the air for some additional maneuverability but if you take too many hits, he leaves you in peace albeit a peaceful state involving greater vulnerability for yourself. The fucker.
In addition to the standard platformer moves, you can occasionally cling to some grass covered surfaces, blow candles out by shaking the controller and be fired from one barrel cannon to another. You go from point A to point B, but in various ways and with various exploratory detours to collect bonus booty. Your rhinoceros pal is back, ready to charge the hell out of anything that gets in your way and smashing through rock barriers like an asteroid at a polystyrene sales conference. Every now and then DK has to take a ride in his hard to control rocket barrel, avoiding oncoming obstacles with all of the precision of a demented, inebriated ant. And of course, the evil genii at Retro have revived the mine cart levels. Evil, evil men and women.
How does it play? It starts off fairly gently. Then it gets harder than whatever the hardest thing in the world is these days. Which, funnily enough, turns out to be this game. So with that in mind, if you get too sick of constantly dieing over and over and over and over again, you get the option to have Super Kong run through the level and beat it for you. And of course, once you done that, there’s no point in playing the rest of the game since it’s unlikely get any easier. It gets harder and harder as you progress, and then you realise that you aren’t progressing and so you send in Super Kong. And then you come to the conclusion that YOU aren’t the one progressing through the game anymore and so you eject the disc, put it back in the case and list it on eBay.
It looks and sounds good for a Wii title with cartoon art style and a silky smooth 60 fps frame rate. It also has a lot of the same memorable tunes associated with DK (one of which goes all the way back to the first game in the arcade). You do get a lot of warm nostalgia glow for your cash with this game.
It’s a quality title, especially if you like games with a high difficulty level and fairly punishing gameplay. 2D fans will love what’s on offer here. I’m only marking it down because having the computer play the game for you is not a substitute for balancing the game better.
Controller1.com rating 2/3
Review: Call of Duty: Black Ops
Reviewed on PC. Also on PS3, Xbox 360, Wii Developed by Treyarch. Published by Activision
A year after Modern Warfare 2, which was either the worst game ever or the besterest, depending on to whom you are talking, their age and the pitch of their voice; we have another Treyarch CoD game. But a funny thing happened on the way to the web forum. BLOPS isn’t all that much more than World at War, yet the internal combustion at Infinity Ward has guaranteed BLOPS would be released without being in someone else’s shadow.
The Single player campaign starts off in the early Sixties’s during the failed Bay of Pigs invasion in Cuba. You play (mainly) as Alex Mason, a bland Australian actor posing as a CIA agent (which is ironic since that also describes Mason’s voice over artist Sam Worthington) as he recounts, seemingly under duress, a number of his recent missions (it’s right there on the menus when you boot up so it’s not really a spoiler). With action splintered across several locations such as Cuba, Vietnam, some icy place in the USSR, some shanty town in somewhere or other; it follows the hyperkinetic story-telling techniques as used in MW2, but without the most important story info imparted to you in boring-as-plain-cardboard loading screens. The game never lets up on the excitement. It’s quite a contrast to the rather muted and serious MoH reboot.
There’s nothing particularly new in terms of movement or combat (you can swim now and then, but only when the game wants you to) but this is a formula adhered to by every clone game (Medal of Honor) so why shouldn’t Activision? The use of flashbacks and disorienting graphics perfectly complement the all-over-the-place story (i.e. it covers the silliness with a veneer of credulity like dressing a clown in a tuxedo). Does it make any sense? No. It’s no worse or better than MW2 it seems, but it is a pretty cool roller coaster ride if you don’t think about it too much. Even if every mission has someone to tell you what to do every step of the way. Even though the action is scripted you have giant HUD elements pointing you in the right direction and NPC’s reiterating your current objective as nauseum. Even more action and even more jam on the lens!
But because it doesn’t mess with success, it plays really well and Treyarch have managed to produce a great set of levels with less of the overt me-too rehashes of IW’s more successful missions. One new element pushed to the fore here are the missions where you control a vehicle such as a chopper or gunboat. They control as well as the rest of the game (something too many FPS’s don’t get right when they add a new element for one mission-think of Alan Wake‘s awful driving) although the controls don’t let you get into too much trouble. Yyou can’t crash your chopper, for instance. Thing aren’t as finessed as the vehicles in Halo:Reach for example). I rather enjoyed these almost fail-free missions a lot more than the skidoo/ seadoo levels of previous CoD games.
