Consolation Prize

After many months of deliberating I finally took the plunge and decided to purchase Wii Fit. To be honest it wasn’t for Wii Fit itself, but for the Balance Board, which I wanted to combine with Shaun White Snowboarding: Road Trip. In the end however, and perhaps to my surprise, it’s Wii Fit that has seen regular use.

I think it’s fair to say that Wii Fit has endured quite a bit of scorn and scepticism during its brief life. Quite possibly because it represents the new “casual” Nintendo, not the hardcore fan service of yesteryear. But I don’t really take offence with what they (Nintendo) are doing; they’re just tapping into a mostly untouched demographic and are fully exploiting it for all it’s worth before everyone else jumps on the bandwagon. In the meantime I’ll get most of my kicks on another console - that’s my prerogative.

For the record, I don’t necessarily view Wii Fit as a game in the traditional sense, although I do think it’s challenging the boundaries of what’s conceptually acceptable as a video game. It does after all have some of the qualities present in most video games - active participation with feedback, unlockable rewards, high score tables, and a goal in the form of self improvement. However, I prefer to think of Wii Fit as something more akin to say a fitness DVD. A motivational tool that’s far more entertaining than grinding out 30 minutes on a mind numbingly dull piece of fitness apparatus. And although the benefits may be proportionally less than a specialised piece of equipment, I believe it can still find place, especially if used regularly as part of an overall training plan.

The actual exercises’ within Wii Fit are split into four distinct categories: Yoga, Muscle Workouts, Aerobic Exercises, and Balance Games. To begin with not all the exercises in each category are unlocked, but instead they are slowly revealed as the total amount of Wii Fit minutes accumulates in the piggy-bank. This not only helps promote a gradual progression, but it also serves to act as a simple reward mechanism – the more you play, the more you’ll unlock, and hence the more you’ll get out of Wii Fit. Tutorials are provided for both the Yoga and Muscle Workouts with each one clearly demonstrated and explained by your personal trainer, whom will also provide useful feedback and recommendations during the actual exercise depending upon the movement being fed back from the balance board.

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The skateboarding crown once held by the Tony Hawk franchise was put in dire peril in 2007 when a new kid on the block, namely Skate, made its appearance. Developed by EA Black Box Skate generated quite a lot of praise for its innovative controls and environments upon release, and now 16 months later we’re getting a sequel. To wet your appetite a demo of Skate 2 was recently released on Xbox Live Marketplace and is scheduled to arrive on Playstation Network imminently.

The career demo lets you sample the initial first moments of the game, enabling you to comprehensively design your avatar’s look and then jump into some simple challenges. The vast customisation options not only extend to tinkering with your facial features and clothes, but also your skateboard deck, truck and wheel selection - albeit only as far as your limited $300 budget will stretch. You can appreciate that in the full game you’ll certainly be able to completely style the look of your skater as more funds become available and additional items are unlocked.

Once you’re happy with your skater then it’s straight into the tutorial as you head off to Slappy’s Skatepark, learning the odd trick or two along the way. What’s initially quite impressive is the use controller to perform tricks; from simple ollies and nollies to kick flips and rotations, they’re all handled by flicking or rotating the right analogue stick. It does take a little bit of time to get used to, and undoubtedly you will fall off your board at some point, but it does feel like a more natural control method than just simply pressing a sequence of face buttons. Once at Slappy’s you’re met with the usual assortment of ramps, and rails to perfect your jumps and grinds, but there are also a few challenges to complete as your sick tricks can be photographed for Skateboard Mag.

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Although my iPhone will always play second fiddle to the Xbox 360 as a gaming platform, the sexy mobile device does however provide a convenient distraction that whittles away the time when I’m not in the comfort of my own home. The majority of games available are undeniably still in there infancy, but there are certainly signs of improvement with games such as Rolando that wouldn’t seem too out of place if it appeared on the Nintendo DS or Sony PSP. I am however still holding my breath, waiting for that standout title that blows me away and convinces me that the iPhone really could be a serious gaming platform.

There are an obscene number of so-called-games on the application store. Quantity rather than quality seems to be the driving marketing strategy as developers fall over themselves in a rush to get a piece of the gaming pie, and there are certainly plenty of free games to try out. The question is, even through they’re free, are any of them worth downloading?

Well to help you decide I’ve been trying out quite a few free games recently. Most of which have been picked from the “Top 25 Free” application list, but a few of the others I’ve heard about on the grapevine. In the first part of the guide I’ll be checking out Crazy Penguin Catapult Lite, PAC-MAN Lite, Touch Hockey, and Labyrinth Lite Edition.

Crazy Penguin Catapult Lite

You can probably guess, just from the title, what this game is about. But just to avoid ambiguity this game involves firing penguins from a catapult so that they can dive bomb polar bears – which for the record are naturally evil and have resorted to capturing penguins rather than eating them, but for what ever reason nobody knows.

