Tag Archives: Wii

Spongebob Boating Bash Review

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It’s time to finally delve into the world of Spongebob! I must admit that I actually haven’t played a great deal of Spongebob games before. This is one of the first ones for me, but it’s a pretty good way to get back into the franchise. This title is a racing game mixed in with a little vehicular warfare. It makes for a good dynamic and the game even has a plot which is an added bonus. Especially considering that this game goes for only a few dollars, you do not want to miss it!

The game starts off with Spongebob failing to get his license once again. It’s a pretty emotional moment since he had been doing so well in the training, but he randomly decided to accelerate and hit every obstacle. I feel like his short term memory had just ended when the exam started so he forgot everything that he learned. He feels bad about it, but then a shark comes along and offers Spongebob a chance to get a license through…other channels. He simply has to complete the Shark’s D.R.I.V.E. school which teaches you how to be a bad driver, that way you know what not to do on the real exam. Spongebob figures that this is easy enough and decides to pay the high entry fee to join. The rest of the characters get in on the action as well.

After you finish singing the Spongebob theme song to yourself and get back into the game, you’ll see that the DRIVE chapters have now opened. There are 5 chapters in the game along with a final chapter where you must use everything that you have learned. It’s graded report card style, but fortunately you don’t need all As. The levels are mostly pretty easy. A few of them may have taken me 2-3 tries, but ultimately you’ll have it down pat. The controls are easy enough as you just accelerate, turn, and brake. That’s it. You get to choose which vehicle you want as the game goes on and once you unlock the big boat, there’s no turning back. One good hit from that car can total just about any other. It’s only drawback is that it’s slow, but that’s not a problem in bumper cars. Just don’t pick it for the races.

The different game modes are: “Smash The Cars” “Race The Cars” “Smash The Cars and pick up the pieces.” My favorite is certainly the first mode, but they’re all reasonably solid in their own right. I haven’t played a great deal of car games with this gimmick so that was definitely a lot of fun. The gameplay is actually pretty smooth and I’d say that the game got a pretty decent budget for a title based on a TV show. There are even a lot of sound effects as you’re driving where the characters hurl some pretty personal insults at each other. Lets just say that their friendships will be a little strained after this event is all over. It’s the price that they have to pay for victory!

Graphically, Spongebob delivers. It may not look great, but the levels are very clear. If anything, the only part that bothered me was the loading screen as Spongebob would get a very weird facial expression. They also added too much color to his cheeks which was odd as well. So when you ignore the loading screen, then the whole thing comes together quite nicely. I should also mention that the game has fully animated cutscenes with voice acting which was a really good bonus to have along. The music is also pretty good. The main theme is very catchy and I still remember it which is a very good thing.

There is a little replay value to be found here. Once you obtain all A ranks in the game, you’ll unlock the final vehicles and game options. It probably wouldn’t take long to get the rest of them. I got a bunch of A ranks without even trying so it’s not like you’d have to redo all of the lessons. Still, I can’t say that I’m too tempted to get the rest of the cars since the ones that I already have are pretty good. I suppose it still does help to make the overall game longer and more worth your dollar though.

You definitely do need to enjoy the gameplay though since the game is very formulaic and can be seen as a little repetitive. There are roughly 35 levels sprinkled into the game and since there are only 3 game modes, you’ll be seeing them quite a lot. I guess you could say that it’s set up like Mario Kart, but with far fewer levels so you’re usually just on the same roads. The game did its best to shift things up a bit, but the level designs was certainly its weakness. There are no colorful levels as they all look the same.

Overall, I’d recommend checking out Spongebob’s Boating Bash. It’s a surprisingly fun adventure and one of the only underwater racing games that I can think of. What really gives it an extra boost is the story mode since it’s pretty engaging. Spongebob is definitely a little more naive than I remember, but at least he’s portrayed as a good kid. He’s always acting pretty modest and addresses everyone as Sir. His friends all seem a little more mean spirited though as they all join just to beat up Spongebob. I forgot how much the whole village resents his success. I look forward to trying out one of the Gamecube games at some point, but it’ll likely be a long while before then.

