WiiWare
Rage of the Gladiator
Publisher: Ghostfire Games
Players: 1
ESRB Rating: T (Teen) – Animated Blood, Alcohol Reference, Violence
Price: 1,000 Wii Points
Description: Rage of the Gladiator is a fantasy-based fighting game in which you must fight for your life in the arena. One of the most gorgeous WiiWare games ever, it features amazing 3-D graphics, animation, lighting, shadows and special effects. Full voice acting means each boss has its own personality and taunts you mercilessly. Discover insane finishing moves: Summon a fiery meteor or savage tornado, or transform into a hulking colossus 10 times your normal size. Customize your character and specialize in skill trees – Offense, Defense or Magic – to gain new powers. You’ll also enjoy epic, blood-pumping music by legendary composer Sean Beeson. For added replay value, unlock Challenge Mode and encounter tougher bosses with new abilities. The game also supports the Wii MotionPlus accessory.

Triple Shot Sports
Publisher: The Code Monkeys Ltd.
Players: 1-2
ESRB Rating: E (Everyone)
Price: 500 Wii Points
Description: Triple Shot Sports is one of the most advanced recreational shooting games available for the WiiWare service, immersing players in the world of competitive target shooting. Most competitive events consist of activities that are traditionally derived from hunting and combat skills. Over time, these practices have evolved into a variety of competitive sports that include Archery, Pistol Shooting and Free Rifle. As with real-life shooting events, you will have full control over the aim of the weapon. You must also account for prevailing weather conditions and the athlete’s breathing pattern, as these factors can influence the accuracy of your shot.
Virtual Console

CASTLEVANIA RONDO OF BLOOD
Original platform: TurboGrafx16 CD-ROM
Publisher: Konami
Players: 1
ESRB Rating: T (Teen) – Animated Blood, Fantasy Violence
Price: 900 Wii Points
Description: This is the 10th action-packed installment in the ever-popular CASTLEVANIA series, which depicts the epic struggle between the Belmont clan and the dark forces of Count Dracula. An instant classic, this title is recognized far and wide for its beautifully rendered world, outstanding game balance and haunting CD-quality music. The player takes control of RICHTER, the clan’s ultimate Vampire Killer, guiding him through a total of nine stages filled with treacherous traps and hidden secrets. Using your legendary whip – passed on from generations of Belmonts – and a powerful selection of Item Crash attacks, it’s up to you to destroy Dracula and his evil horde. What’s more, rescuing MARIA at some juncture in the game allows you to use her as a playable character for even more vampire-slaying fun.

Nintendo DSiWare
Zoo Frenzy
Publisher: Gameloft
Players: 1
ESRB Rating: E (Everyone) –Mild Cartoon Violence
Price: 500 Nintendo DSi Points
Description: Create the zoo of your dreams and try to maximize your profit by managing tons of parameters. Enjoy five fun mini-games to train and support your animals: Feed them, heal them and even play soccer- or hockey-themed games with them. Your best-trained pets will go back into the wild to fight dangerous monsters and find cute new animals for your zoo. Enjoy use of the Nintendo DSi system’s built-in microphone and camera – wake up the hero by shouting at him, and see yourself in the game.
101 MiniGolf World

Publisher: Teyon
Players: 1-8
ESRB Rating: E (Everyone)
Price: 500 Nintendo DSi Points
Description: 101 MiniGolf World is one of the first-ever 3-D miniature golf games for the Nintendo DSiWare service. Your stylus becomes the putter for an incredibly fun mini-golf experience. Play more than 100 challenging holes solo or with up to eight players on one system. Send your ball flying through loops, pipes, arches, extreme ramps and mind-blowing obstacles. Enjoy a combination of real golf rules and wacky mini-golf fun.

