No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle Review

The Good

* Remarkably fun and interactive combat system
* Excellent use of motion controls
* Plenty of side jobs and minigames to keep you entertained
* Story, characters, and world ooze with style
* Some of the best graphics on the Wii.

The Bad

* Camera troubles ruin the fun
* Assassins aren't very well fleshed out.

In the bizarre metropolis of Santa Destroy, duels to the death are broadcast on television, and an entire economy has sprung up around the business of taking lives. No More Heroes 2 is a satirical, irreverent, and bloody tale of revenge set in a world gone mad. Like its predecessor, No More Heroes, Desperate Struggle deals with one man's rise to the top of an assassin leaderboard and focuses on his insane battles with a kooky cast of villains. However, it does so in a much more streamlined manner--the Grand Theft Auto-like open world and the ranked battle entrance fees have been removed, eliminating almost all of the tedium that plagued No More Heroes. With a raucously fun and brutal beat-'em-up combat system, a collection of enjoyable retro minigames, and a thoroughly entertaining story, No More Heroes 2 is a worthy follow-up to one of the most entertaining bloodbaths to be found on the Nintendo Wii.

Glastonbury, let's punk!

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Travis Touchdown is the Crownless King. Three years ago, the anime nerd and professional-wrestling aficionado purchased a beam katana on the Internet, fought his way up to the top of the United Assassin Association's rankings ladder, and simply walked away. He has become a legend in the underworld, and partly because of his story, the murder-for-hire business has exploded and gone mainstream. When his best pal is murdered in retaliation for Travis' killing spree, he returns to the UAA in order to seek vengeance on the man responsible, who coincidentally happens to be its number-one-ranked killer. Helping him out along the way are old friends, such as the beautiful UAA agent Sylvia, the deadly swordswoman Shinobu, and his twin brother and on-again, off-again rival Henry.

Much like its predecessor, No More Heroes 2 consists chiefly of magnificently violent and over-the-top bloody combat. If the idea of wielding a sword in a Wii game conjures uncomfortable thoughts of nonstop controller waggling, rest assured that this is not the case. Travis swings his totally-not-a-lightsaber at a press of the A button, and after you've sufficiently weakened an enemy, you can split him in twain--causing a morbidly amusing cloud of blood and dollar bills to rain down--by swinging your controller in the direction indicated onscreen. Alternatively, Travis can execute one of 13 different wrestling moves learned over the course of the game to finish off a stunned enemy in a slightly higher-concept and less-bloody manner.

Darth Maul she may not be, but don't be fooled by her cuteness.

No matter how you choose to destroy your foes, each execution causes a roulette wheel at the bottom of the screen to spin, and if three slots line up, Travis activates one of his darkside powers. By shouting aloud ridiculous attack names such as "strawberry on the shortcake" or "cranberry chocolate sundae," he can perform superpowered feats such as slowing down time for his enemies or temporarily transforming into a tiger. But even if you aren't lucky enough to hit it big with a jackpot, you can manually activate a new hyperspeed attack mode whenever you top off your ecstasy gauge, which fills as you dish out pain and empties as you receive it. Other changes include the ability to shake your remote when running for a slow-but-powerful slash, and the surprisingly effective option of using a Classic Controller to play through the entire game without motion controls.



By far the highlight of No More Heroes 2 are its eccentric duels with rival assassins. To earn the right to battle them, Travis must carve his way through their domains and their armies of hapless goons. After you make a game-saving restroom stop, the assassins reveal themselves in bizarre, spectacular ways, and the heat is on. Whether you're fighting the hip-hop dancing leader of a religious cult or an adorable but deadly coed with a double-sided beam sword flute, the battles are fun, challenging, and unique. Perhaps most intriguing about the assassins are the elegant locales that serve as their arenas: a dilapidated haunted house, a grassy plain between the realms of life and death, and an eclipsing, setting sun all serve as backdrops of battle and inject extra personality into the duels. This is important, because the assassins--while wild and crazy--often lack personalities and, with few exceptions, are poorly or not at all fleshed out. Though the story is centered on Travis' quest for vengeance, a bit more characterization of his archenemies would have been appreciated. Finally, it's worth pointing out that though there are now 50 rankings in the UAA, group fights and other circumstances out of your control reduce the number of bosses you encounter to 15.

Minigames let you man the meat, grab the coconuts, get your hands on transforming magical girls, and more!

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No More Heroes 2 features a much more streamlined method of navigating Santa Destroy than the original game--you simply pick where you want to go on the map and you're there. Ranked matches also no longer require entrance fees, which means that if you want to go directly from one fight into the next to keep the action going, you can. Working side jobs is still a necessity, though, if you want to stay abreast of Dr. Naomi's latest weapons technology, update Travis' punk couture, or work out to increase your max health and damage output. This time around, you earn cash through simple and delightful 2D retro games by performing tasks such as exterminating bugs, delivering pizzas, and collecting trash in space. These fully featured but nonetheless brief minigames are a great way to relax in between murder sprees, but if you prefer an aside that's a bit more "hands on," you can always hunt down the goons directly responsible for Travis' best friend's death. As intriguing as this may sound, the revenge missions are ultimately disappointing--they're simply timed deathmatches, and the hit men fight and act no differently than the average thug, which is a huge missed opportunity for more nutty villainy.

Desperate Struggle utilizes a highly stylized, cel-shaded look that delivers some of the most striking graphics that the Nintendo Wii has to offer. Even in the midst of a bloody massacre, the action unfolds smoothly and without stutter. The game's greatest weakness, however, lies in its camera system. Though you can lock on to enemies and it's easy to reset the camera, it all too often doesn't know where to look, and things aren't much better in the handful of nonstandard sequences during which you're given direct control over it. On the positive side, Desperate Struggle includes an all-star voice cast, from the lovable and gleefully self-aware Travis to the sexy French siren Sylvia to the Irish badass Henry and beyond. Accompanying the great vocal performances is a wicked, eclectic soundtrack full of catchy punk and rock songs, fantastic retro themes, and brilliant parodies of cliche anime music.

The quest to make Travis look even more ridiculous continues.

Despite a couple of key shortcomings, such as a poor camera system and a general lack of rival assassin characterization, No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle is an overall improvement upon its predecessor. This greatly streamlined game throws out the tedium of the original, and a host of smart changes to the side jobs make even plumbing fun and rewarding. While an average play-through will last you 10 to 12 hours, you can easily put in more time by searching for all of the hidden collectibles, by earning enough cash to complete Travis' wardrobe set, and by replaying boss battles for low clear times in the unlockable Deathmatch mode. Whether you're yearning for a fun and violent Wii action game or simply want to live out a secret Star Wars fantasy of duel-wielding laser swords, No More Heroes 2 is the game for you.
By Lark Anderson, GameSpot

EA Sports Active

The Good

* Wide range of exercises and sports that really put you through your paces
* Strict workout regimens keep you interested
* Can be very challenging, especially if you're not aerobically fit.

The Bad

* Resistance bands are a little weak
* Some exercises aren't great without the optional Wii Balance Board.