The main campaign game finds you wandering from stage to stage on an overhead map, with each stage generally consisting of two elements. The first part is to launch your squad of penguins into the air using said catapult – usually through a narrow gap – so they can proceed to the next part, hopefully without suffering too many casualties if you timed things correctly. The second part sees the now flying penguins zooming across the screen whereby you have to time where and when to dive bomb the polar bears below. A successful strike will knock the bear from the screen and a set number of bears are required to be removed to be victorious. That is more or less the entire game, although each stage does get progressively more difficult by placing bears behind ice fortifications that need to be destroyed first.

So the game looks fine; with cute penguins and gleefully evil looking polar bears, and it has an annoyingly jovial music track. However, no matter how good the presentation is the game is severely let down by the one dimensional gameplay and I just didn’t find it remotely enjoyable. This is the “Lite” version of the game, and perhaps there’s more to see in the retail version that costs £2.99, but on the evidence I doubt I’ll ever find out.

Rating:  

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You generally know within the first few minutes of playing a game whether or not you like it, or even if you’re willing to persevere with it for a little bit longer just in case you missed that hidden gem of game-play that suddenly adds cohesion to the entire experience – but I’m afraid no such epiphany happened while playing through the trial game of RocketBowl.

The idea behind RocketBowl is quite appealing; take the familiarity of bowling, place it all in an open area with multiple “lanes”, an undulating landscape replete with obstacles, and add in the ability to give your ball a boost or fire it off in either a left or right direction by igniting a rocket. It sounds quite interesting in theory, but in practice, I’m sorry to say, we’re left with a fairly dull game.

Given 10 frames on the course you have three attempts to knock down all the pins of each frame in sequence to accumulate the highest score. It’s not essential to aim at the set of pins directly ahead, and in-fact you are free to launch in any direction - which is actively encouraged given that there are lots of points bonuses and power-ups dotted around the course. The only real requirement is that you hit some pins somewhere if you want to keep those extra points and avoid the shot being called a “miss”. It doesn’t feel however, like you can do a great deal to control the rocket ball. You’re only able to nominally apply some swerve and fire off the occasional rocket, thus, it feels like you’re more of a spectator than an active participant.

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It’s that time of week again when new Xbox Live Arcade titles have been released for our perusal and this offering, developed by “Housemarque”, better known in my books for the superlative
Super Stardust HD on the PS3 is a welcome addition to the Arcade roster and firmly plants its putting wedge on the more humorous and casual side of Golf, akin to such games like Hot Shots Golf.

At the start of the game you can customise your golfer; choosing a gender, hairstyle, and can kit them out in a selection of clothing styles. You know that this game isn’t going to take itself too seriously when you find your cartoon-like golfing avatar can be equipped with bunny slippers, karate gloves, and even kitten ears. However, as silly as this may sound it sets the tone of the game well and guarantees that your character stands a good chance of looking at least somewhat different to your opponents.

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Whilst agonisingly waiting to get hold of my copy of GTA IV earlier this week I thought I’d check out what the PSN store had to offer. There were a couple of PSP demo’s which I wanted to try out, namely Patapon and God of War: Chains Of Olympus but I thought I’d give the Everybody’s Golf: World Tour demo a whirl.

Before getting into the nitty-gritty it’s worth mentioning that this title is also known under a couple of different names. In Japan it’s known as Everybody’s Golf 5 and if you’re reading this on the other side of the pond from the UK it’s Hot Shots Golf: Out of Bounds.

Although initial impressions suggest this is going to be a lightweight golf game with its large headed cartoon-esque characters once you’re actually in the game it becomes apparent that there’s a serious golf engine running behind the scenes.

The demo allows you to pick from a couple of characters, either “Jasmine” or “Felipe”, each with their own set of stats such as power, control, and spin and once chosen the character can be customised using the limited number of outfits and club types available. It’s apparent that more outfits, clubs and ball types will be selectable in the full retail game but the few on offer here provide an adequate taster of things to come.

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A demo of Sega Superstar Tennis is now available to download from Xbox Live Marketplace, sized at a reasonable 677MB.

The demo allows you to try out a single player match choosing from either AiAi of Super Monkey Ball fame or Shadow the Hedgehog. Characters play slightly differently to oneanother due to a specialist skill and a signature “superstar” move. For example AiAi can curve shots more easily and can transform the tennis ball into a bunch of distracting bananas which boomerang back to the opponent with a bend “Beckham” would be proud of.

The game controls quite well and on first impressions felt very similar to the Virtua Tennis series of games I’ve played in the past. There are however a few differences to note when it comes to shot selection. The “A” and “X” buttons produce either a fast or slow shot respectively, but if you want to perform a lob or a drop shot then a simple combo has to be pressed, “A” followed by “X” gives you a lob whilst reversing the action will produce a drop shot.

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