WaW’s standout contribution to CoD was always the Zombie mode that is unlocked once you’ve completed the single player campaign. It makes another appearance here and although I won’t spoil it for you, I will say it is definitely worth playing through the game to get to it. The character you play as nearly made me soil my pants from laughing so hard.
Of course, being a CoD title, there is a large proportion of the game’s playerbase who don’t care and just want Multiplayer. It’s probably the most balanced MP of any Call of Duty game to date with only a few Killstreak rewards ruining the game for the rest of us (those damn attack helicopters turning a close game into insta-lose!). I’ve had quite a bit of fun with MP though I can’t say I’ve had the burn I’ve had where I’ve NEEDED to play it a lot (ie several times over the course of a day, every day). I still anticipate playing it for a few more weeks at least (though I am tempted by the Vietnam expansion for Bad Company 2), but then I can’t see much else in the short term that’s going to compete with it. One nice thing- PC gamers get dedicated servers back (albeit heavily controlled) and gosh wouldn’t it be great if more devs took Epic and EA’s lead to introduce dedicated servers on more console games. CoD on consoles always had one thing going against it and that’s IW’s peer to peer networking code/ matchmaking is awful compared to Bungie’s. Bungie doesn’t have radio controller explosive cars, though. I love me some RCXD.
The presentation looks as good as previous CoD games (or as decent as my gaming rig can handle. Word on the streets is that the 360 version is slightly prettier than the PS3 (probably in such a small increment that it hardly matters) and the PC, if it’s beefy enough, would probably outshine the console versions, particularly the Wii (at least Treyarch caters for Wii owners). CoD sound has always been great. Stirring music and sound design is only let down slightly by a lead actor who hangs on to his accent with such a tenuous grip that you feel like giving him some supaglu. Enunciate, Sam.
So overall, it’s a good to great game (though not quite excellent). You will not lose sleep if you don’t play it, but if you have any interest in shooters, BLOPS has much to recommend it. If you think the score is low, get a life. It’s a very good game just not a must-play.
Controller1.com recommendation 2/3
Review: Punch Out
Reviewed by Lisvender
Available on Nintendo Wii. Developed by Next Level Games. Published by Nintendo.
I hate fighting games. They’re archaic, frustrating things that only elitist enthusiasts appreciate anymore. Punch-Out!!, however, is not a fighting game. In fact, you could argue that it’s not even a boxing game. Punch-Out!! is to boxing as NBA Jam is to basketball: it’s a simplified and exaggerated caricature that takes only the most exciting moments of a sport and condenses them into one hell of a video game.
after lots of scrolling, a SFW image from Punch Out
Little Mac, a junior from some Bronx high school, has teamed up with retired fighter Doc Louis to claim the championship of the World Video Boxing Association. It won’t be an easy trip, as the WVBA is quite possibly the worst-regulated sporting association in history. It has no weight classes, and no rules against flagrant cheating. Most of Mac’s fourteen opponents are twice his size, and could probably snap his neck like celery. Thankfully, they also have about half of Mac’s intelligence, as they all announce their punches with peculiar tells.
Your challenge is to recognize these tells, avoid the incoming punches, and then respond with a flurry of counterpunches. Little Mac can make left and right jabs to the face and left and right hooks to the gut. He can duck down, dodge left and right, and block jabs. If you manage to slug the other guy at an opportune moment, you can earn stars that can be used to throw a powerful uppercut. Knock him down three times in one round for a TKO. This is the way of the Punch-Out, as it’s been known for decades, and though it appears simple, it’s amazingly addictive.
this one, not so much
Mac will take on thirteen fighters in order to become champion. That may not sound like very many, but once you have the belt, you’ll have to defend it. All your old foes will line up for a chance at the new champ, and they’ll come at you with new tricks and techniques that will trip you up and make you search desperately for openings.
Since Punch-Out!! only involves Mac and his opponent at any given time, a lot of effort is put into making those opponents interesting. Next Level Games must have a platoon of expert animators under its employ, because they’ve done an amazing job at filling the fighters with personality. Your opponents preen, strut, taunt, and smirk like God’s gifts to video games, and you’re going to like some of them in spite of yourself. Glass Joe, the lovable wimp, displays a delightful mix of haughtiness and fright, while Aran Ryan, known only for being indistinct in his SNES days, has been turned into a wild-eyed madman who smuggles weapons into the ring. Even the speechless Little Mac is likably determined. The voice acting is excellent, with Doc Louis providing mostly useless moral support from the corner, and your international opponents firing threats in their respective languages. Strangely, the game’s Subtitles option only works for Doc, but not for your opponents. You’ll have to be multilingual to understand their lines.