Keeping motivated is one of the biggest problems with any plan to get in shape. Countless aspiring exercisers have bought gym memberships that went unused, or treadmills that wound up next to the washer and dryer, doing time as the world's most expensive clothesline. Providing couch potatoes with enough incentive to get up and get moving is even more difficult for console-based exercise games. You've got to provide something very interesting for gamers, because flopping onto the couch and vegging out with a gamepad in one hand and a calorie-crammed soda in the other is never more than a click away. So you have to hand it to EA Sports Active, a personal trainer program for the Nintendo Wii loaded with a ton of innovative exercises and sports challenges that keep you coming back for more. Pro athletes aren't going to turn to the game suddenly to keep them in shape during the off-season, but the average Joe looking for a heart-pumping home workout should be more than pleased with this gym in a box.

The one-on-one sports challenges are very addictive.

Actually, "gym in a box" might be an overstatement. EA Sports Active comes with just the game disc, a Wii Nunchuk-housing thigh band that tracks running, and a stretchy resistance band for lunging and weightlifting (and making your room smell strongly of peppermint). However, the use of these two rather unassuming items lets the game replicate a wide range of athletic activities. Add in the Wii Remote, which is used for throwing, punching, and doing curls, and from the comfort of your living room you can take on just about any exercise that you can do in a gym or on a track. The game also supports the Wii Balance Board for a number of activities, although it isn't a requirement.

Exercises are varied and numerous. A lack of the repetition that makes so many people skip out on the real gym is the only common value shared between them. You can freely choose among dozens of activities geared to get the blood flowing, all divided into separate categories for cardio, lower body, upper body, and sports. It's an impressive collection that includes running on a track, squats and lunges, bicep curls, boxing with targets and a heavy bag, inline skating complete with jumping tricks, aerobic dancing, hitting and throwing a baseball, swinging a tennis racquet, shooting a basketball, and so on. All you do is watch a workout leader in an onscreen box and follow her movements, which are mimicked by your in-game avatar. The great variety of activities keeps the game feeling fresh even many days into working out. It's tough to get bored when you're constantly switching between exercises that hit all muscle groups. Whenever you feel a little repetition creeping in, you can just move on to something completely different. Sick of running on the track? Head to the baseball diamond. Tired of bicep curls? Move over to the heavy bag for a bit.

The primary thrust of the activities is aerobic. Most of the activities tend to focus more on speed and flexibility, rather than strength. Much of the running is combined with high kicks. Boxing is more about fast punches of the heavy bag than dishing out blows with serious oomph. And the resistance bands are so stretchy that they don't pose much of a challenge for larger men. Nevertheless, don't think that this is some lightweight pushover. The easy exercise routines push you through a grueling 20 minutes of running, stretching, and lifting. Be warned: If you're not in reasonably good fitness, at least from a cardio standpoint, the very first introductory workout will beat the crap out of you and leave you soaked in sweat. Don't go in expecting a cakewalk, especially if you're the average couch-potato gamer coming off a winter in which the closest you came to exercise was watching the kid next door shoveling your driveway.

Everything is heavily structured to keep you on course and following a regimen. So though you can simply fire up the game and pick a single exercise to mess around with, the design focuses on choosing a predesigned workout plan with easy, medium, or hard difficulty; setting up a custom exercise program that incorporates up to nine exercises of your choice; or taking on the 30-Day Challenge administered by Oprah Winfrey's aerobics guru, Bob Greene. There is even an option to work out with a friend, which provides an extra little bit of motivation. You can make EA Sports Active be nearly whatever you want it to be. Want a pick-up-and-sweat program for occasional exercise? You got it. Want a "whole life" journal that pushes you on a daily basis, keeps you fixed to a workout calendar, tracks calorie losses over long periods, and even asks questions about what you had to eat yesterday? You've got that, too.

Although the resistance bands aren't strong enough to allow for serious strength training, they're more than suitable to use in a rigorous aerobic workout.

About the only thing you don't have here is first-rate production values. The visuals are cartoonish, and the audio effects are restricted to a pretty limited selection of generic workout music. At least the workout leader is well animated, which makes it easy to follow along, and she also calls out lots of encouragement and instructions to keep you motivated. There are also a few minor issues with controllers. The cord between the Wii Remote and Nunchuk is probably the most serious annoyance. It is a bit small for some of the curls, forcing you to stretch it to its limits to register the movement successfully, and on other exercises you can easily flip the cord right over your head when moving forward. The leg strap could also be a little bit bigger to accommodate larger thighs.

Although it remains debatable how effective EA Sports Active--or any other video game-based workout program--will be at getting the masses into serious shape, the game's combination of exercises and motivational programs is undeniably catchy. It will get your heart pumping, help you lose a few pounds, and is certainly a lot more healthy than indulging in the usual, more sedentary video game alternatives.
By Brett Todd, GameSpot

Wii Fit Plus

The Good

* Can create your own workout routines
* Most of the new balance games are fun
* Great way to track your fitness progress
* Will help improve your balance and strength.

The Bad

* User routines limited to yoga and muscle activities
* Multiplayer limited to nine games
* Balance board response can be a little sluggish.

Wii Fit Plus is exactly what it sounds like--a revision, rather than a revolution, of the 2008 game that almost single-handedly propelled the fitness genre into the mainstream. The core experience hasn't changed, but Plus is a big improvement over the original Wii Fit thanks to the ability to create your own tailored workouts and the introduction of plenty of fun new balance games. And while there are still some head-scratching omissions (and some questionable health advice), Plus' excellent integration with the Wii Balance Board peripheral and its solid presentation make it an ideal tool for those wanting to improve their fitness without having to trek to the gym or publically expose their downward facing dog in a yoga class.

You can now set your own workout routine in Wii Fit Plus.

While it's essentially the same game as its forebear--a series of muscle, yoga, and balance game exercises which (mostly) use the board peripheral--there are enough reasons here for those who bought the original game to dust off their balance boards and shell out cash for Wii Fit Plus. Extra activities are the most noticeable additions: Plus features three new yoga poses and three new muscle workouts, all of which are tailored for more advanced users and nicely round off the existing offerings (and bring the total to 18 yoga and 15 muscle exercises overall). While the actual number of exercises hasn't increased significantly, the way you access them within Wii Fit Plus has been given a positive makeover, making workouts a much smoother experience.

First, all exercises are available to try from the get-go; you don't have to unlock them, which was the case in the original. More importantly, you can now easily string together individual exercises into routines, remedying Wii Fit's most glaring omission. Plus comes with its own preset routines bundled into different target groups. The Form group, for example, has three routines (each made up of three individual exercises) which target hips and behinds, arms, and figures, while the Youth grouping targets posture, mind and body, and legs and hips. You can join these preset routines together to create a longer session, or better still, you can create your own routine from scratch. Plus allows you to create a session of up to 60 minutes in length, but it strangely lets you choose only from muscle and yoga exercises. Creating your own routine is a more-than-welcome addition, but not being able to include some of the more aerobic-heavy games such as Hula-Hoop, Jogging, or Rhythm Boxing seriously hamstrings Wii Fit Plus' effectiveness as a total fitness tool.

You may not be able to work up as much of a sweat as you'd like with your individual routines, but Wii Fit Plus does provide you with an excellent way of tracking your health plan's progress, even if it's still heavily reliant on body mass index (BMI) measurements. BMI is a widely accepted indicator of whether a person is overweight, but any health professional will tell you that it's reliant on age and muscle mass, points that Wii Fit doesn't take into account. You can once again set weight and BMI targets, and if you have a previous Wii Fit save, Plus will automatically transfer your history and goals. Plus also adds a calorie counter, using a somewhat complex measurement named METS to figure out how many calories you've burned while doing any of its activities. And in another neat addition, Plus also has a long list of foods and how many calories you need to burn to work off said food (which is either a great motivational tool or an easy way to get depressed once you see that 10 minutes of work only adds up to a boiled prawn).