Overall 7/10

Donkey Kong Country Returns Review

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It’s time to finally go to one of Nintendo’s most classic franchises. DK even started before Mario which is pretty impressive. I got to play most of the old games so it’s cool to see the Country series return. I never really played the music games for the GC, but they are barely even referenced here so I’m confident that they won’t be missed. I ended up getting Tropical Freeze shortly after this one so it’ll be cool to see how it stacks up. I can safely say that Country Returns is a fun game and it’s easy to see that it’s another AAA title from Nintendo.

The plot is that a mysterious being made of wood has shown up to take over the world. It mind controls all of the nearby animals and forces them to start stealing all of the bananas in the area. That’s diabolical if you ask me! They try to control DK, but it apparently doesn’t work on him. This may be a subtle shot at DK’s intelligence since he really looks…not too smart the whole time. Ah well, whatever works right? DK must stop these guys since they are insulting the bananas with their cruel schemes!

There are 8 main worlds. There is also a 9th, but to get to that one you’ll need a lot of collectibles. That’s good for the replay value though. There are puzzle pieces and 4 Letters to grab in every level. Obtaining them all will require you to master all of the levels and show the world that you are a DK pro. Even without this, the main game should take you a reasonable amount of hours. If you beat every world in an hour, then that’s around 8 which is pretty good. Even if it’s a little less than that, it’s much better than Star Fox Zero’s <4 hour play time or Into The Nexus 3 hours.

The game is reasonably difficult as well. I don't think I would say that it is quite as tough as Super Mario World, but it's been ages since I played that game so it's possible that it would be a lot easier nowadays. The gameplay is divided into a few different segments. You have the traditional platforming levels where you jump and dodge obstacles to get to the end. Where DK differs from Mario and the others is that you can roll into opponents to deal damage and you can shatter objects by slapping the floor. You'll grab onto vines to swing around and there are just many more elements than a traditional Mario game. It's made to be more complex and you have to consider a lot of variables.

A great deal of the level is interactive as well with most bushes and other suspicious objects containing bananas and golden coins for you to grab. Some of them are just trolls, but you should check them all out. Gold coins in particular are very valuable in the game. Other parts of the level will see you head into a mining cart. One hit will destroy you so you have to jump with great precision. There's also a blue cart which only appears twice in the whole game. It's slightly different as when you jump, you actually leave the cart. Thus, you have to jump and keep moving to fall into the cart again since it will speed ahead of you afterwards. It's a little easier in co-op since you effectively have two chances to survive this way. There is even a whole boss battle modeled after this style. Surprisingly I don't think there were any under water levels. No worries, Tropical Freeze fixed that.

The soundtrack isn't very lively or memorable for the most part, but I really like the villain jingle. Whenever their theme plays, you know that things are about to get real. It's a little cheesy/corny, but it's catchy and that's what counts. It is even used as the final boss theme which is pretty surreal. I can certainly say that I wasn't really expecting it when it occurred. The graphics are pretty solid. They're not amazing, but the character designs look sharp. It's fun to see a modern DK and there is something novel about seeing any Nintendo character on the big screen. Mario, Link, Kirby, DK, the games never look outright spectacular in the cutscenes despite the gameplay being super crisp, but just seeing them is really cool. Maybe it's because their series don't tend to have a lot of cutscenes, but it is more satisfying than seeing another franchise appear fully animated.

When it comes to 2D side scrollers, Mario's still got the edge over everyone. He's just impossible to beat. I'd probably give Sonic 2nd place although I mainly like it for the boss battles. The actual platforming can be a little tricky at times. Kirby would probably be third because I love cheesing levels. If we just talk about pure gameplay, Kirby even beats Sonic. Then I'd put in DK. It feels like Mario, but the extra complexities do slow it down a bit. If you count one shot games that had side scrolling like Klonoa then the list can get quite long so lets stick to Nintendo for now. I'll merge Yoshi with Mario since they're so similar. DK may be the lowest on this chart, but that just goes to show how tough the competition is. Plus, Nintendo owns 90% of those series which is equally impressive.