The incredible soundtrack boasts catchy Bill Conti-style tunes with electric guitar, piano, and lively brass. You’ll hear a lot of rearranged versions of the NES Punch-Out!! theme, but they vary enough to keep you from getting tired of it. Some of the themes, like those of Russian soft-drink guzzler Soda Popinski and the monstrous Mr. Sandman, are iPod-worthy. This is some of the best music I’ve ever heard in a video game.
Here are some outrageously homoerotic pics of Nintendo’s Fellate Out!!
The only aspect of Punch-Out!! that makes me shake my head is the control. The game offers three options for control: using the Wii Remote and Nunchuk for motion-controlled punching, the Wii Remote turned on its side for button-controlled punching, and then the same two options combined with the Wii Balance Board for motion-controlled ducking and dodging. I don’t own a Balance Board, so I can’t give an opinion on it, but I’ve heard that using it sucks. I used the Wii Remote and Nunchuk successfully through most of the game, and I personally prefer it. Like other games that use motion controls for canned animations, the game doesn’t register a “punch” until you’ve a made a sufficient motion with the controller. Mac’s punches are so quick, though, that by the time you’ve extended your arm, Mac’s fist is in his enemy’s face. The motion controls work well up until the last few Title Defense matches, when beating and countering your opponents requires wicked-fast speed and reaction time. Even the split second that it takes to make a punch motion can ruin your timing and cause you to lose. You’ll have to unplug the Nunchuk and resort to old-fashioned button control to win here.\
Especially against that Bald Bull. God, I hate him.
This is the disappointing thing about Punch-Out!!: it demonstrates the faults of motion controls in video games. They’re only effective and responsive when the onscreen action corresponds to the player’s real-life movements one-to-one. Unfortunately, this drops the capabilities of the game character to the limits of the player’s big, flabby body. Contrariwise, games in which characters can do amazing things, like knock out a giant Turkish boxer, force the player to move in very specific ways in order to trigger canned animations that are more easily controlled by buttons. With games like Punch-Out!!, New Super Mario Bros. Wii, Donkey Kong Country Returns, and Kirby’s Epic Yarn, all of which are played with archaic, NES-style controls, Nintendo is more or less apologizing for the steps they’ve made, and admitting that video games really work better with buttons. It’s too bad that Microsoft and Sony didn’t get the message.
Despite this embarrassing backpedaling, Punch-Out!! is a ton of fun. The give-and-take of the fight is timeless, and far more logical and enjoyable than the overblown chaos of Street Fighter. If you or someone you know expects a Wii beneath the tree this year, be sure that a copy of Punch-Out!! winds up beside it. No matter how you choose to play it, you’ll find it’s one of the best games on the system. If more fighting games and sports games followed Punch-Out!!’s ways, it would be a merrier world. This is one of the best games on the Wii.
Controller1.com rating: 3/3
Review: SUPER MARIO GALAXY 2
Reviewed on Wii. Developed by Nintendo. Published by Nintendo
Mario is back. Again. So soon?
Super Mario Galaxy came out in 2007 and had Wii gamers not yet accustomed to feeling cheated after E3 cheering for Nintendo’s latest take on 3D Mario. After the minor let down (ie WORST MARIO EVER) of the Gamecube’s Super Mario Sunshine, Galaxy felt like an exciting move back to the more abstract worlds we all know and love in the Marioverse. But near perfect review scores didn’t translate to the multi-quadtrillion unit sales Nintendo had expected from their flagship and despite being reviewed highly, it was an imperfect game with too many cool ideas not fully developed. Here in 2010, in the wake of the continuing success of the 2D Mario games on DS and Wii, Galaxy 2 has arrived. And it’s taking names.
SMG2 is more or less a refined expansion pack to the first game, but one that substantially improves on it in nearly every way (ie Uncharted 2 is better than Uncharted). Gone is the mind-numbing-to-navigate hub, replaced with a simpler, smaller hub in the shape of Starship Mario (if you need to ask…) with world selection far more streamlined, harkening back to a Super Mario World on the SNES level of simplicity).