Battle of Giants: Dinosaurs – Fight For Survival
Publisher: Ubisoft
Players: 1-2
ESRB Rating: E10+ (Everyone 10 and Older) – Mild Fantasy Violence
Price: 800 Nintendo DSi Points
Description: Long before mankind stepped into the world, the Earth was a harsh environment dominated by dinosaurs. Every species of dinosaur had to fight to survive in this hostile environment. Travel through the hostile lands as one of three breeds of dinosaur while battling giant enemies to save your kind. Create and customize your own unique dinosaur. Explore four mysterious territories and discover buried fossils to complete your mission. Enhance your dinosaur’s abilities and compete against your friends in epic duels.

Car Jack Streets
Publisher: Tag Games
Players: 1
ESRB Rating: T (Teen) – Mild Language, Violence
Price: 800 Nintendo DSi Points
Description: A critically acclaimed game with high-octane action, innovative real-time game play, stunning visuals and an awesome soundtrack, Car Jack Streets will take you to the limit. The Italian mob is calling in your gambling debt of $1 million. Attempt a wide variety of criminal and legitimate jobs to earn as much cash as possible, but remember to avoid attracting attention from the cops and other gang members. Do you have what it takes to stay alive, pay your debt and rise to the top of the criminal underworld?

If you have not played any of the previous episodes, I urge you to skip this review and pick up the first one on WiiWare. It is the best adventure series on Wii, and you really want to experience the story in sequence. I will try to keep this review light on spoilers, but it will still be a bad idea to read through this review if you have not gotten all the way past the previous episode, Trial and Execution of Guybrush Threepwood. So, now that the spoiler warnings are out of the way, let’s proceed:

You start off this episode the same way you ended the previous one: dead. They weren’t kidding with the previous episode’s title, that’s for sure. As you awake in the afterlife, you realize you have no powers, barely any usable items, and no idea what to do. Right off the bat, you realize that this episode is much more difficult than some of the previous ones. If you were one of the folks complaining about the easy puzzles before (I wasn’t), then here you’ll find the challenge you were looking for. The mechanics and controls are the same, you guide Guybrush around the world talking to weird and funny characters and looking for clues and items so that you can revive yourself and rescue your wife Elaine from the evil pirate LeChuck, now more powerful than ever.

The episode opens up the progress path, so that you can complete your tasks in a less linear fashion than previous episodes, but that also means that you have less guidance on what to do next, and some of the puzzles are so devilish or straight up obtuse that you may soon be reaching for a strategy guide. As you gather the various artifacts necessary to resuscitate yourself and defeat LeChuck, you will straddle the line between life and death, and cross over between worlds constantly. While this episode contains the humorous banter and situations you expect, the overall mood is much more dramatic. Much is at stake, and LeChuck is especially brutal, while your allies may or may not die, just as you have.

The afterlife is a beautifully dark and imaginative place here, full of unique and interesting new characters, as well as old friends who return (sorry, Murray does not make a comeback). The developers continue to push the graphics and audio, just as they’ve done for each previous episodes, so that Rise of the Pirate God is easily the best looking game in the series, filled with tons of locales (some rehashed) and characters. The audio is fittingly dark, rather than the cheery tropical tunes from the previous episodes.

I’ve covered the gameplay mechanics in the previous episode reviews, so I’ll close with this: If you’ve made it this far into the series (and I hope you have), Rise of the Pirate Gods will give you grand finale you’ve been looking for. The story, graphics, and audio have all grown up, the stakes are bigger, and the menace is much more imposing. You’ll find plenty of humor here, no doubt, with the afterlife being chock full of shady characters, as expected. Still, Rise of the Pirate God knows it has to wrap up this marvelous season and does so with flair and gusto.

If you have read my Diner Dash: Flo on the Go review, you’ll pretty much get the gist of this game, which is basically a re-skinned version of that title. The main twists here are that you have to first select the right cake, food, and honeymoon based on the client’s wishes, then you get to the main gameplay, which is a familiar juggling act where you use your stylus to shift a waitress around to serve guests food, deliver presents, etc.