Really one of the best things about the game is how much content it has and how fun the levels are. It's a very high quality title that you can play for hours without getting tired. The plot may not be amazing, but the gameplay is sharp and that's really what you're looking for in a title like this. I didn't get to play the Gold Pyramid world since you need to do a lot of bonus stuff for that, but perhaps someday. It's really good to have DK finally return to the home console and maybe we'll get a game for the Switch at some point.

I don't really have any negatives with the game either. The levels all have a check point or sometimes multiple ones. If you die, you can always respawn close by. You can buy extra lives with the medals that you collect and the medals keep replenishing so getting them isn't an issue. The levels are challenging, but not unfair the way that Mario and the Lost Levels was or Mighty No 9. The levels are made to be difficult, but balanced. You'll get the hang of them with practice since the levels themselves never actually change. It's just really good game design.

Overall, Donkey Kong Country Returns is definitely a fun game. I can see why DK fans were so thrilled when it finally came back. The title does a good job of bringing back all of the classic DK elements that fans were expecting. It may have had less barrel launching than I was expecting, but I don't mind since the actual platforming is really the fun part for the game. You can get the game for a pretty good price nowadays so I'd highly recommend it. There is a lot to do here after all and the level variety is excellent. You also won't be forgetting the main jingle of the game anytime soon either. It's simply too awesome and catchy. Now, it's time to check out Tropical Freeze! So far, I'd actually say that it's easier than Returns, but I've only conquered 2 worlds so far. There's still plenty of adventure left!

Overall 8/10

Academy of Champions Review

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Academy of Champions is one of the more enjoyable Soccer games that I’ve played. For whatever reason, I was never too impressed with the FIFA titles so Mario Strikers and Pure Futbol have been my go to titles for the sport. Granted I haven’t actually played the FIFA games as much as I could have. I can acknowledge that those games have a lot more depth to them, but this title is easy to just plug and play. Adding in popular characters like Ezio and Rayman is just a nice bonus.

Lo and behold there is actually a story mode in this game. It starts off with our young hero receiving an invitation to the world’s most prestigious soccer academy. The person who invited the hero doesn’t remember doing so but decides to roll with it anyway. It turns out that this is all going according to a corrupt teacher’s master plan. The main character is going to need to stay sharp since no one can be trusted.

There may not be much to the plot but at least the game has a story. That’s more than you can say for a lot of its rivals. How the story works is that you go through his various school semesters. Each semester is 20 days with a critical event occurring every 5 days. You can’t afford to lose those days so they are mandatory but the other days are low stakes. Winning will get you more exp so that’s the main incentive for the average day. The other incentive is just your pride.

The activities in a day vary according to different categories. A match event is self explanatory as you’ll play a hand against an opponent for practice. The gossip task will have you chat with your friends about how tough the villains are. Training tasks will have you doing basic drills and then you also get tasks to head to the shop and to upgrade your characters. That was a bit of an annoying addition since it meant that you could not upgrade at will, you had to wait for that day to arrive.

The matches were pretty fun because the gameplay was actually very on point. It’s pretty simple to pick up and play but very challenging to score goals until you learn the tricks. Passing to your teammates is highly recommended along with running side to side as the goalie will take the bait. Each player has a super attack with you can buy to take your game to the next level. They actually didn’t help me much as the A.I. would just block it every time, but it will be good against human opponents. Just stay aggressive and knock the opponents down.

I have to give the game some credit for having full cutscenes. I wasn’t really expecting that. They may not have had any dialogue as that was all done via text box but it was still neat. The character models are a little off. Graphically, the game isn’t bad. The designer just went a little too wild with the character proportions which is what made everything a little dicey. The game was still very clear and you could always tell what was happening. It was good enough for me to enjoy the rest of the game. I’m afraid that the soundtrack was significantly less impressive. There weren’t any tunes that really stood out to me. It was all fairly generic and lifeless. I don’t think the developers put much time into this part of the game.