So you pilot Starship Mario, them select an available galaxy, then Mario will fly there (as he did in the first title. Each Galaxy may have a few stars to collect, some only appearing later on to encourage you to revisit some levels later, but often in a way that you don’t feel you’re playing the exact same level twice to beat two different objectives. Traversing the same geometry on revisits is thankfully kept to a minimum (I mean you’ve selected what star you’re aiming for) but there are still the mystery stars that are hidden throughout. I just ignored these troublemakers since they are just trouble-making belligerent drunks.
Green mushrooms giving you another life? Check! Red Mushrooms temporarily doubling your max health? Check? Bumblebee suit? Check. Fireflower? Check? Princess captured by Bowser? Check?
The puzzles on each level, much of which has brought over from the first game, feel more organic and less forced overall. Perhaps it’s just that the game feels so much more polished than the first game. Not that the first game was rough, but SMG2 feels like the gameplay has been polished so thoroughly that Nintendo is almost daring you to find something wrong with it. I dare you. Dare to hate.
The thing that really makes this game stand out for me is Yoshi. Now, I’ve never really played games with Yoshi outside of Super Mario World on the SNES but here my favourite levels have been those with Yoshi and his abilities. The Drill is also a favourite of mine, though it’s hard to say how much of this is new since I only got about 50% of the way through SMG. This game has made me think about revisiting the original. But there are obviously things I like about the sequel that just weren’t there the first time around. And I HATED New Super Mario Brothers on the Wii.
Your brother Luigi is back and at times you will be given the option to play as him. Not that I’ve found much of a reason to play as Luigi but he’s there all the same. A few new suits and talents are used really well but for the most part, if you’ve played the first game, you’ve played this. If you haven’t played the original, play this. It’s just better.
The graphics are perfect, everything looks crisp (even on a Full HD TV with upscaling) though with some jaggies of course. I do know that the Wii doesn’t translate well to using a computer monitor, but a game like this works so well with the hardware. Maybe that’s the lesson of the Wii. If you can make the art look clean and bright, it well sell to people regardless of high poly character models with realistic textures.
The sound is what you expect of a Mario game, even though most of the sound and music is recycled from the first game- not that you can realistically change the sound of a Mario game. Going down a pipe sounds the same as always, collecting Yoshi is the same as it was on the SNES, etc.. Charles Martinet is back as Mario and Luigi so you can expect all manner of falsetto Ethnic stereotyping as you play this delightful title.
I wasn’t sure I was going to stick with it, but it grew on me more and more as I played it. Earlier this year, I toyed with selling my dust-gathering Wii but SMG2 has made me glad I haven’t (yet) disposed of the console.
Controller1.com Rating 3/3
REVIEW: Quantum of Solace
Reviewed on Xbox 360. Also on PC, PS3, PS3, Wii, DS. Developed by Treyarch. Published by Activision
Mock if you must but for the next few days at least I’m going to party like it’s 2008. I saw a couple of cheap games that I’d been interesting in playing during a lull SO LONG AS THEY WERE CHEAP. The other week I saw Quantum of Solace and 50 cent Blood on the Sand for cheap (AU $30 ea) and I thought “why the fuck not?”
I needed something relatively simple to cleanse my gaming palette after the majesty that was Uncharted 2 and before Modern Warfare 2. Something cheap, short and can’t be looked down as anything other than dumb fun. Quantum of Solace fits that bill quite well. I like James Bond films but I still don’t really know what to make of Quantum of Solace the movie. The title comes from an Ian Fleming short story where Bond is told a story by some stuffy diplomat-type over a cognac, a story about some couple who grew to hate each other. And it’s really quite dull. If I was Bond in the story I would have shot the guy telling the story for being boring. So the movie QoS followed on from 2006′s excellent Casino Royale movie. And then proceeded to ignore all of the lessons of Casino Royale. People didn’t want far fetched Bond plots in 2008.
Why is this important? Well, this game is actually two thirds a Casino Royale game and one third a Quantum of Solace game. A bit of context doesn’t hurt. So you take the Call o Duty 4 engine, give it to Treyarch who were making the better-than-everyone-was-expecting Call of Duty World at War at the same time as this and what do you get? Something that’ s okay rather than great.
As so many games from movies do, any location that appears in the movie is fair game for a full on corridor shooter fest that takes 20-30 minutes to complete. The final scene from Casino Royale is turned into the intro level to this game. Move through level, kill enemies, pick up cell phone’s convenient dotted around the map for intelligence useful (but by no means vital) to your mission. So despite this using the CoD4 engine, it doesn’t necessarily play just like Call of Duty. You run and gun in much the same way but you don’t have melee in the same way. If you get close to an enemy, you can click on the right stick and to trigger a quick time event where you have to press a face button (a different one each time) to takedown an enemy in a nicely animated unarmed
attack.