The goal, as in Diner Dash, is to make sure that all of the guests are attended to promptly so that they can move on to their final step (which is dancing). As usual, the difficulty ramps up pretty sharply, and you’ll eventually be left madly scrambling to keep up, even if you are a seasoned gamer. Part of the appeal of these types of games is that they are immediately accessible to casual gamers, but they also provide a stiff challenge once the game throws additional factors into the mix and speeds up the gameplay. There are fifty weddings in total, which is more than enough for hours worth of entertainment.

The visuals here are disappointing, for sure. The top screen, just as in Diner Dash, is wasted on a basic score counter (or money, in this case). It could serve better uses, such as keeping track of your success percentage or how many guests are left, etc. The bottom screen is where the action takes place, but even though there are various different layouts in terms of wedding reception locales, the graphics are still too simplistic and lack good animation.

While I understand that these games hardly depend on their presentation, a little more effort in the visuals and even the audio would’ve gone a long way towards creating a more compelling product, especially for non-casuals who may still be interested in the core gameplay. The audio here would be appropriate for a wedding, maybe, but could use a little more spicing up. The wedding guests can’t rely on slow dance music forever!

Finally, there is a competitive multiplayer mode where you compete with another player to see who can serve the most guests faster. When you look at the entire package, Wedding Dash is a solid re-imagining of the Diner Dash formula, but doesn’t add enough variety to really stand out. For fans of Diner Dash, this is obviously a no-brainer, since the core gameplay remains as addictive as ever and there is plenty of new challenges. For those looking for something new, Wedding Dash doesn’t really offer it, but I get the feeling it was never really trying to stray too far from its wildly successful predecessor.

Thankfully, the gameplay remains the same as in the original, for the most part. You use your stylus to move around your restaurant and make sure that everyone is attended to. You sit customers down, you take their orders, you deliver food, and you pass them the bill. This starts off really easy, and gradually progresses in difficulty and complexity, as the creators have a few surprises, such as blackouts, turbulence, and other factors that make the game more exciting to play. At the later points, with some of the bigger locales, the action becomes relatively challenging, even for jaded gamers. Moving around using the DS controls works for the most part, but unfortunately there are issues you’ll encounter that have to do with the relatively small real estate on the DS’ bottom screen. The developers certainly could’ve used the top screen as more of an aide than simply a score-keeping tool.

Still, the addictive Diner Dash formula where you just want to keep on growing and helping more and more people is still here, and certainly the audience for this game will enjoy the heck out of the new customer types, entertainers, and the ability to dress up Flo as well. The endless shift mode, sort of like a horde-mode for Diner Dash, provides an endless stream of customers to attend to. As a complete package, the DS version of Diner Dash: Flo on the Go has enough content to keep fans of the series more than occupied for hours on end. There is a multi-card multiplayer mode that has players competing to serve the most customers, or trying not to lose customers, which adds some replayability to the cart.

The visuals, unfortunately, aren’t much fun to look at. The pixel count isn’t high, the animation isn’t fully cooked, and overall the game just looks rather dull and lifeless compared to its PC iteration, or even how some of its competitors look on iPhone. I hate to nitpick about the graphics, since It is entirely likely that the intended audience for this game will be willing to overlook those flaws. Casual gamers are not known for their pickiness when it comes to visuals. Still, it is disappointing that the team couldn’t spruce up the presentation a little bit more for the DS outing. To wrap up the presentation, the audio is competent and just about what you’d expect from these types of titles. The audio didn’t really have any issues, even if it didn’t stand out overall.

Diner Dash: Flo on the Go extends the addictive formula, while adding a few new twists along the way. While the presentation feels cramped and a bit clunky on the DS, fans of the series will nevertheless enjoy this entry. Some tweaks to the presentation and control would’ve definitely improved the experience, but what is here still packs enough new content for casual gamers who enjoy the Diner Dash formula.

This chapter begins with some devilishly difficult puzzles, and ends with another one. Throughout, you are constantly on your toes as the entire island, it seems, is against you. Getting through this without a walkthrough will prove difficult for most, but the puzzles are also rewarding, and of course clever. What sets this chapter apart is the constant sense that something bad is going to happen, and the ominous title is definitely the first sign. Guybrush will literally fight for his life throughout, and when it’s all over, will it be enough?

