Nintendo Wii Review: Wreck-It Ralph

A word of warning before you play Wreck-It Ralph for the Nintendo Wii: If you haven’t seen the movie yet, stay away from this game, because the film’s ending will be blown for you in the opening segment. However, if you have seen the Disney movie, stay even further away from this videogame version of Wreck-It Ralph, because it’ll taint your pleasant opinion of the characters forever. It’s obvious that this was intended to be little more than a quick cash-in, since the entire game will take you under two hours to finish – and that may be the only good thing about it.

For the most part, Wreck-it Ralph can be defined as a platformer, with a little bit of action mixed in for seemingly no reason. Had we been given a simple clone of some classic game in the genre, that would have been a much better idea. Going in, I expected this to be the Wreck-It Ralph game featured in the movie. Instead what we get to play is strange and lacks any discernible focus whatsoever.

Nintendo Wii Review: Ice Age: Continental Drift - Arctic Games

After only one hour of playing Ice Age: Continental Drift – Arctic Games for the Nintendo Wii, I was confident that I had experienced enough of the game to write this review. Before you accuse me of being the laziest critic in history, I’d like to present an important piece of evidence in my defense: Arctic Games contains only 10 mini-games, and each of them will take you only a couple of minutes to play. The result is a completely forgettable experience with so little content that it’s not even worth a rental, let alone a purchase.

Yes, these 10 mini-games come packaged in three different flavors: Story Mode, Tournament, and Free Play. Sadly, each mode is essentially the same. All three game modes contain the exact same mini-games, with the only change being how you gain access to them.

Pikmin and Philosophy

"This game is so cute!" That was the reaction my ex-girlfriend had when she played the 2001 GameCube hit Pikmin. On the surface she is absolutely correct. Pikmin is a game that stars tiny little plant creatures, each with their own silly flower hat.

The art direction for the game is as colorful as the pikmin themselves, with a design that makes even vicious monsters seem like desirable household pets. The protagonist of the game, Captain Olimar, flew in on a miniature spaceship while wearing an antenna on his head. Basically, your simple minded ex-girlfriend has every reason to call Pikmin a "cute" game.

I ask that you stop giggling for just a moment. Remove your mind from those happy Pikmin memories, and take just a few minutes to really think about the events that transpired during the game. As I sit here taking my own advice, I begin to feel cold chills when I remember all those pikmin who died by my hand. I can still hear them scream as they fell to their death in water, or became the meal of a giant bug.

I even remember controlling Captain Olimar as he threw pikmin purposely into harm's way, just to occupy a monster in hopes of creating safe passage. Suddenly Pikmin doesn't seem like such a cute game anymore. Below the cuddly surface, this is a dark game seeping with brilliant social commentary.