It feels as though this game took a lot of cues from the first Uncharted game, especially with 3rd person cover and action scenes. You can balance on beams (looking like Treyarch re-purposed some manual meter code from one of their Tony Hawk ports) jump over things and make leaps of faith just because the game says you can press ‘Y’ to jump. You have some hacking minigames which aren’t anything special but then this is a game designed for a very casual audience. That’s code for saying Normal is actually pretty easy.
So how does it actually play? Well it’s fun for a bit and it is thankfully fairly short. In so many ways you think you are playing a game from five years ago in terms of design and quite often the visuals. It also doesn’t run at Call of Duty 4′s standard 60fps frame rate, so it’s hard to see where the extra fidelity is going.
Presentation is fine for a licensed game but it isn’t going to wow anyone in this day and age. We have many of the cast members from Casino Royale and Quantum of Solace, including a bored Dame Judi and Dame Daniel. Gunfire sounds are somewhat lacking, however, but at least the James Bond theme is used in a more restrained way than some of the EA games on PS2.
So overall- cheap filler when you want something quick to snack on in between the ‘great’ games but there’s no reason to go out of your way to play it.
Controller1.com rating 1/3
REVIEW: Ghostbusters: The Game
Reviewed on Xbox 360 (Also on: PC, 360, Wii, PS2, PS3, PSP) Developed by Terminal Reality. Published by Atari (Playstation versions published by Sony in Europe)
So Ghostbusters, one of the biggest grossing films of 1984, has made into a 2009 video game. Despite there being a Ghostbusters game on the Comedy 64, Terminal Reality though they could improve on this (get out of my head with your thought control, Cameron!), accquired the license and then made this game thinking they had a deal with Vivendi to publish. Then many things happened. Vivendi merged with Activision and the resulting Activision-Blizzard behemoth dropped a number of titles from their portfolio including 50 Cent, Scarface, Brutal Legend and Ghostbusters: The Game. The developers continue, secure a deal with Activision, show off the cute Wii version, proclaim how much better the PS3 is. And then Five minutes before the release of the game comes the whammy for PAL gamers, Only the PS3, PSP and PS2 versions would be available at first since Sony was now co-publishing this as a timed exclusive. Yada, yada, yada, here we are with a review of this game reviewing the region-free 360 version on a PAL console.
So Ghostbusters is that unique beast. It is very faithful to its source material. So faithful it fails. Rather than tell a new Ghostbusters story with all new and exciting demons, the game sees fit to basically revisit the more popular hauntings from the films and expand upon them. So the first three levels consist of Slimer in the Hotel, Mr Staypuft and the Ghostly Librarian. In other words, its Back to the Future part 2. If this is meant to be the third film, why is it a clip show?
Set in 1991, you play as a rookie Ghostbuster being trained by Igon, Stantz, Venkmann and Zeddimore (all voiced by the original cast members) as you learn the ropes. Of course, this being a game you have more than just a proton pack and trap in your arsenal but can use different element beams, use slime and fireballs and even shotgun-style blasts. you generally find yourself in a linear corridor, using your PKE meter to search for paranormal manifestations before zapping ghosts in various ways with your gizmos, all the while being entertained by a really very dull Ghostbusters outing. It’s like Pirates of the Caribbean. Everyone loved the first one since it was so refreshing and funny, but by the thiurd film it was so bloated and full of itself it forget the funny.
While the graphics, sound, atmosphere, design and stroy are all authentic to the first film, the gameplay is where things start to fall apart. It does play a lot Luigi’s Mansion (ironically) but it’s nowhere near as much fun as Nintendo’s game. It becomes repetitive rather quickly- like Assassin’s Creed. You feel like you’re a Ghostbuster all right but like any dream job, it quickly becomes work.
Also of note, is the lack of balance. Playing this on normal is excruciatingly frustrating due to the ghosts knocking you down and killing you with little chance. Knocking the difficulty down to casual gives you a better chance to experience the storyline (and this means a restart of the game). Of course, that’s when you realise the story isn’t much cop. Comedy is all about timing. The timing here is off. Cutscenes drag and its almost as if the developers left gaps for the laugh track (like they forgot which Ghostbusters franchise they were working on. Larry Storch’s unused voice work for this game was phenomenal)
So while its actually fun to play in short bursts, there’s nothing driving you to complete it, unless of course you’re a huge Ghostbusters fan. It also seems slightly buggy in that it can take an eternity for triggers that allow you to proceed to activate. You can often stand around for a while, waiting for some dialogue to trigger which means you can continue. Then you might have to wait for another interminable dialogue exchange before you can continue.
