Reviews: October 2007 Archives

If ever there was a game crying out to use the Wii's innovative controls, it's arcade football. Forget about pressing a button to shoot - the only way mere buttons allow you to control the power is to keep the button pressed down longer, delaying the shot itself. Rubbish! What you need is to swing the Wii Remote with plenty of vigour. Want to do a finesse shot rather than a blaster? Then swing down, not upwards!

 

The system works extremely well, even if my current string* of victories are showing a certain lack of scoring flair: "1-0 to the Wycombe" is becoming a familiar chant on the Adams Park terraces (fear not, non-Wycombe fans, you can choose your own team - and the skills of your individual players will reflect the team's talent in real life too). But that's because I've only dedicated about three hours of my life to FIFA 08 so far, and I'm only starting to scrape this game's full potential ...

EA are one of the strongest games publishers in the world, and currently their success can be attributed to a few key, well placed incomes. One of them is the spawn of annual releases covering many major sporting events globally, and one such strong brand is the Tiger Woods PGA Tour golfing series. Still going strong, Tiger heads for the fairways again in Tiger Woods PGA Tour Golf 2008. So why purchase this one?

We're going to cut straight to the chase and tell you this - we're not golf fans, at all. The only golf games personally purchased around here are Wii Sports (which includes golf), and previous Mario Golf titles. Tiger had to impress us, and he has.

Ignoring some cheesy playable characters and a slightly patronising tone at certain stages through the game, the options available to you in this incarnation of Tiger Woods match and surpass previous editions. One that we were interested to see there was the sitting down option for controls, enabling you to play more effectively whilst sitting down on your sofa and using the Wiimote. Since this focuses on the gamer and giving them choice and options, we're pleased to see this here.

The Sims is a brand that is making EA millions, and it is also without a doubt one of a new throng of gaming brands and ideas that have ushered new gamers into the family; many more female gamers, more elderly gamers and many casual gamers, those who wouldn't usually spend lots of time sitting down in front of a video game.

With a Sims title due out later on the Wii, some were wondering what this 'MySims' venture was going to be all about.  Not itself a true 'Sims' game, but obviously borrowing heavily from the concept that made The Sims and Sims 2 such mega hit on various formats, we decided to find out.  EA sent us a copy and we prepared to be enveloped by elevator music and strange sounding language babble ...

Unfortunately due to staff illness, all that was on offer for playtest at Nintendo House this week was Metroid Prime 3: Corruption, the first Wii incarnation of this venerable and much-loved series. As usual you take control of Samus Aran as she battles various space monsters across the galaxy, only this time there is a not-particularly-inspired twist: there is a "dark" Samus, as the heroine is being slowly corrupted by the mutagenic material Phazon, and you complete various levels as either one or the other versions of the character. The story sees you chasing nefarious Space Pirates across the solar system, in league with other bounty hunters.

Boogie is currently exclusive to the Wii, delivering a unique combination of dancing (using wiimote waggling), singing (the player sings), and music video editing (player edits their performances). EA have taken a bold step into the fray currently dominated by Singstar.

With a set of characters called 'the Boogs', you can expect the game to be aimed at a universal (read kiddie safe) audience. It's very cartoony in style, very simplistic and easy to use. The storyline is typically thin and unimportant; this game was born for two things:

Fiddling in the single player situation and having a bit of a laugh in multiplayer with your mates. Something quite new to gaming though, has appeared. Music video editing! And why not, eh?

The choice of camera angle is reasonable for software of this sort, offering some good selections for beginners to editing. Some of the wipes are a bit childish (remember Homer Simpson and his 'Starwipes'?), covering the music video with hearts or stars. Others are more artistic and offer a more mature edit; making the music video appear old and tea stained, for example. One of the more interesting is the 3D effect which works if you're wearing 3D specs.

You can add as many cuts/edits as you like, which we're pleased with. This means that if you get bored of adding wipes and camera angles, you can just leave it there and the end of your video will look a bit plain.

The singing accuracy feels more awkward than Sony's Singstar, it has to be said. The mic is a big improvement on the Gamecube mic, but shorter than the Sony, making it harder to hold. In short, it's a good attempt and it is fun - the dancing adds to the interest and editing your own music videos is pretty bold as a new step. We think the seeds of a great idea are here and on first try, it's done reasonably well. Rhythm is very important in the dancing, and developing rhythm is a sure-fire game winner, if the huge run DDR has had is anything to go by.

However, it's not going to make people who already refuse to play Singstar break out the moves, nor will it defeat the former great singing title. We're hoping that Boogie 2, with a few tweaks and a better singing system, might be the sort of next step that dance and singing games have been waiting for. Not a bad game at all, but it's more of a step forward than a leap into the future.

Kim Kaze 3/5