The Wii And How To Swing It
It was back in the balmy days of April that I got my clammy hands on a Nintendo Wii, the first games console I'd bought since getting a second-hand Xbox in 2003 for the sole purpose of playing Halo. I promptly took photos of myself whirling around like a loon but haven't really said much about it since. Now, with Christmas hurtling towards us like a runaway juggernaut, some of youse may be hoping to get your own little white games box, or already acquired your own and wondering what games to stick on your list before it goes up the chimney. Rest easy, for here's the Falling Sky guide to Wii games, or at least the games I've actually played this year (there's plenty of good-looking ones I haven't yet got - most notably Metroid Prime Corruption, Zack & Wiki, Guitar Hero 3 - but those'll just have to wait until I've had a go). Oh, and if you want to have Miis of the Lass & I wandering around your own Wii, our number is 5335 4776 6303 9151 - go on, leave your own in the comments and we'll pop over in digital form.
It comes with the console (unless you're in Japan, but then you get to see Studio Ghibli films first so nerrrr) and it's still one of the best games you can get. Wii Sports utilises the motion-sensitive Wii controls so intuitively and naturally that if someone completely new to the Wii comes round I just load up Tennis, hand them the Wiimote and say "off you go". Within 30 seconds their eyes are lit up and limbs are swinging all over the shop. I prefer Tennis and Boxing the most - although the latter can be infuriating, that's more than balanced out by the sheer rush of what is essentially glorified shadow-boxing - but Bowling is also huge fun. It's clearly made for playing with others, and there's few joys like two-player tennis with your sweetheart, but also works fine solo, especially the training sections. If you've ever wanted to bowl a ball through a hundred pins or so, now you can. Wii Sports is so deceptively simple you almost take it for granted, and it's arguably the most accessible and immediately enjoyable game I've ever played.
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Wii Play comes with an extra Wiimote, so all things considered you basically pay £5 more to get Wii Play on top of the cost of a Wiimote on it's tod. If it were full price it'd be guff, but for a fiver it's good fun, made up of a number of short and (relatively) simple minigames that basically get you used to the various ways the Wii controller can be used in games. There's a target-shooting game, ping-pong, laser hockey, tanks and, er, racing knitted cows across a stitchwork track. Twelve games in all, most of which would be pretty ho-hum on single player but can become good simple fun with a second player joining in. Unlike Wii Sports, we haven't really played this game much since the initial play, but it's ideal for introducing visitors to the system, especially little 'uns, and it is good for some short simple multi-player thrills. And knitted cows. Still can't quite get over that one.
MENTAL. Absolutely bloody insane. A brilliant collection of mini-games that are both physically hard work (though nowhere near Boxing) and, crucially, genuinely hilarious. The rabbids are ostensibly the villains of the piece, but they're really too gormless and daft to feel any animosity for them. Instead, their actions, expressions and shrieks - "DAAAAAAH!!!" - had me laughing out loud way too much while playing the games, which veer from pumping carrot juice at oncoming rabbids to slapping off-key singers, yanking worms from rotting teeth to clobbering a bunny on the bonce with a hammer. The key games are variations on a superb on-rails shooting game (but don't worry, you're only firing plungers) and - my favourite - a rhythm game where you shake the controls in time to the beat as your character grooves on a dancefloor and an audience applauds/curses your funky powers. Honestly, I never knew watching a bunch of rabbits throwing shapes to 'Girls Just Wanna Have Fun' would be such a pleasure, but trust me, it is. It's also the perfect pick-me-up if I'm ever feeling grumpy, because there's no way I can maintain a sulk when faced with these shrieking goggle-eyed berks.
THE LEGEND OF ZELDA: TWILIGHT PRINCESS
From the ridiculous to the gloriously sublime. The Legend of Zelda is a series of increasingly epic and awesome fantasy games that started in 1986 on the NES and included the solid-gold classic that is Ocarina Of Time on the N64 in 1998. The last one I played was The Wind Waker on the Game Cube and that was bloody ace, but Twilight Princess absolutely bowled me over. Frankly, I reckon it's up there with the Lord of the Rings films for sheer epic scope, vision and a stunning combination of excellent storytelling and well-directed drama - when I finally completed Twilight Princess over this year the feeling was reminiscent of reaching the end of Return of the King (extended edition, mind) or coming to the end of Neil Gaiman's Sandman series. So the story's a whopper, the visuals are stunning and incredibly atmospheric - thankfully, it's also an extremely enjoyable game to play, building on the brilliance of previous Zelda games and still managing to come up with something fresh, original and unpredictable. Using the Wii controllers to physically move in swordfights felt more involving, while the targeting system for firing arrows worked a treat. Even though I've completed it, I still look forward to replaying Twilight Princess sometime in the next couple of years, much as I'd go back to a particularly satisfying book or film. If you've got the time to invest in it - this isn't a game you'd pop on for 20 minutes a day, deserving at least an hour or two of focused play when you're on it - you'll have an amazing time. Definitely one of the best single-player games I've ever played, and equal to Ocarina of Time in originality, imagination and all-round excellence, Twilight Princess is fantasy adventure honed to perfection.