Preset routines are grouped into different categories.

By far the biggest addition can be found in the balance games section, with 12 brand-new games and three improved versions of existing challenges. Most of the new games are quite fun, offering more depth and challenge than the originals bundled with Wii Fit. Tilt City, for example, is a great test of coordination, requiring you to guide colored balls to their appropriate destinations by tilting three different platforms using the Wii Remote and by shifting your weight on the balance board. Snowball Fight is a Time Crisis-like game which sees you leaning left and right from cover and using the remote to shoot snowballs at opponents. Segway Circuit has you emulating a ride on the unique mode of transport, shifting your weight forward in an open course to try to pop balloons. And for golf fans, Driving Range lets you hit the range, and the balance board shows you the mechanics of your swing by tracking how your weight shifts.

Not all of the new additions are appealing. Obstacle Course at first glance looks promising, requiring you to run (lifting your feet up and down on the balance board), avoid obstacles, and jump onto shifting blocks (bending your knees and then quickly pushing up) in a Mario-like platformer environment. It's a great concept, but it's let down by the balance board, which often seems a step behind (literally) in realizing when you've stopped or started moving. The same controller inaccuracy also makes Perfect 10--where you have to swing your hips against large onscreen bumpers to create sums of 10 or 15--more frustrating than fun, occasionally failing to register the right direction where you're thrusting your hips. And Bird's Eye Bulls Eye, while not suffering from control problems, might be one that you end up avoiding simply because it requires you to shred your dignity by standing on the board and flapping your arms like a gigantic chicken.

While you could have family and friends play the balance games with you in Wii Fit, it was a fiddly process which required you to reselect and restart the game for every new player. Plus makes this process much easier, allowing multiple players to take turns on games. But just as the create-a-routine ability is oddly limited in Plus, so too is multiplayer, with only nine games selectable for group fun.

Flap your arms. Go on. You won't look silly.

Wii Fit Plus' presentation is the same as in last year's game, which is to say it's clean, clear, and pleasing to the eye. The generic male and female trainers are back to help you (and sometimes goad you into activity), as is the cartoon balance board, which serves as a guide to all of the features of Wii Fit Plus.

Wii Fit was already a decent attempt at bringing fitness to a home console, and Plus improves on it by being more user-friendly and adding even more activities. It's still lacking some much-needed functionality--such as being able to choose from any exercise in your own routine and having better multiplayer options--but for its bargain price of $19.99 (A$29.95) just for the game, Wii Fit Plus is hard to beat, particularly for those who need an excuse to break out their balance boards.
By Randolph Ramsay, GameSpot

Silent Hill: Shattered Memories

The Good

* Deeply emotional story with great pacing
* Incredibly haunting atmosphere
* Your experience depends on how it profiles you.

The Bad

* Far too short
* Puzzles and nightmares are always the same.

From the moment you turn on Silent Hill: Shattered Memories and are informed that the game "plays you as much as you play it," it's evident that you're in for something quite different. Indeed, this is not the Silent Hill you may have come to expect. The fog, rust, and awkward combat of the past have been replaced by snow, ice, and lots of terrified running. Developer Climax Studios has reinvented the aging franchise for the better by removing the tedium, as well as going back to the basics of strong, psychological storytelling and intense, chilling atmosphere. Regardless of how you feel about previous Silent Hill games, Shattered Memories is a fresh and welcome new beginning that's good for a scare.

When the world freezes over, all you can do is run.

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When loving father Harry Mason loses control of his car on the icy streets of a town called Silent Hill and crashes, everything begins to unravel for him. Awaking in the snow, Harry is horrified to discover that he can't find his seven-year-old daughter, Cheryl, and sets off into the darkness to find her armed with little more than a flashlight. As he traverses the dangerously snowed-in town, Harry meets and interacts with several of its residents, from a local cop to an overly familiar party girl, struggling to come to grips with the fragments of memory the accident left him with, as well as his constantly shifting reality.

There's a dark side to Silent Hill, and every so often, the world freezes over before your eyes as supernatural glaciers rise from the earth to consume almost everything. Trapped within the mazes of ice formed in these frozen nightmares, Harry must run, jump, climb, and crawl his way out as he is stalked relentlessly by the pale-skinned, shrieking ghouls that emerge to hunt. They are many and cannot be harmed, so Harry has no choice but to run for his life as these hideous monsters give chase. Each nightmare is its own self-contained maze of twists and turns, but without any sort of useful map to guide you to freedom, you need quick thinking, a strong sense of direction, and a little bit of luck to find the way out. If the monsters succeed in bringing you down, you're returned to the beginning of the maze to try again, but while they can sometimes take several tries, these mazes are rarely frustrating.

Though these nightmares represent the only moments in the game in which you're actually threatened, you're constantly vigilant because of the fantastic and haunting atmosphere of every area in Silent Hill, from Midwich High School to Lakeside Amusement Park. Power is out across most of the town because of the snowstorm, and with everything bathed in darkness, only your flashlight--guided by where you point your Wii Remote--can light the way. Similarly, nearly every major action you perform, from opening up cabinets to casting off the monsters that pounce on you in a nightmare requires some sort of gesture, which produces an almost tactile sense of immersion. The simple puzzles you encounter also require motions, such as twisting a radio dial to the proper station or adjusting a planetarium projector. These motion controls not only work without a hiccup, but they're also extremely forgiving and intuitive, which helps to pull you into the haunted town almost immediately. And haunted it is, for Silent Hill is a swirling vortex of paranormal activity with something new lurking around almost every corner.

Paranormal phenomena is hidden all over for you to find.

As you travel throughout the town, you'll encounter everyday objects with strong emotions attached to them. When in the presence of such an item, Harry's flashlight will begin to flicker and a burst of static will emerge from the Wii Remote speaker. Finding the source of this disturbance will lead to a spooky moment and the receipt of an eerie voicemail or text message on your cell phone, which helps to explain the significance of that particular localized haunting. Occasionally, you may also catch a glimpse of a ghostly flickering image just out of focus to the naked eye but not to the digital sensors in your camera phone--snapping a photo reveals the hidden truth and also triggers the delivery of a voicemail or text. In Shattered Memories, the town itself is a main character, and everything from the haunted objects to the kitschy mementos you find lying around help to establish it. You can even call up the phone numbers seen on billboards and wanted ads all over the city for hidden messages.

At regular intervals throughout Shattered Memories, you're temporarily pulled out of the action to interact with an extremely unconventional psychologist in first-person sequences. During each of these sessions, your therapist asks you to complete simple exercises or answer uncomfortable personal questions about fear and sexuality. Your performance and answers to these questions can have wide-ranging effects on your gameplay experience. Characters, dialogue, and ghostly messages can drastically change; the forms of the monsters you flee from are customized to your personal fears; and even the areas you visit, as well as the ending, can differ, which makes this a great game to replay in different ways. For example, in one game, you might encounter a friendly country cop, but in another she's a frigid, shoot-first-ask-questions-later type. There are many possible permutations of story elements, but no matter how much the world changes from one play-through to the next, the nightmares you experience and each of the puzzles you solve remain identical. Thus, an experienced player can easily complete Shattered Memories in six hours or less, though your first time will usually last around seven hours.