There really isn’t any replay value aside from multiplayer mode. This is the kind of game where you can’t go back and hire everyone to form the ultimate team. You can replay the last few days I believe so you can grind out some extra stats for your characters but there’s nothing you can do with them anyway. Since the gameplay is good the multiplayer can go a long way. I suppose it will just have to suffice in this case. If you have a friend over, this is as good a pick as any.

One quality of life issue that I had with the game was that you couldn’t see your individual stats for each player when switching up your lineup. You’d have to write them all down or memorize the stats if you wanted to make some changes. It just ended up being a longer process than I would have liked. Finally, the difficulty level of the game is pretty good. You can definitely expect to meet a real challenge towards the end of the game. The tournaments are maybe just a little too long, but at least the game always feels fair. Replaying the level never becomes a chore.

Overall, Academy of Champions was definitely worth the couple of dollars that I bought it for. This may not exactly be a triple A game, but they put some nice effort into it. Incorporating the guest characters into the story would have been awesome but I guess we can’t have it all. Some mechanics weren’t thought out well like not being able to upgrade at will, but the gameplay was on point. I usually don’t care for the “day” system where a day will pass each time you do something but the game pulled it off pretty well. I’d recommend getting this title. You’ll be surprised at just how good it is.

Overall 7/10

Star Wars The Clone Wars: Lightsaber Duels Review

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The Star Wars marathon continues. I’m finally into the TV show continuity so that takes me one step closer to the original films. It’s been a fun marathon, but it is almost time to put it on hold since my Birthday is quickly approaching and that means that Legend of Zelda is on the horizon. Still, Star Wars will be back and this is a really solid game to have as the latest title. A Star Wars fighting game makes perfect sense and the series certainly took its time before coming to this conclusion.

The plot adapts classic fights from the movie and the show. Most of the levels are relatively stand alone in that sense as they skip you from fight to fight and it works as a nice abridged version. Honestly, the plot was pretty exciting as a result since the fights just kept on coming. It’s the kind of editing that would work well for many other titles as well. Imagine a DBZ adaption where it skipped all of the set up and just threw you into the fights? To an extent, Tenkaichi already did that, but it included a lot of minor fights while this one only kept the best.

One strike against the game is that it’s incredibly short. There are only 9 levels and each level will take you about as long as your average Street Fighter match. Maybe a little longer if your opponent starts to block a lot, but it’s still nice and quick. This game would probably not even last you two hours so it’d probably be sad to have gotten this game at full price. It’s not as if there is no replay value though. You can play challenge mode to unlock the final fighters. I tried one of the challenges which was to not use any force abilities, but it’s hard to not do this accidentally. I would have preferred that the game just disable those attacks so you can button mash at will. If you really want the characters then it’s worth trying out, but I can’t say that it nabbed my attention.

Multiplayer is where the real replay value is at. The gameplay is surprisingly fun considering that it’s heavily motion based. You wave your Wii remote around like a sword and try to take names. It may not be quite as epic as the Bleach game for Wii, but few are. You won’t hurt your wrist the same way that the Bleach game weakened it so that’s a nice trade off. The controls are easy to learn, but hard to master which is always a good balance. It’s the best way to develop a game because then casual gamers can get into the fun and people who take it seriously won’t have to hit a skill ceiling too quickly. I’d say that I’m still a casual in this game as I basically stuck to button mashing and trying to figure out what combos to use in the meantime. I learned a little about Force attacks and would randomly throw them out during the fight. It worked and I beat all of the foes so that’ll suffice. There are higher difficulties for you to play the levels in as well which should give you a real challenge based on the normal difficulty setting.