Back to the ridiculous... and how. Another mini-game collection, but these are far stranger, faster and more energetic than anything else out there - we've just got Mario Party 8 and while it's a lot of fun, it's can't help feeling rather pedestrian compared to this. Hell, even the madness of the aforementioned Rayman Raving Rabbids pales in comparison with the full-on barking hyper-mania of Smooth Moves. Absolutely stuffed with short games - most lasting for less than ten seconds - Warioware uses the Wii controllers with more variety than anything else I've seen out there. The entire game seems to be on the fastest of sugar rushes, reminiscent of incomprehensible Japanese game shows, complete with ludicrously catchy music (ah, the theme driving through Diamond City...). The sheer strangeness of it all, the way it doesn't seem remotely bothered about looking polished, next-gen, professional, is one of the charms, especially as behind the apparently simple visuals is a surprisingly rich collection of mini-games. For anyone planning multiplayer gaming, this is nigh-on essential - it's the kind of thing anyone can pick up and the sheer speed of it means that if you don't like one game, another one'll be along in a couple of seconds. There's no way of playing this slumped back or half-hearted - you have to get up on your feet and be quite prepared to bounce around like a lunatic on fast-forward, thereby making it an absolute cracker with a few friends. Like Wii Sports, it's the kind of game that'll get popped on every now and then, especially when anyone comes to visit, and no doubt will continue to be. Mind you, the (awesome) pairs-jumping game is probably best kept 'til there's no-one living below.
Another collection of mini-games, but this is a world away from Warioware and the Rabbids, being a far more cerebral selection. No wonder - it's the Wii version of those hugely successful Brain Training titles on the DS. It's the kind of game that works best played for a little bit every day, rather than the multi-hour sessions you'd have with Zelda, RE4 or SMG. Perfectly fine played solo, it's that bit more enjoyable with someone else around, whether it's to whisper hints for maths puzzles or to play against each other in a mental race through mini-games. The whole thing is based around a school setting, with your Miis cheerfully bouncing around before being called to order by Professor Lobe, the bespectacled mustachioed jellybaby you see above. Personally, I reckon he's one of the best aspects of the game, beginning each daily session with a where-the-hell-did-that-come-from bit of meandering philosophy that I find hugely endearing. The range of tests is just varied enough, and don't suffer from replaying, especially as the difficulty level increases. It's a good choice for non-gamers too, and the lasses in particularly warm to it, but maybe that's just down to the inscrutable charms of Prof Lobe.
Oh, fucking GET IN. While I've enjoyed all the games thus far, after a few months I must confess I was hoping for a game that'd get a bit nasty, a bit vile. Pastel coloured Miis and wide-eyed bunnies are all very well, and the glorious fantasy visuals of Zelda were downright intoxicating, but I wanted to see how the Wii would handle something grim and proper, preferably with buckets of blood, entrails and naughty words. Thank goodness then for a Wii port of Resident Evil 4, already recognised as one of the finest games in the last five years on GameCube and PS2. I'd never played it until it came to the Wii, so it was a brand new experience... and, sweet jesus, what an experience. It's fucking incredible, extremely cinematic and genuinely thrilling to play, plus the storyline and designs are as good as you could hope for from a quality horror film as it veers from sinister rural-types to parasitical nasties, spooky cowl-clad monks and a thoroughly disturbing scientific laboratory sequence. My only complaint was that it resolved itself a little too easily near the end (though still far more satisfying than, say, Halo 2), but that was after well over 15 hours of full-on brilliance. On top of all that, once you finish the main game a whole bunch of extra games are unlocked, which I'm saving for another time post-SMG. Playing this on the Wii means you're physically pointing at the nasties to target them, making it that bit more immersive, flicking your wrist to reload, and the game looks and sounds grim, scary and vicious as fuck. Hooray! More of this sort of thing!
WOAH. Fucking WOAH. The reviews praised this to the stars and they weren't remotely wrong. The true successor to the sheer genius of Super Mario 64 (recently placed as the 5th best game of all time by IGN), Super Mario Galaxy is about as perfect as you could ever want it to be. It's the only game out of those featured here that I've not completed - 58 stars at time of writing - and I've already had far, far more than my money's worth of joy from playing this game. From the title screen, where twinkly piano music plays over a gently spinning view of comets and a curved planet, the over-riding feeling is of pure quality and class. So much so, it's how you'd imagine a Studio Ghibli game to be if they actually made one and it was as good as their finest films. The imagination on show here is quite astounding - every time you travel to a galaxy there's really no telling what you're going to see or do - taking the idea of a platforming game to heights that seem utterly unbeatable. Honestly, how the hell do you top a game like this? The motion controls of the Wii are used relatively gently - you can play it sitting down, thank goodness - yet still effectively, especially the feature allowing a second player to get involved hunting for star-bits on screen or firing said bits at beasties. Seriously, the closest I've come to excellence like this in gaming was playing the above Twilight Princess, the original Halo on Xbox, Ocarina of Time on the N64 and Head Over Heels on the ZX Spectrum, yet SMG really does bound over them all. The music is stunning, as good as Joe Hisaishi's scores for Ghibli films (I've got particular love for the racing theme, heard when racing penguins, riding a manta-ray, that sort of thing), while the visuals eschew the ultra-realism that Xbox 360 and PS3 continuously reach for, instead taking the Mario style to gorgeous new levels while still echoing level and character designs from all the way back to Super Mario Bros. Even just moving around is a joy - oh, the triple jump! - and, and, and... y'know, I could go on about this for pages, but there's no fun in that. It's a game that's all the more delightful for the surprises it holds in store, so I'm certainly not going to go spoiling any. But if you've got a Wii and not yet played SMG... oh my friend, the treats you're in for, hour after hour of delights, eyes wide with genuine wonder. Game of the year, pure and simple.
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