As usual, your adventure will be chock full of characters, including an old Monkey Island series veteran, the hapless lawyer/salesman Stan. He adds a humorous and fresh twist to the proceedings, though his performance doesn’t match that of the talking skull, Murray, in the previous chapter. The writing and voice acting are solid, but in general they also don’t reach the quality (or humor) of the previous chapter, Lair of the Leviathan. This has more to do with how brilliant that chapter was, and not meant as a knock against Trial and Execution, which features some of the better cutscenes and plot twists of the season.

Unlike the previous chapters, there are no new locales in this chapter of the saga. Instead, you visit the site of the first chapter, Flotsam Island. The twist here is that you visit the island at night this time, and this provides the developers an opportunity to differentiate it with new textures, particle effects, and some very impressive environmental lighting. It really does feel different for the most part, but after the wonder provided by the previous chapters, it felt a bit disappointing heading back to Flotsam. Eventually, I did end up preferring this nighttime Flotsam to its daytime equivalent, and all of the previous enhancements in lighting and animation that have evolved with the series are present here. The audio, as usual, was very well implemented and set the tone perfectly for the wacky scenes, as well as the few serious scenes found in this chapter.

All things considered, it’s difficult to say that this is the best chapter in the series. The previous one, Lair of the Leviathan, featured funnier writing and prettier locales. Still, Flotsam Island has never looked better, and The Trial and Execution of Guybrush Threepwood featured tougher puzzles and a better story. While all of the previous chapters have ended in cliffhangers, Trial and Execution’s final act is the best one yet, and will surprise with the way it leaves the player on the edge of their seat. As usual, fans of the series or those who enjoyed previous chapters should pick this up immediately, while those who have yet to test these waters would do well to start at the beginning of what is shaping up to be the best adventure series on Wii.

“We are thrilled to be bringing Harvest Moon: My Little Shop to WiiWare,” said Hiro Maekawa, President and CEO at Natsume. “It’s a great addition to the WiiWareT library for players of all ages. It combines the addictive farming fun of the Harvest Moon series with lively, imaginative minigames. You won’t find anything else quite like it!”

In Harvest Moon: My Little Shop, you’ve just taken over your grandparents’ farm and shop in Clover Town. You’ll raise crops and animals, then use what you farm at your shop! Keep your customers happy by making wild fruit juices, towering ice cream cones, and extravagantly decorated eggs in a series of fun and fast-paced activities that use the Wii Remote to its fullest potential. Chop vegetables in midair, shake your Wii Remote to match your cow’s moves, roll eggs through tilting mazes, and more! Use your hard-earned money to buy new crops and animals, and expand and decorate your shop. Along the way, you’ll meet and befriend lots of new and interesting characters, as well as more than a few familiar faces from the Harvest
Moon series!

Harvest Moon: My Little Shop is now available for digital download on Nintendo WiiWare. For more information, please visit www.natsume.com. To follow all the latest news about Natsume, please visit www.natsume.com/facebook and www.twitter.com/natsume_inc.

Squeeballs Party skews young, but not too young. There is quite a bit of animated violence to be found, much of it in the form of cute toy mutilation. As you test out the toys, you will slice, dice, and grate them into oblivion. You will blow them up, cook them, and hurl them at a canvas so that their bodies burst into bright colors to paint your masterpiece. All of this is done through mini-games that take all of the Wii remote’s functions into consideration. It would have been great to have Wii Motion Plus support, but to be honest I never felt like the controls were imprecise. For the most part, all of the shaking, turning, pointing, and tilting was recreated faithfully on the screen. The developers were able to make mini-games that rarely required super precise motion controls, which takes away the frustration generally associated with non Wii Motion Plus games.

The mini-games include the typical bowling game that has been included in countless other Wii games, but the developers have managed to put their own twist in various ways. One of these is to include challenges that require you to get three strikes in a row, for example, before moving on. Another variation has you controlling the ball via motion controls down a perilous lane with holes and other hazards. In the same way, many of the other mini-games will seem both familiar and different as the Squeeballs add their own flavor and humor to the proceedings. Among my favorite mini-games was one where you had to fill a blank canvas with specific colors from Squeeballs that you shot out of a slingshot, and a first-person shooter type game where you fend off an approaching army of critters.