Shattered Memories is very dark and moody, and from its impressive use of lighting and shadows to the creepy, real-time freezing effects of the nightmares, the titular town on display is at its finest--except when running through doors. For whatever reason, there is some graphical stuttering that frequently occurs when opening up doors, particularly in nightmares. It's not a game-ruining problem, but it does negatively affect your immersion in a game that is all about getting immersed. Fans will be pleased to know that series' maestro Akira Yamaoka returns to score Shattered Memories and produces one of his most distinctive soundtracks yet, but whether you're familiar with his work or not, this Silent Hill features an engrossing sound design that keeps you on your toes at all times.

No matter how fast you run or how well you hide, these things will always find you.

Throughout the years, the Silent Hill franchise has gradually lost focus of its psychological roots and moved instead toward an ultimately subpar, more action-oriented experience. Shattered Memories is a fantastic return to the core concept of personal fear, and though its developers made some unorthodox decisions--such as removing combat entirely--those decisions have paid off handsomely. This is not the Silent Hill that may have terrified you more than a decade ago but an entirely new experience that is truer to it than any other game bearing the name since Silent Hill 3. Despite a few issues, including its surprising brevity, Silent Hill: Shattered Memories is a great game for anyone looking for a scare, whether you've been to the haunted town before or not.
By Lark Anderson, GameSpot

Wii Sports Resort (w/ Wii MotionPlus)

The Good

* Lots of minigames
* Excellent, intricate controls
* Great fun with friends
* Accessible for all age groups.

The Bad

* Lacks lasting single-player appeal
* Requires extra MotionPlus accessories for multiplayer.

Traveling alone can be fun, but the best vacations are often the ones you take with friends (and perhaps your least annoying family members). Much the same can be said about Wii Sports Resort. Going solo to the Resort is enjoyable, and while the number of activities on offer--more than double that of 2007's Wii Sports--means this game will hold your attention longer than the original, the simple nature of each activity makes it a shallow single-player jaunt. But if you throw in some friends, it becomes a much more memorable holiday. Wii Sports Resort shines as a fun, accessible, and varied multiplayer experience, and while not all of its minigames are top-notch, there's plenty here to make this a great party game for any Wii owner.

Wakeboarding is one of several new sports available at the resort.

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Of course, to get in on the party, you'll need the new MotionPlus accessory because none of the games in Wii Sports Resort can be played without it. One MotionPlus is bundled with the game, and to Nintendo's credit, many of the minigames can be played by sharing one remote and one MotionPlus with a few players. But you'll need to buy more if you're hoping for some simultaneous multiplayer action, and while this may seem like an unnecessary financial imposition from Nintendo, it doesn't take long to become convinced of the new accessory's worth. This isn't some gimmicky plastic peripheral--the MotionPlus gives even the simplest games in Wii Sports Resort an intricate level of sensitivity that is apparent from the moment you first pick up a controller.

For example, take the simple Frisbee Dog minigame. It's easy enough to pick up--you mimic the real motion of throwing a disc by making a flicking movement with the Wii Remote--but the one-to-one movement afforded by the Wii MotionPlus means there are several things to think about in every throw, such as the speed of your flick, the angle and timing of release, and any spin you may want to impart. Unless you're a serious Frisbee freak in the real world, it can be a decent challenge to throw straight consistently. These tight controls make even this basic minigame--throw Frisbee, make dog catch Frisbee--more challenging and fun than you might expect.

That same level of control intricacy can be found in all of Wii Sports Resort's minigames. There are 12 different individual sports, and since many of them feature several modes the total number of activities on offer is more than 20. Not only can you throw your Frisbee to a dog, for example, but you can also hit the links for a game of Frisbee golf, complete with the ability to choose from three types of discs for different distances. This makes Wii Sports Resort a much more varied package than its predecessor, and while not all of the activities on offer have lasting appeal (or even short-term buzz), the majority are good fun, particularly when played in groups.

This is actually tougher than it looks.

Most of the minigames in Resort are brand new, with only two (bowling and golf) that are enhanced versions of Wii Sports activities. Of the new activities, archery is one of the standouts. The Wii Remote acts as the front of your bow, and you mimic drawing on the bow's string by pulling the nunchuk back. The MotionPlus allows for extremely precise targeting, making archery simple to perform but hard to master. Table tennis is another top performer, with the game accurately tracking every slight tilt and turn of your virtual racket. This makes it an extremely close re-creation of the real sport and one of the best competitive games to be found in the Wii Sports Resort package. Bowling and golf's MotionPlus augmented improvements are also easy to spot. In golf, putting is a much more precise affair, while adding a draw or fade to shots is now something that can be realistically added to your arsenal. Adding spin when bowling has also been significantly improved--making a bowling ball curve left or right is now easier than ever, so much so that an entire minigame has been devoted to it (where you have to maneuver the ball around obstacles placed in the lane).

Most of the other new minigames are fairly dull when played solo, but they improve significantly when the element of competition is introduced. Swordplay, for example, is generally just a whole mess of random waggling, but if you play it in Speed Slice mode--where two players vie to see who can cut various objects in specific directions--it becomes a frantic test of who has quicker reflexes. The three-on-three Basketball mode is also quite enjoyable, if a little simplistic. But sadly, not even the draw of competition can lift Wii Sports Resort's poorest entries. Cycling has you holding the Wii Remote and nunchuk in each hand while quickly waving your arms up and down to pedal--and, yes, it is as dull and pointless as it sounds. Kayaking--where you hold the Wii Remote upright and move it on either side of your body to paddle--is similarly aerobic and just as uninvolving. But with such a variety of other good activities available, you're actually spoiled by all of the choices in Wii Sports Resort. This significantly improves the game's longevity as a multiplayer game because the choices available to you make it so that--unlike in Wii Sports--you won't ever have to play the same one or two good games ad nauseam.

Wii Sports Resort doesn't really push the Wii's graphical capabilities--it has got the original game's bright colours and cartoony looks, which make it visually appealing if a little bland. The audio is similarly simple but effective. The jaunty music is fitting to the game's holiday theme, but there's little else of note here in terms of effects or speech. But that's not to say the game's presentation is ineffective. Nintendo has kept it basic and accessible, with a straightforward menu that makes it very easy to switch among any of the activities on offer.

Speed Slice is the best swordplay mode.

And it's the overall accessibility that makes Wii Sports Resort a must-have. Just as the original Wii Sports was a great showcase of what the Wii Remote could do, so too is Wii Sports Resort a great advertisement for the capabilities of the Wii MotionPlus. It may not have lasting single-player appeal, but with so many compelling and downright fun games to play with friends, Nintendo has created another winner that can be picked up and enjoyed by gamers of all levels. If you're itching for a holiday and have got a few friends who want to tag along, then you should definitely drop by the Wii Sports Resort.
By Randolph Ramsay, GameSpot

Modern Warfare Reflex

The Good

* Excellent campaign is full of thrills and surprises
* Online multiplayer is engaging and addictive
* More online modes than World at War.

The Bad

* Campaign is short
* Occasional control hiccups.