The graphics are pretty good. At times, I couldn’t tell which parts were from the game and which were the clips. It’s all pretty smooth and having cutscenes with action inside of them was a nice treat as well. I feel like this game actually got a pretty reasonable budget which is nice to see. Imagine how cool this game could be with Gamecube controller support. I dare say that it would have been one of the Wii’s top tier titles. The soundtrack is rather bland. We have a decent “previously” music theme that plays a few times, but the others aren’t very notable at all. You’ll likely forget them as soon as you finish playing.

The cast of characters are all pretty likable in this game. From Dooku to the Killer Droid, everyone brings something to the table. I especially love all of the overconfidence that emanates from everyone. The amount of trash talking in this game is impressive and the stream of comments just never stops. It’s safe to say that Anakin is my favorite character in this game as expected, but the Killer Droid probably had the best design. A robot wielding Lightsabers just makes sense. I really want to see more wielders in Episode VIII because these games keep reminding me how much I miss those battles. High octane Lightsaber battles is what Star Wars is all about.

Overall, Lightsaber duels is actually one of the better Star War titles although the bar is already quite high so that might be misleading. It’s certainly not as good as Episode III and Bounty Hunter, but I dare say that it’s better than all of the small console titles and maybe even the two Gamecube flying ones. It’s a tough call, but being a pure fighting game can do wonders for you. I do wish that the game had been longer and contained more characters though. That keeps it a little lower than I would have liked the game to be at. Next up is the DS Clone Wars game so it’ll be interesting to see how that one plays out. If it’s essentially a portable version of the same fighting style, then I think we’ve got a real winner here folks.

Overall 7/10

Yogi Bear Stats and Records

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Stats Time!

% Complete 57%
Continues Used: 0

Picnic Baskets Badges
Jellystone Trail 5/8 3/3
Wolf Forest 3/8 2/3
North Caves 1/8 3/3
Jellystone Ridge 6/8 2/3
Tower Falls 2/8 2/3
Crystal Creek 4/8 2/3
Hawk’s Nest Pass 7/8 3/3
Gold Rush Trail 4/8 2/3
Hanna Cavern 4/8 3/3
Cougar Ridge 1/8 3/3
Barbera Springs 4/8 3/3
Gilder Gauntlet 4/8 3/3
Ranger’s Retreat 4/8 3/3
Dry River Cave 5/8 1/3
boulder Pass 7/8 3/3
Eagle Mountain 3/8 1/3
Huckleberry Canyon 5/8 3/3
Jellystone Lake 2/8 0/3

Yogi Bear Review

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I admit that I have never seen the Yogi Bear film. It’s one of the few influential bear films that I have yet to see, but I figured that getting the game was the next best bet. It’s a fun enough game and it was clear that the developers were trying to make this game like a Mario title. They gave it a real effort, but you can’t just make an AAA Mario game with a limited budget and artificial length. It’s fun for 2-3 hours, but then you’ll just go back to playing Mario.

The plot has Yogi show up at the Ranger’s house to steal his lunch. Yogi also scatters the ranger’s photos to the wind as well so now the national park is going to be shut down. Apparently there are no backups and there is no other way to get people to come to the park. Yogi agrees to go and find the animals so he can take new pictures of them and hopefully steal some food along the way. Go fast Yogi!

The gameplay is your standard 2D platformer. You jump through the levels and avoid enemies. You die in a single hit to anything so you have to tread carefully. Luckily, there are frequent checkpoints throughout the level so you’ll never beset back more than a minute. You can do body slams to stun the enemies and get past them safely. You can’t actually defeat any enemies so you need to move quickly so they don’t get back up and take you down for good. There are pies everywhere and grabbing 50 of them will give you an extra life. There are also 3 medals in every level and I’d recommend grabbing any that you see.

At first I was ignoring them completely, but that ended up catching up to me. There is a park ranger who shows up every once in a while and the only way to get past him is to bribe the guy with medals. Getting 2 out of every 3 is a good way to make sure that you can always bribe the guy. They’re not even that hard to get as there will be obvious caves everywhere and if you see an arrow pointing right…go left. That’s all you really need to know to grab those medals.