The visuals in Squeeballs Party are about as vivid and colorful as you would expect in a mini-game compilation on Wii. One of the differentiating factors for this game is that you can tell great care was taken to create a unique world and character models, so that everything seems to mesh and you start to recognize individual characteristics for each Squeeball.The world itself is also inventive and unique, and of course consistent visually from one scene to the next. There is nothing particularly outstanding about the visuals, but they do run in progressive mode and are widescreen to boot. The sound is also well done and consistent, so that the game’s entire presentation gives off the impression that this will not be a one-of outing for the Squeeballs. It wouldn’t surprise me to see more games featuring these characters in the future, although I suppose that will depend on the type of reception they get from gamers.

As a party game, Squeeballs Party will likely not have the sort of universal appeal that, say, a Mario Party game would have. Instead, it’s clear that this fun, hectic romp is aimed mostly at young boys who get a kick at the destruction and mayhem. Still, the true test of any party game is the strenght of its mini-games, and Squeeballs Party has some genuinely fun ones. The controls are tight and intuitive, the visuals are lively, and the developers have obviously worked hard to create memorable characters and a cohesive, if surpisingly naughty, world. Putting all the toys through their paces will be an enjoyable experience for young (but not too young) Wii gamers, and provides a stiff challenge to even the most jaded Wii party gamer.

Joining you in this new adventure is a mostly new set of supporting characters, one of which steals the show (no spoilers here) and provides some of the most humorous moments and memorable lines yet in this already funny series. Along the way you will lead the way out of a giant manatee and into the titular lair of the leviathan.

You begin the episode where the previous one ended, inside a huge manatee searching for a mysterious artifact that will hopefully rid the world of a serious, rapidly spreading illness. Which you unleashed. But that’s neither here nor there, as you must somehow find a way out of the beast. Aiding you (well, sometimes hindering you) on your quest are a bounty hunter, a conquistador, and his disenchanted former crew. A nice introduction is provided for gamers that have not played the previous episodes, and it certainly can be played without experiencing the previous episodes, but I would strongly recommend playing the Monkey Island games in sequence.

Immediately, you’ll notice that the developers have once again upped the ante in terms of visuals. The manatee’s innards look great, with imaginative nooks for the trapped pirates. The textures and animations are all enhanced, and the episode features very large character models for the manatees and the ships, the largest in the series and very impressive for a WiiWare title. The audio is also stepped up, with a lighthearted score and the best voice acting yet, including a whole lot of dialog for leading man Guybrush. Unlike the first episode, I found that every dialog option for Guybrush was fully voiced.

Still, the main draw for the Monkey Island series has always been its unique brand of pirate humor, and in Lair of the Leviathan that humor is better than ever. Guybrush delivers his lines with gusto, and all of the characters you meet are unique and interesting. Of course, as I mentioned earlier, one character (familiar to longtime Monkey Island fans) in particular delivers a standout performance. I literally laughed out loud several times during this episode.

The controls are unchanged from the previous episodes, though as I mentioned the animations were smoother this time around. Also, the puzzles were well thought out, and aside from a few really perplexing ones, were reasonable in difficulty. The key, as in any other Monkey Island game, is to think of unconventional ways to use the items in your inventory. Sometimes, the solutions were very difficult to figure out, but once you did, they (mostly) made sense.

The Secret of Monkey Island: Lair of the Leviathan is the prettiest and funniest episode to date. The developers have sharpened the presentation and the writing to offer up the best episode in the series. The episode will cost the usual 1000 points on Wii, and the episode is about the same length as previous entries in the series, which means 3-4 hours tops. For those who enjoyed the previous episodes, this one is the best yet, and for those on the fence, now would be a good time to jump in, considering the way the episodes have evolved. As usual, the episode ends in a cliffhanger that sets up the next one, and after this episode, I can’t wait to see what kind of trouble Guybrush gets himself into.