Wii owners who have been waiting since 2007 to experience the excellence of Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, your time has come. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare: Reflex Edition is a successful port that includes the intense, breathtaking campaign and engaging, addictive multiplayer that made Call of Duty 4 such a hit. While the visuals lack a certain sharpness, the environments still convey the drama and diversity that help make the campaign so excellent. And though there are some minor aiming hitches, the controls are precise and customizable enough to let you be all you can be. The multiplayer system that first arrived on the Wii last year in Call of Duty: World at War is even more robust in Modern Warfare, making it the best online shooter experience the Wii has to offer. If you've already played COD4 on another system, there's no reason to pick it up again. But if you have yet to experience Call of Duty's first foray into the 21st century, Modern Warfare: Reflex Edition will entertain you immensely.

The road to evac is paved with the bodies of your enemies.

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In the modern world, wars are no longer fought as massive clashes between sovereign nations. Conflicts are much more isolated and far flung, requiring mobility, flexibility, and, of course, superior firepower. The campaign in Modern Warfare embraces this philosophy, and you undertake a wide variety of actions playing as a few different soldiers. There are tense infiltrations behind enemy lines in which silenced weapons and stealth tactics are the order of the day. These missions require you to quietly eliminate enemies or just sneak past them undetected. Then there are full-blown firefights through Middle Eastern streets where the bombed-out buildings are crawling with enemies and a friendly tank is your only sure cover. In these missions, enemies continually pressure you, so not only do you have to dispatch them rapidly to avoid being overrun, but you have to push forward to your next objective. The environments are more or less linear, and though they have occasional lapses in sharpness or detail, they do a very good job of accurately depicting a variety of locations. In most levels, the terrain allows you to take a number of different approaches to any given section, giving you an invigorating sense of battlefield freedom while still spurring you onward.

Many of the missions throughout the campaign are intense and exciting for various reasons, but there are a number of dramatic set-piece levels that ratchet things up to a whole new level. From the first mission in which you race to escape a sinking ship, to the levels in which you become the powerful air support that you have previously relied on, to one of the most electrifying sniper sequences to ever appear in a game, Modern Warfare's campaign keeps you on your toes. You'll see some things you never expected to see in a shooter, and these dramatic turns are used effectively to create an expertly paced, immensely exciting experience.

You get a whole new perspective on the battlefield when you're airborne.

Unfortunately, it's all over pretty quickly. The campaign doesn't last much longer than five hours. You can play through individual levels again once you've beaten them, and there's an arcade mode that scores you on your performance, but there's no way to share those scores online. You can also have a friend join you and add some extra firepower as a disembodied target reticle, but this feature is novel at best and ends up being pretty distracting. Still, despite the short length and so-so replay options, there's no denying that Modern Warfare's campaign is an intense, diverse, and exciting shooter experience.

And that's just the campaign. Once again, Call of Duty's online multiplayer is a standout. The core system is largely the same one featured in World at War. You earn experience for killing opponents, accomplishing objectives, and completing challenges. This allows you to level up and unlock new guns, new equipment, and new perks. Equipment includes explosives like grenade launcher attachments and claymore mines, and perks are battlefield bonuses that bestow a range of abilities. Some of these are similar to those in World at War, but many are either tweaked versions of old perks or entirely different ones. They are still a lot of fun to unlock and employ, and you can outfit a number of custom classes with different weapons, equipment, and perks to suit many different gameplay styles. There are also different kill streak perks that fit the modern setting, so players who string together kills can call in an airstrike or an attack helicopter to decimate the enemy.

One of the biggest improvements is the number of online game types available. While World at War was limited to a handful of Free-for-All and Team Deathmatch variations, Modern Warfare includes objective-based modes like Sabotage (plant a bomb on an enemy target) and Domination (capture and hold control points). These modes add some much-needed variety to the online scene, and the 10 player cap (up from eight in World at War) fits the well-designed maps very well. There is still no support for Wii Speak, and the Kill Cam has been lost in translation, so you won't get to how your enemy got the better of you. Yet despite these omissions, Modern Warfare's multiplayer not only more robust than its predecessor, but it's also the best online shooter action the Wii has to offer.

Never underestimate the effectiveness of a good stabbing.

There's just one other wrinkle in this otherwise excellent package, and that's the occasional aiming hiccups. When you look down the sights of your weapon and are aiming near an enemy, your targeting reticle will snap onto that enemy. This assist is helpful when it works, but sometimes your reticle will jump back to where you were originally aiming or otherwise dislodge from your opponent. Sometimes the problem seems to be the result of frame rate stutters, and other times it happens while things are running smoothly. It's disorienting and possibly fatal, but fortunately it doesn't happen enough to become a full-blown nuisance. Extensive customization options that allow you to find your preferred aiming style go a long way toward mitigating this issue.

All told, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare: Reflex Edition does right by the source material. The expertly scripted and intensely exciting campaign is just as entertaining as it was two years ago on other systems, and even the occasional lapses in visual fidelity and control precision can't keep it from being a must-play for Wii shooter fans. Though the multiplayer will feel familiar to World at War veterans, the modern guns, equipment, and perks will make it feel new again, and the expanded gameplay modes offer a lot more variety. Though there are a few hitches to deal with, the core excellence of this game shines through, giving Wii owners a great shooter to keep them entertained for months to come.
By Chris Watters, GameSpot

New Super Mario Bros

The Good

* Great level design
* Challenging difficulty
* Plenty of replay value
* Multiplayer can be fun if you're not taking it too seriously.

The Bad

* Multiplayer can be frustrating if you're taking it seriously
* Motion control-based moves can lead to control lapses
* No Classic Controller support.

You better bring your butt-stomping A-game to New Super Mario Bros. Wii. Like the best Mario 2D games of decades past, this game is unashamedly and deliciously challenging. It will even test the most seasoned platforming veterans. And it's not just the difficulty that evokes comparisons with such classics as Super Mario Bros. 3. While New Super Mario Bros. Wii feels and plays like its esteemed side-scrolling forebears, there are enough additions here--such as the ability to have four players take on Bowser's minions at the same time--to make it a completely engaging game in its own right. Whether you decide to tackle it solo or submit yourself to the at-times fun, at-times frustrating multiplayer, New Super Mario Bros. Wii is a thoroughly worthwhile experience.

Multiplayer is chaotic and fun--mostly.

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It's an experience that will feel instantly recognizable to anyone who grew up with the mustachioed plumber's various adventures throughout the years. Nintendo hasn't fiddled with its successful formula too much in New Super Mario Bros. Wii, with gameplay additions limited to tweaks rather than total revamps. Your task is still to make your way from point A to point B while avoiding various environmental obstacles and enemies, which requires increasingly accurate timing, intricate planning, and ninjalike reflexes as you progress through the game's eight varied worlds. Mario himself gets two new power-ups; first, there's the astoundingly useful penguin suit, which grants Mario the ability to hurl snowballs that can freeze opponents (as well gives him better traction on ice and the ability to navigate through water like a fish). Then, there's the just-as-useful helicopter suit, which allows Mario to shoot himself into the air and hover for short periods of time. All of Mario's other power-ups and abilities are old favorites--fire-flowers, ice-flowers (that can also hurl freezing snowballs), starmans, and more make a comeback. The loveable Yoshi also makes an all-too-brief appearance in a few levels.