The game keeps track of your game overs so I recommend playing carefully. I was actually able to beat the game without ever losing all of my lives. I’m trying to act surprised, but maybe this is expected right? Heh heh. The graphics aren’t all that bad. You can see what is happening at all times. It may not be high end graphics, but they serve their purpose. I do have to give the gaame a lot of props for actually having full cutscenes with voice acting within. A lot of Wii games actually don’t have this so it’s definitely pretty impressive. The soundtrack is less impressive and you won’t remember any of the tunes by the end. You’ll definitely remember the sound effects though because Yogi Bear constantly mentions how he’s smarter than the average Bee, Human, etc. He talks a lot during the levels and even talks when you try the bodyslam. As a result, you can expect constant chatter throughout, which is not bad per say, but it can get repetitive.

My main negative with this game is the artificial length. The game coud easily be completed in a single sitting if not for the ranger constantly asking for medals. Once I knew that I needed medals I was able to get enough where I didn’t have to go back anymore, but it was still a little annoying. Lets face it, even if the levels aren’t that bad, it’s not as if I want to go back and play them again. That’s reserved for a big title like Sonic or Mario. It also just shows that the developers couldn’t think of a better way to make the game longer.

There is some obvious replay value…getting all of the medals and baskets. It’s not something that would entice me to play the game again though. As far as I’m concerned, this is one of those games that you play to completion once and then it goes into the drawyer…never to be seen again. It’s fun enough and the price is pretty low so you’re getting a good value.

Overall, It’s good to see that Yogi Bear has gotten his own video game. He’s certainly the kind of character that you can get behind. He’s so mean and over confident the whole time in an “oblivious” way that it works well. The gameplay is good enough to keep you playing and at the very least there is nothing that will hamper your progress aside from the ranger. The ranger definitely brings it down by a star. It’s a good game, but one that you won’t be playing after you’ve beaten it. I recommend giving it a shot if you want a fun little platformer, but the burning question will always be “Why not just buy a more established one?” Still, it is Yogi Bear so that gives it some novelty.

Overall 6/10

Monkey Mischief: Party Time Review

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It’s time for another party game. Honestly, this one wasn’t half bad. The actual minigames are fairly well designed and the campaign mode isn’t made to irk you like the Outdoor Fun title. That being said, the game is incredibly short and you can beat it in around an hour. I got the game for 2-3 bucks, but if you paid any more for it then you would probably be very disappointed. It appears that this game may have also gotten another spinoff for the Wii. It’s feels like for every party game that I complete, two more take its place. Gamestop is just about all out of Wii games though so I don’t see myself getting many more party games, if any in the near future.

There’s no story mode of course so lets jump right into the technical aspects. The graphics certainly aren’t very good. They are fairly low budget for a Wii game and while you can tell what is happening…the game won’t do much for you beyond that. It’s passable as the game at least isn’t fairly dark like one of the levels in Flip’s Twisted World which will get you stuck for ages. What is more annoying is the soundtrack and the sound effects. Each level will have the Monkeys laughing and yelling constantly. I suppose this can psych you out, but that’s not a positive in a party game. Some of the levels have a very awkward moan when you click on them which is just plain disturbing. The monkeys sound like humans, which is also something that you’d hope the developers would have thought of. The actual music is decent, but the sound effects are much louder so they will keep popping up. No worries though, I got you covered. There is an option in the settings to disable sound effects, this should be the first thing that you do when you turn on the game.

There aren’t many modes here to play. You’ve just got single player mode and multiplayer mode. They both take you to the same screen of games. There are exactly 20 games here and they are split up into 4 different worlds. Most of the games are fairly easy to complete with a small handful coming down to luck. No worries, the game has a bunch of glitches and some of them will help you out. Some games count as being completed even when you lose so just keep on playing til you see the “complete” sign. That helps to take a little of the pressure off.