The graphics are relatively decent and the character models are pretty decent. You hear the actual score of the movie rather than Ray Parker Jr’s song over and over again. The sound effects are authentic as are the voices, as mentioned earlier. The main crime of the game is that it makes Ghostbusters boring. A followup with a different structure (this is crying out for an open world games with lots of smaller missions rather than a few missions strung out past their use-by date.
Controller1.com Rating 1/3 (3/3 if you’re a fan of Ghostbusters II. If you can make it through that, you’re fine to put up with this)
REVIEW: BOOM BLOX
Reviewed on Wii. Developed and published by Electronic Arts
Another quick review. Boom Blox was EA’s first partnership with Steven Speielberg since Medal of Honor. And just like Medal of Honor we have the traditional Normandy Level, as well as robust online multiplayer and a somber score by Michael Giacchino. Wat?
Boom Blox is a cutesy puzzle game where you are presented with a puzzle to solve, usually within a limit of throws. You might be throwing baseballs, or bombs with your Wii Remote, or you might be throwing last night’s curry leftovers but wither way you’re presenting your HDTV with a mortal threat so use the jacket and the strap. Like World of Goo and Peggle, Boom Blox also uses a simple physics system as part f the game, which probably explains why the games looks so very N64. It might look like it doesn’t need the RAM expansion pack you got with Donkey Kong 64, but I’ll bet the physics chew up more CPU power than the particle effects.
Boom Blox gives you a choice of gameplay styles, from levels where you have to manipulate two green blox so they connect and explode to levels where you just have to make the diamonds hit the ground, to vanishing blox and even a few levels with a frickin’ laser pistol. Each level scores you on how many points you get and you can squeak by with a bronze score. But Gold is where it is at, baby.
If you already have a Wii, you should hunt the bargain bins for Boom Blox which has sold OK enough to warrant a sequel but I don’t know whether its a game you want iterated on again and again. There’s exploration mode, where you just play a level at a time and unlock the next challenge, Adventure (Why?) and a mode where you can create your own shitty levels that just recreate badly a game from the NES. Well, Mario 1-1 might be hard on Boom Blox but there’s always Little Big Planet for all your knock-off needs.
This isn’t a graphical game, even for the Wii. The art style looks 10 years out of date and the music sounds like it belongs on a PSOne game but it captures the annoying Wii-style music featured in games like Wii Sports and Wii Fit. Its awful. Wii give up.
So if EA can do something right on the Wii, does that mean there’s hope for the future? No, EA Sports Active says ‘Hi, lard-ass.”
REVIEW: WORLD OF GOO
Reviewed on Macintosh. Also on PC, Wii. Developed by 2D Boy. Published by 2D Boy
This cute puzzle game has you building scaffolding out of cute balls of goo. That’s it. You have to direct your little balls of disgustingly cute-but-still- rather-disgusting-if-you-stopped-to-think-about-it towards their doom in a vacuum nozzle at the end of each level. The catch is, you only have a set number of little dungy spheres with which to reach the top. You also have a quota of shitballs you need to suck up in order to complete the level.
There’s not much to say other than go buy this game. 2D Boy are former EA Employees (and isn’t everyone these days) who got together and made this charming game. Probably the only thing worth getting on WiiWare, its made a decent impression if not necessarily a large one in the sales charts. The developers offered the PC version with no DRM and all they got for their troubles was increased piracy. Which is a shame, because the game is brilliant.
A new breed of puzzlers uses physics as part of gameplay. World of Goo, like Peggle uses the physics as part of the game, unlike the shitfest that is Banjo Kazooie Nuts and Bolts.
You can build your tower higher, but you also have to build your tower so it supports its own weight. It’s like reverse Jenga. Which means it is good. Because Jenga is shit.
Its quite a relaxing game though it does require some brainpower. It also makes an excellent contrast to the carnage of today’s shooters so is quite a nice way to unwind at the end of a hectic week (as my week has been). The graphics are pitch perfect and the jazzy music score is divine. There’s none of this unicorn shit here, just one fantastic little package.
I urge every reader of this site to try out World of Goo.
controller1.com rating 3/3
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