You'll need to dig deep and mine whatever experience you have with previous Mario offerings because New Super Mario Bros. Wii is by far the most challenging game in the series for many years (certainly more so than New Super Mario Bros. on the DS or Super Mario Galaxy). It starts off innocuously enough, but by the start of the second world, things get noticeably more difficult. It doesn't let up as you make your way through to the fiery eighth world and a particularly epic Bowser boss battle. It's a welcome challenge because despite the fact that you'll no doubt lose plenty of lives and at times be tempted to throw the Wii Remote in frustration, the game never feels cheap, thanks to its consistently outstanding level design. Avoiding half a dozen Bullet Bills while navigating various shifting platforms may seem impossible to begin with, but patient study and fast reactions will always get you through (with enough practice, that is).

The game's high difficulty may initially scare off new players, but it wouldn't be the Nintendo of today if the game didn't try to make concessions for casual gamers. The Super Guide is the game's way of helping you past sections you may find tough and is activated as an option once you lose eight lives in any particular level. If you choose to use the guide, a computer-controlled Luigi will sub in for Mario and essentially run through the entire level for you (including any boss fights that may be part of the level). Once complete, you're given the option to either try the level again yourself or just skip it completely. It's an interesting addition, and while it initially seems to make the game too easy, the high lives count needed before it activates means that, for the most part, you'll probably be able to figure out the best way through a level on your own even before the Super Guide kicks in for you. And while it does show you the optimum path through levels, the AI Luigi doesn't uncover all the secret areas or star coins, which means Mario completionists will still have to figure out how to grab these bonuses on their own.

The game gets tough quickly--this is just the first world.

As with previous Mario games, there are plenty of these secret areas and bonuses to be found, which adds greatly to the replay value of New Super Mario Bros. Wii. Each level features star and red coins to collect, as well as the usual warp pipes, hidden blocks, secret extra lives, and more. Collected star coins can be used to unlock bonus movies that show where hidden areas can be found, speed runs, and more. But more importantly, you'll need star coins to access a supersecret area that is only unlocked after you complete the game, giving you even more incentive to continue playing.

Your quest to find all those coins and save perennially kidnapped victim Princess Peach is backed up by mainly solid controls that have kept the simplicity of previous Mario games. You play with the Wii Remote held sideways, with the 2 button used for the all-important jump and the 1 button used to throw projectiles. It works fine for the most part, but some of the motion-control-based moves--such as shaking the Wii Remote to launch a spin attack or quickly jerking the Wii Remote down to pick up objects--can sometimes lead to unexpected lapses of control as your hands shift. It's not a game breaker, but there will be the occasional instance where a carefully planned and intricate sequence of jumps and attacks is undone by waggling-induced control loss. And while you can play with a nunchuk attached, for some odd reason, there's no Classic Controller support built into the game, which is a disappointing omission.

Multiplayer can be fun, as long as you're not playing with jerks.

New Super Mario Bros. Wii's biggest new feature is the ability for four people to play the game at once. Players take on the role of Mario, Luigi, Blue Toad, and Yellow Toad. Though technically they're different characters, they all share the same abilities and moves. Playing with friends is initially great fun--you can bounce off other characters, push each other into crevices, or even pick up and throw other characters. It's chaotic and can provide plenty of laughs; that is, as long as you're not actually serious about quickly reaching the end of a level. The ability to bounce off other's characters makes navigating most tough levels with more than one player a slow process, and it reaches frustration levels if you're partnered with Mario newcomers who will, more often than not, accidentally get in the way. That's not to say you should avoid multiplayer--with other experienced players at the helm, it can be fun, if a little tedious, to make it through a world. Multiplayer can also be a great teaching tool, with experienced players taking the lead and showing the ropes to platformer novices who want to build up their skills. Outside of the main game, players can also compete in two dedicated multiplayer modes--Free mode and Coin Battle. Both these modes allow you to play any level you've already unlocked, but while Free mode is just a straight-up replay, Coin Battle sees you competing with your friends to see who can make it to the end with the most coins collected.

While New Super Mario Bros. Wii is the second Mario platform game offering for the Nintendo home console, it pales in comparison to the looks of the first game: Super Mario Galaxy. This new Mario for the Wii features the usual bright colors and cartoon look of the series, but it lacks the sharpness and detail that Galaxy showed off. Sound is more a collection of nostalgia-inducing music and noises from previous Mario games than anything groundbreaking or new, including sounds from the 8-bit era, such as the distinctive noise made when Mario first grabs a super mushroom.

Controls are mostly fine, but some waggle and motion moves can be annoying.

Thankfully, New Super Mario Bros. Wii has more than nostalgia to back it up. While it doesn't stray too far from what's come before it, New Super Mario Bros. Wii's tight gameplay, multitude of secrets, accessibility for newcomers thanks to the nifty Super Guide, and some fun multiplayer additions all add up to a great platformer that Mario fans and nonfans alike should enjoy.
By Randolph Ramsay, GameSpot

Final Fantasy Crystal

The Good

* Richly detailed and diverse world
* Exciting, well-told story.

The Bad

* Shallow, repetitive combat
* Absence of map makes it easy to get lost
* Character customization is uninvolving.

When it comes to creating distinct and memorable worlds, few developers have such a storied history as Square Enix. And in The Crystal Bearers, the new third-person adventure game set in the Crystal Chronicles universe, this gift for conjuring worlds is on glorious display. Your journeys will take you through a diverse assortment of vibrant locales that are alive with detail and activity, and you'll sometimes feel yourself getting transported to this vividly realized world. But that feeling won't last. The Crystal Bearers is crammed with disappointments and frustrations that are every bit the match of its charms, and each time you're starting to feel yourself absorbed in the adventure, one of those disappointments comes along and yanks you right out of it.

The opening sequence is fast-paced and fun. Unfortunately, most of what follows isn't.

The Crystal Bearers may be set in the same universe as earlier Crystal Chronicles games, but no knowledge of those is necessary to dive into this one. It has been a thousand years since the events of the original game, and the world has changed drastically. Technology is the dominant force, with magic the domain of only a handful of outcasts called crystal bearers. You play as Layle, a brash young bearer who rents out his abilities of telekinesis to the highest bidder. The game gets off to a thrilling start when the flying luxury ship that Layle has been hired to protect is besieged by monsters summoned by a member of the ostensibly extinct Yuke tribe. Layle launches himself into a hot pursuit of the enigmatic Yuke and into an adventure in which the fate of the world is at stake. The story is a good one, packed with memorable characters, rich with themes of discrimination and a sense of history, and told via frequently exciting cutscenes. The most compelling reason to play this game is to experience the tale it tells and the richly detailed, magical world in which it takes place.

Experiencing that tale means putting up with a whole lot of disappointing gameplay, though. The Crystal Bearers makes a strong first impression, with a bold opening that makes it clear right off the bat that this is an action game, altogether different from the earlier, more role-playing-oriented Crystal Chronicles titles. When the ship is attacked, Layle literally leaps into action, and as he plummets through the sky, you use the Wii remote to target and fire at the flying monsters. It's a brisk and fun opening sequence that sets a tone the game sadly fails to maintain. Other minigame sequences pop up frequently throughout the story, including an on-rails chocobo chase sequence and a simple rhythm game when Layle must dance at a high-class ball, but while these are pleasant little diversions from the core action, they aren't enough to save it.