It was certainly interesting to see that this game completely copies one of the minigames from Block Party. “Slobber Slammer” to be precise. Instead of saving a kid from being eaten by a Dog this time, I believe it’s a Hippo or something like that. It’s a little less crazy than the dog version, but it is literally the same minigame with the same controls and everything. The game better have been made by the same developers or this is just a bold faced moment of plagiarism. Another minigame is heavily inspired by Mario Party as you bounce around and try to knock each other off of a mountain. It’s not nearly as hype and awesome of course, but it’s still a pretty fun minigame here.

Another good one has you try to hold on to the ground amidst heavy wind conditions and other Monkeys trying to kick you off. This one was fun, but the computers died so instantly that I didn’t really get to have as much fun here as I would have liked. Dodgeball was another really good minigame and a bunch of others as well. There are other fun minigames like this and that’s why I’d say that the minigames were actually decent. They were enjoyable and the timer was fairly low so it’s not as if they lasted too long. If you focus on the positive minigames you’ll come out of here with a decently positive experience.

Naturally, not all of the minigames were hits. I didn’t care for the “Draw exact shapes” game because with the Wii Remote, that’s just way too hard. It’s also just not very entertaining so naturally this was one of the few minigames that the game decided to reuse. There were some generic shooter minigames as you shoot at targets or everyone shoots at a single target. They weren’t bad, but just felt rather soulless. Give me a kite minigame instead any day. (Now the kite minigame was pretty solid, it’ll test your skills!) The one shooter game that I liked a lot had all 4 Monkeys flying with balloons and you had to shoot them down before they shot you. Now that was a well thought out game. This title actually had some effort put behind it which I can expect. Considering the extremely low budget that the developers likely had, they did a decent job.

I guess you can say that there is some replay value since you can fight against your friends in multiplayer mode. I always count that as replay value, but lets face it, why would you play this over another party game. The minigames aren’t half bad of course, but there is always Mario Party to really fit the bill. It does help the game get a little longer as being a one player party game would be even worse. Believe it or not, there are some party games that actually are single player.

Overall, Monkey Mischief: Party Time was a little better than I expected. That being said, it is incredibly short with no real replay value besides multiplayer mode. That being the case, I couldn’t bring myself to give it a 6. I think a 5 is perfectly reasonable for a game like this as it can be fun to play for a little while, but has enough against it to keep from getting an actual positive score. After all, I just couldn’t really recommend this game to someone and a 6 would imply that I could right? Outdoor Fun at least had 30 games and medals to earn for each tournament so it had a lot more replay value. As I said though, if you want about an hour’s worth of fun for 2 dollars, this game is one that you should pick up. Think of it as a 1 day rental and then you can put it back in the closet.

Overall 5/10

Family Party 30 Great Games Outdoor Fun Stats and Records

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Stats time!

45766 Points
Characters 10/16
4 Bronze Medals
4 Silver Medals
6 Gold Medals
9 Platinum Medals

Minigame Reciords

Pole Climb 2 1498
Obstacle Race 2 1937
Reflexes 1055
Unicycle 1084
Balance Board 1400
Beach Flag 1950
Boat Race 751
Homerun Match 2355
Quarterback 1826
Free Kick 720
Floating Island 1861
Boxercise 1320
Inner Clock 2 1735
Hammer Strike 1354
Marathon 2281
Get Rich Quick 1375
Hanging Bridge 2162
Ninja 1824
Samurai 2066
Karate 1589
Subliminal 1050
Sniper 1057
William Tell 2179
Planet X 2070
Asteroid Belt 1145
Territory 390
Wanted 2615
Spark Ball 2 1552
Hole 2 1565
Cowboy –
Remembering –
Jumpdive –
Dungeon –

Family Party 30 Great Games Outdoor Fun Review

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It’s been a while, but it looks like it’s time to try out another Wii party game. I really went on a rampage buying a ton of these a while back, but they’re finally almost at an end. I have to admit that I’m going to miss these Wii games ever so slightly, but at the same time it will be fun to have them all gone for good. This one is certainly of a higher quality than some of the others like Deca Sports and the 30 games are actually mostly unique. I have to give the game some credit there and the A.I. is tough although not always very balanced.