If you’re new to the world of Squeeballs Party, here are some details:
-In the game, Squeeballs are toys that are manufactured on a secret island somewhere in the Pacific and they must be fully tested by the players of the game before they can be sold to children across the world. The game features a collection of more than 150 unique challenges where players can blow up, cook, slice, bat, bowl, shoot and bounce the Squeeballs. The game’s mischievous antics provide a nice mix of fun and guilty pleasure that both kids and adults will enjoy it.

-The Wii version will retail for $29.99

THE ELEVEN MAIN GAME TYPES
• 10 Pin Bowling
• Feeding Frenzy
• Cannon
• Cooking
• Crazy Lanes
• Paint by Squeeballs
• Squeeball Testing Belt
• Pumping
• Squeeball Golf
• Shock
• Stampede

In the meantime, enjoy the screenshots on the right panel and the short Squeeballs Sizzle Reel to familiarize yourself with the zany Squeeballs.

You can find out more about Squeeballs Party by visiting the official site here.

As the blocks fall, horizontally scrolling markers at the top of the board indicate opportunities to increase your score by timing when you press down on the Wii remote to set a block at the exact time when the marker reaches a certain point. This means that, in addition to concerning yourself with matching the colors in the board with the falling block, you also have to time the fall to coincide with the markers above if you want to score really well. This added layer of complexity keeps you on your toes, providing an extra challenge but also an opportunity to increase your score significantly.

There are gamplay problems in Groovin Blocks, however, and those can get irritating and prevent you from enjoying the game as much as you’d like. For one, the slightly tilted angle of the main screen means that you actually have less time to plan how you want to align each block, even though you’d think the opposite would be true, since in theory a back tilted board would give you greater depth of view, like in the music games Rock Band or Guitar Hero. This just doesn’t play out very well in standard definition, however, because it’s difficult to view color orientation, and the vertical size of each block piece makes the total height of the puzzle space seem too small. The tilt just makes the vertical screen seem smaller, the blocks seem squished, and even on my 42” screen everything just felt compressed and messy, especially as the blocks pile up. Combine the lack of time with the need (or want) to play the game as intended and time the block’s release to the beat, and you have a real problem. Bottom line, gamers should have at least an option to play with the board in a fully vertical position.

For the most part, I was not able to keep track of the beat and make effective combinations simultaneously. At the beginning of a song, while the board was empty, it’s easy to keep your eye on the side and play with the beat, but as the action heated up and the board filled up, it became more and more difficult to play the game that way. Eventually, you just give up and worry about clearing the board only. And if you try to play by ear, meaning that you would rely on the song’s beat rather than having to look over, you’d only get a small fraction of the markers, not to mention the fact that you would miss the superbeats. This is disappointing considering how the aforementioned music games manage to time the notes perfectly with a song’s beat. Because every beat isn’t represented by a marker, you are forced to keep an eye on the scrolling markers in addition to the falling blocks, and I simply did not feel like the board/marker layout and orientation were optimal for the task.

Even with those issues, I still had fun playing Groovin’ Blocks. There is plenty of content too in this budget release ($19.99 msrp), with over 50 levels and competitive or co-op multiplayer modes, though they are offline only. The game was previously released on Wiiware, though this review is based on the retail disc version.

Groovin’ Blocks is a valiant but sometimes flawed attempt at creating a fresh take on the puzzle genre. The concept simply isn’t allowed to achieve its full potential given the developer’s choices for the presentation layout. The main problem lies with the board, the block pieces, and the general speed of the game, even at the earliest songs. It is sometimes very difficult, and in turn frustrating, to attempt to play the game the way the developers intended. When you ARE able to get “in the zone” and stack blocks to the beat, you see the potential. The game is still undoubtedly fun (you can’t mess up Tetris too much), and the soundtrack is superb. Fans of puzzle games in general will want to look into this game and experience this unique puzzle/music mashup.