Although the plot tries to create a sense of tension as Layle pursues the mysterious Yuke from one location to another in the early stages, the dull gameplay kills any sense of pacing. When you run from area to area, you'll occasionally come across groups of monsters to fight. But the combat is shallow and tedious. You can target an environmental object or an enemy with the remote, grab it using Layle's powers, and toss it through the air with a quick flick or a tap of the B button. You can also swing the remote to have Layle roll, avoiding any incoming attacks. This is how all combat works in the game. You target things, grab them, and toss them, over and over again. There's a small amount of experimentation involved, since it may prove to be more effective to toss certain objects at certain enemies, but the mechanics of combat never become any more elaborate or rewarding. Even the final boss battle, which to its credit has a grand sense of scale and drama to it, is as frustrating and dull as the battles that precede it.

Grabbing and tossing things repeatedly as your only means of attack makes for some repetitive, boring combat.

The dullness of combat is compounded by the camera, which, rather than smartly following the pointer when you're trying to target a monster at the edge of the screen, must be slowly rotated with the control pad. And it's made more frustrating by an imposed time limit. If you vanquish all the monsters in an area, you're rewarded with a myrrh fragment, which increases your maximum life. However, if you take too long to defeat the monsters, they all vanish, and you must wait for all of them to reappear for another shot at the precious myrrh fragment. What's particularly maddening about the time limit is that there's no countdown displayed onscreen, so you never know how much time you have remaining. If you could see the clock ticking down, you'd at least be able to cut your losses and move on when it became clear that things weren't going to go your way, but as it is, you can waste minutes trying to defeat all the monsters, only to hear a bell toll as you fail and the monsters vanish, leaving you with nothing to show for your efforts.

Of course, you're not always fighting. Much of your time is spent just traversing the world, running or riding a chocobo from one key location to the next, and this process is also marred by a glaring issue. The game has no proper map to help you get from one place to another. As a result, it's very easy to get lost and to waste long periods of time running around until you stumble on the path to where you're going.

One thing you probably won't spend much time doing is customizing Layle. Character customization may be a significant part of most games that bear the Final Fantasy name, but it's a very minor component here. As you travel and fight monsters, you'll gather materials that can be crafted into various accessories that Layle can equip to enhance certain attributes, increase the size of your target cursor, or convey other bonuses. But the overall impact of these accessories on the gameplay is generally small, and you can progress through the entire game without bothering with accessories at all.

The story and the world are far better than what the gameplay deserves.

The Crystal Bearers looks impressive. The locations you visit are designed with an imaginative flair and are imbued with a level of detail that makes them truly captivating. There's a remarkable variety to the locations as well. The architecture, fashion, and technology of each area lend believability to the rich history and diverse cultures that the game's story hints at. From the futuristic elegance of the Lilty capital to the rusty oppressiveness of an aerial prison, the world of this game will stay with you. So will its characters, thanks to smart writing and mostly solid voice acting, though Layle's lines are listlessly delivered. The various melodies that play as you travel the world provide appropriate accompaniment to the look of each region, and the sound effects suit the action just fine.

The amount of time it takes to reach the conclusion of The Crystal Bearers can vary wildly depending on how much combat you decide to bother with and how much time you spend trying to figure out how to get where you're going, but regardless of whether it takes you eight hours or 15, you won't enjoy most of that time. A game this beautiful, with an exciting, well-told story like this one, should have gameplay that makes you want to spend time in its world. But as dazzling as the characters and locations are, they can't hide the fact that the game just isn't fun to play.
By Carolyn Petit, GameSpot

Academy of Champions: Soccer Review

The Good

* Involving Story mode for kids, with lots of challenges and minigames
* Colorful, cartoonish visuals
* Simple-but-satisfying arcade soccer
* Solid roster of wacky guest stars from other Ubisoft franchises.
The Bad

* A little childish for older players
* A bit lacking in the multiplayer department.


Academy of Champions: Soccer is aimed directly at the preteen set and has a focus almost evenly split between soccer-school social life and booting a ball around on the pitch. But even though it's more of a shallow role-playing game based on the beautiful game than a full-fledged arcade sports game, it does a good job of playing to the Harry Potter fan base with a fantastic world that replaces magic with soccer. An enchanting atmosphere and varied challenges and minigames come together to keep a young player's interest for quite a few hours.

Pele would probably be OK with the pointy head if he could look this young again in real life.

Story mode thoroughly rips off J.K. Rowling. You take the role of a new pupil at Brightfield Academy, a mystical soccer school in a golden castle run by the legendary, very youthful-looking Pele (with occasional help from Mia Hamm). Brightfield is a stand-in for Hogwarts, with soccer players running around in the pictures on the walls, Pele playing a beardless Dumbledore, your team the Mighty Five acting like good-guy Gryffindor, and the rival Scythemore Academy assuming the villainous function of Slytherin. Soccer feels a lot like quidditch, too. Games are played on a wide variety of otherworldly pitches with huge placards, giant soccer balls, and surreal art floating in the backgrounds. Weird on-field scenery denotes where your match is taking place, such as the goals that look like the mouths of giant Mayan idol heads when you're playing against a Mexican squad. Some of your opponents even come from other Ubisoft properties. One team is made up of Raving Rabbids from the Rayman series, for instance, and you can unlock Altair from Assassin's Creed and Sam Fisher from Splinter Cell as special players. The Prince of Persia even shows up as a ringer brought in to support one of your early rivals.

Everything about the presentation is eccentric and whimsical. Characters are exaggerated cartoons, including strikers who sport huge flip hairdos reminiscent of Sonic the Hedgehog, mouselike little girls who start at midfield, and heavyset keepers who have huge guts plummeting over the tops of their shorts. Music is a bouncy Saturday-morning confection, and conversations with fellow students and Pele sound a lot like the mwah-mwah-mwah language spoken by Charlie Brown's teachers. It's all pretty twee, but it's fanciful enough to capture the imagination of the preteen crowd that plays soccer and reads Harry Potter.

The gameplay isn't as memorable as the style and setting. Story mode, which is the main way to play Academy of Champions: Soccer (the only other options are plain one-off matches and minigames), takes you through terms at Brightfield with day-by-day calendars. Every day you run through a series of three activities, ranging from on-field minigames where you pass, shoot at targets, dribble, and so forth, to RPG-lite pastimes like talking to schoolmates, scrounging up dirt on opponents, recruiting players for your squad, dealing out experience points to teammates to buff stats like speed and shooting, and buying better equipment. Full-blown five-on-five matches are a regular occurrence, although the big games take place only every week or so and have to be won in order for you to proceed further.

Everything is quick and breezy. On-field drills deal with accomplishing a simple objective, such as hitting a set number of targets in a goal in two minutes. The only offbeat minigame is a special freestyle dribbling competition that makes use of the Wii Balance Board. Chatting involves basic dialogue trees where you pick from just a couple of options. Recruiting is straightforward, since you generally have no more than a couple of choices, and you always pick up the player that you want. Upgrading teammates is a little more involved, but there are still just a handful of stat and equipment categories to deal with for each player. Every so often you top up your striker's speed by moving him from C+ to B, nudge a keeper's reaction from F to D, or buy somebody some new football boots, but you really don't need to put much thinking into roster management. And matches are speedy, three-minute affairs loaded with shots and players executing crazy moves. It's fast-paced, but not hyper-accelerated or some kind of soccer on steroids. Sure, you can make nutty dodges and pull off superhero special moves such as cartoon banana kicks when you max out a talent bar. But the enemy AI is sharp, the goalies are top-notch, and the final scores are generally comparable to those in real soccer. The schedule moves so quickly and shuffles up challenges so much that it's tough to get tired of the repetition…even though there are only so many things you can do with a soccer ball.