See, some games are very easy because the A.I. can’t play for beans and then they’re overpowered in others. It’s always hard to know one way or the other at first if you’re going to be in for a really close fight or if you won’t even have to try that hard. It is good that it’s not a cake walk though and you should be able to win pretty much all of the games by the end. Some of them just take 2 tries tor eally understand how to play since the controls and instructions aren’t always clear. They’re certainly not quite as on point as the Mario Party controls, but few games are.

The main campaign mode divides the 30 mini games into groups of 5. You start with only 4 unlocked for the first three worlds so you have to beat them to unlock the 5th minigame for each world. Beat all of them again to unlock the 4th world. There are 6 worlds and since you have to beat them all twice, it’s about 12 worlds of content. Of course, it can be a little tedious to have to win twice each time and if your score isn’t high enough, then your win isn’t even counted. Luckily that only happened to be once. It would be a bigger issue if it was something that happened more often for sure. I wouldn’t call this a very long game, but considering that you can get it for 3-4 dollars from Gamestop, it’s not a bad deal.

As I mentioned, this game has a decent level of quality to it so the games don’t start to copy each other with different colors like certain other sport games. There is really a nice variety here. I won’t mention all of the 30 games here, but I figure that it may be nice to list some of the good ones. This game has a Football minigame where you have to try and gain yards/score. The other three players try to stop you. It seems a little hard to do anything when the deck is stacked against you like that, but it is certainly fun. Another solid game has you control a spaceship and you have to blast your way to the finish. The side-scroller is handled well and it could easily be a real level in a game like that. It was certainly handled well. Track and Field/Marathon was fun as it tests your reflexes. There’s a memory game where you have to remember 10 really quick objects that pass through the screen and the tough part is that all 4 of you get turns at it. UFO is another similar one as you have to beam up people who have a certain description ahead of the other 3.

There are some other active competition type games like a platformer where you have to jump to the finish line. That one’s pretty fun and what adds to the tension is that you can push an opponent into the water. Another game has you hold on to the ground for dear life as it shakes, but an opponent might shove you away while you’re bracing yourself. Honestly, I’d say that at least half of the mini games, if not more than that are actually quite good. It was surprising to see. I don’t want to get crazy, but from a pure minigame perspective, I dare say that these may be better than Mario & Sonic, at least the first game. Naturally, this game lacks other things like the presentation and AAA value that the other title has, but when it comes to the pure mini games, it’s hard to get better than Family Party.

For replay value, you can try to beat your high scores or get more medals. It’s certainly not the most thrilling form of replay value, but it’s something and naturally there is also multiplayer that you can give a whirl. There’s certainly enough content for your dollar here so I don’t think that should be an issue for you. The graphics are all right. I am glad that the characters all got actual design and aren’t just the same kid with a different T shirt each time. Yes, I noticed that even if the game tried to hide the fact. The mini games all look pretty good and everything is on point. It’s not breathtaking or at the level of a AAA game, but it’s good enough. The music is also pretty fine. I like the main menu theme and the music that plays throughout is fairly calming. There’s nothing really wrong with it and I’ll take it over nothing. It’s probably free domain music.

Overall, This game was maybe a little better than I expected. The fact that the developers actually put some thought into this game definitely gets a thumbs up from me. I’m sure it was still reasonably cheap to make, but at least the games were actually fun. I definitely have to give them some well deserved praise there and this game got quite a few sequels and spinoffs/prequels so those may warrant a look as well. Realistically, I don’t see myself getting any of the other games in this series anytime soon, but you never know. You never want to count out anything since you just don’t know what the future will have in store. I’d recommend this game if you’re looking for a party title to check out, but for that you may as well get one of the Mario and Sonic Olympic titles right? That, or you could get Mario Party 4, the definitive party experience. (Yes, I’m not counting Super Smash Bros here!)

Overall 6/10