Fanciful soccer pitches and unlockable guest stars like Sam Fisher and the Prince of Persia are two key elements of the game.

Oddly, though, the game makes little use of some core Wii characteristics. Motion controls are barely used. Most of the game relies on the control stick and the buttons on the nunchuk, with the Wii Remote being used largely for its A and B buttons to shoot and pass, and to take on button-clicking timed challenges in isolated duels for possession of the ball or to make a header. There is support for the Wii MotionPlus, but only to angle the ball for shots and to activate special abilities (via shaking). Multiplayer is another area where the game comes up a little short. Although you can call over a single buddy for quick-play matches on the same system, there is no way to get a few friends in on the action like in many other Wii sports games, and there is no option to go online. So this isn't much of a party game.

Even though Academy of Champions: Soccer isn't a serious arcade soccer simulation, it meets its goal of providing a diversion for kids attracted to the idea of both kicking around a ball and taking part in the extracurricular activities at a magical soccer school. It won't hold the interest of older teens or adults for very long, but then again, the game isn't aimed at them. Soccer moms looking for a way to get their kids through the winter should take a look at this one.
By Brett Todd, GameSpot

yakuza 3

We talk to Sega developers in Japan and answer some of your reader questions from last week.

GameSpot is back from Japan where we checked out some of Sega's big releases for 2010, as well as talked to some of the developers behind games like Yakuza 3, Super Monkey Ball: Step and Roll, Valkyria Chronicles 2, and Resonance of Fate. We've already given you a sneak peek at Sega HQ in Tokyo, but this time around, we thought we'd answer some of the more pressing questions readers had in response to our first post.

Yakuza 3.

The list of questions below is organised by game name. The answers have been provided by managing director of Sega Australia, Darren Macbeth, for questions relating to Yakuza 3, Shenmue, and Project Needlemouse; Yasuihito Baba for questions relating to Super Monkey Ball: Step and Roll; Takeshi Ozawa and Shinji Motoyama for questions relating to Valkyria Chronicles 2; and Takayaki Suguro and Mitsuhiro Shimano for questions relating to Resonance of Fate.

Yakuza 3

GameSpot readers: Why does it take so long to bring Yakuza games to the West?
Darren Macbeth: We need to be comfortable that there is a strong enough market in the West to warrant local releases. Feedback from our fans online has suggested that there are more than a few gamers out there that are looking forward to a local Yakuza 3 release. We are listening to this feedback.

GS readers: Do the sales of previous Yakuza games in the West make any impact on your decision to release new Yakuza games in this market?
DM: Yes and no. Past sales are always a strong indicator of how a franchise is likely to perform. However, it is also important to invest in a franchise for the future.

GS readers: What other factors affect your decision to bring big Japanese titles like Yakuza to the West?
DM: Releasing Japanese titles in the West is a tricky beast. In a lot of cases, we have a very strong vocal group of fans who demand the opportunity to play these games in their local markets and are very outspoken in their support. However, when the time comes, they are reluctant to stay committed and actually make the purchase. For this reason, although taking consumer feedback into consideration is important, we really need to analyse the market and competitive landscape to determine for ourselves if localization of Japanese games is indeed warranted.

GS readers: Why did you decide to use English subtitles in Yakuza 3 rather than voice-over?
DM: These decisions are made on a case-by-case bases. In this circumstance, we simply felt it would be cooler to have a more authentic experience by retaining the Japanese language.

GS readers: Do you think Yakuza 3 will sell better than its predecessors in the West?
DM: There seems to be a bigger market for this sort of title now, so we do expect a positive result.

GS readers: Will Yakuza Kenzan ever be released in the West? What are the reasons for its delay? Can you reveal if there are any intentions to one day release it?
DM: There is nothing in the plan at this stage for Yakuza Kenzan.

GS readers: Will it also take up to a year to release Yakuza 4 in the West? Or will you be able to speed up the process?
DM: Right now, we are focusing on the release of Yakuza 3. The feedback we get from this release will help us in making future decisions.

GS readers: What advice do you have for Yakuza fans who are angered by the long delay between Japanese release dates and Western release dates?
DM: Please understand that we are doing everything we can to expedite the release of Yakuza 3.

Super Monkey Ball: Step and Roll.

Super Monkey Ball: Step and Roll

GameSpot readers: Will Super Monkey Ball: Step and Roll support any online features?
Yasuhito Baba: No. However, looking forward, we’d like to consider online functionality with the next Super Monkey Ball title, but we haven’t decided if we will. We still don’t know what platform the next game will be on or when it will be released. However, we feel online functionality would mean people can enjoy playing the game for a longer period of time. And that’s something we want to do.

GS readers: How did the idea for using the balance board come about?
YB: Super Monkey Ball has always been a very simple game with very simple gameplay. We didn’t want to change this. We just wanted to come up with a new experience. The Wii Balance Board has been around for a long time, and we wanted to take advantage of it. The simple game mechanics of Super Monkey Ball made this a possibility, and we hope fans of the game enjoy it more with this new addition.

Valkyria Chronicles 2

GameSpot readers: What problems did you face switching from the PlayStation 3 to the PSP?
Takeshi Ozawa: We wanted to bring the game out as soon as possible and focus more on multiplayer and co-operative play, so that’s why we chose the PSP as a platform. However, it was really hard to port the battle system over. In the end, we think we brought the same experience to the PSP after a lot of work. We’ve also included a few new features and maps, which we hope players will be pleased with.

GS readers: What multiplayer options will you be offering?
TO: The PSP has both ad-hoc mode and wireless play, so it was a perfect platform for multiplayer. We'll be offering versus and co-operative play. Players will be able to choose from many customized units based on the existing classes, as well as different maps with new objectives. There is also a co-op mode that will allow players to work and attack together.

Resonance of Fate

Resonance of Fate

GameSpot readers: Will the battle system be turn-based or real time?
Takayaki Suguro: Both. We know that Western gamers don’t really like the slow nature of the command and turn-based battle systems, so we tried to create something different with the incorporation of real-time elements. We wanted to make a hybrid between a role-playing game and an action game.

GS readers: What reasons stand behind the decision to use guns rather than more traditional RPG weapons?
TS: We wanted to step away from traditional RPGs and go with something that will make sense given the game’s gritty context and setting in a world ruled by machines. Traditional swords and magic in RPGs is becoming very banal. We wanted something different with acrobatic actions and camera angles.

Shenmue

GameSpot readers: There's been a lot of community response regarding Shenmue. Does Sega ever intend to finish the series? If so, when? And if not, why not?
Darren Macbeth: We have read all the comments and posts on Shenmue. We wish we had an answer for you all, but at this stage, there are no plans to revisit the franchise.

GS readers: Is the big fan base and heavy community interest in Shenmue enough to inspire Sega to make another game? Or does that decision rely on other factors such as budget, and so on?
DM: Game development is a large investment with a complex process behind it that needs to span across many years. Before any game can get a green light, there are many levels of research and study that need to go into ensuring that it is the correct path to take. As important as interest from the fan base is, this is by no means the only indication factor that needs to be considered.

Project Needlemouse

GameSpot readers: Can you give us more details about Project Needlemouse?
Darren Macbeth: More information on this project will be revealed in the new year.

Stay tuned to GameSpot's Sega feature on December 28 where we'll be giving you exclusive previews on all these games and video interviews with the developers behind them.