NGamer Issue 6

Frayed nerves. Sweat pooling on a trembling lip. Outside noise obliterated in a mental abyss of pure concentration. The shadow of time looming over your shoulder, inducing panicked sloppiness as he breathes omens of failure into your ear. No, not NGamer's deadline; this is the Trauma Center experience.

It's the DS' infamously tricky surgery-sim puzzler, gloriously Wii-formed for the magic white box. Presented with a series of increasingly mangled patients, you have a selection of eight surgical tools to hand. Success is ensured by remembering correct procedure and pulling it off quicky and effectively - ie without rushed body-deforming Frankenstein stitching. Beginning with simple extract-glass-and-stitch operations, you'll wonder what the fuss is about. Then you meet the aneurysm. The curing process - zoom in, inject anti-inflammatory serum, cut it out, drain it, reconnect the broken vessel and stitch it - is tricky enough. Wait until you have four appearing simultaneously - it's enough to give yourself an aneurysm.

Crafty work

Speedy swapping between tools, swabbing the patient with antibacterial balm to stabilise vitals, prioritising between stopping seeping blood holes and curbing aneurysm growth, fumbling and releasing the artery with your tweezers, accidentally shooting a laser into the gut of a patient when you meant to magnify; it's heart stopping stuff and the sense of relief when it's all over is extraordinary. Appling the final stitches and bandage, proud of your handiwork just below the surface, is one of the most satisfying feelings we've had in a long time.

But then the same could be said of the DS version, so what does Second Opinion do differently? Outside of a new set of fun operations carried out by sultry lady doctor Nozomi Weaver, this is exactly the same game as before, down to the silly dialogue and uninspired static cutscenes. The major difference lies in the controls.

On the DS, tool selection was a case of tapping one of 10 diddly icons arranged down the sides of the screen; skipping from left to right over the 'play area' could lead to accidental scalpel prodding in places not designed to be prodded by scalpels. The Wii employs nunchuk analogue stick selection; eight obvious analogue stick directions, eight tools, obvious really. No longer wrestling with shoddy controls, you're properly able to appreciate the full challenge that's naturally offered by the game.

Tool time

Tool usage is tightly calibrated to the remote pointer; you'll never suffer from a jumping reticule or lazy response time. For a majority of tools you aim with the pointer and hold A to begin cutting/stitching/injecting. Due to the nature of the tools, the remote suits some better than others. The DS' stylus was perfect for stitching and slicing; as in real life, you'd be pressing against a surface to carry out such actions. The detached remote doesn't replicate this as well - there's always that niggling feeling that the game is slightly more lenient with its rankings to adjust to slightly sloppier controls.

The laser and syringes feel a lot more 'realistic' to use. In an OR you'd be holding the laser at a distance - okay, in real OR you wouldn't be using it to fight dragon-esque bacterial invaders - but it's certainly a lot better than controlling the laser's point of impact with the DS stylus. Similarly, the natural jitteriness of the human hand translates better to syringe-jabbing with the remote, so it's less of a tapping target shoot.

Morbidly fun

The major improvement over the DS is the fact that the game is no longer handheld. Blown-up on a television screen - with a sharper, if not awe-inspiring, visual makeover - the operations are bigger, and feel like more important events. With other people able to watch your progress, the game reveals just what an enjoyably communal experience it is. Whether it's the morbid fascination of watchign a friend butcher a patient for the tenth time in a row or the simple punchy excitement burst of a five minute operation, it's definitely up there as one of the best single-player multiplayer experiences you'll ever have.

SUMMARY

Always fun, often merciless but never unfair. If you've played the DS version this is different enough to enjoy. If not, a trip to the operating room is a must. Seriously good for your health.

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No game better encapsulates its mascot than WarioWare. That the obnoxious garlic-guzzling pie-boy should appear in a game that champions lunatic speed, off-the-wall cheekiness and laughing at the ridiculousness of others is completely logical. He's the black sheep of Nintendo and with the Wii's need for body flailing making fools of us all, you'd think he wouldn't have a more natural home. You'd think.

Back to basics

Like Wario himself, the game is pretty simple. Five-second minigames played in fast succession. That's it. Mastery begins and ends with recognising particular games and remembering what needs to be done to solve them. We're not talking rocket science here - it's more a case of choosing between shaking, poking, lunging or twisting. Ask anyone who's played WarioWare: Touched on the DS and expect to hear babbling love for the stylus incorporation; Wario knows how to make you love Nintendo hardware - and with the Wii it's really no different.

The game has a barefaced approach towards remote usage; it acknowledges that you're holding a rectangular piece of plastic, never hiding behind the silly idea that it's actually a sword/gun/bow/bat or similar bit of useful equipment. Wario picks up the remote in the opening Indiana Jones spoofing cinematic and rubs it in your face. Tongue firmly in cheek, the game refers to the remote as the Form Baton, a magical stick that can be used to replicate the movement of other objects - exactly how you'd explain the Wii remote to a child or the village idiot.

Work that remote

The loose definition of what the remote represents allows the developers the freedom to do anything they want with it. One minute of play can have you turning a key in a lock, balancing a panda on a ball by tilting a horizontally held remote, grinding up herbs using the remote as a pestle in your cupped hand mortar, waking up slumbering monks with some bell bashing, throwing some darts, shoving a small child into a mushroom patch or rolling morph ball Samus into a hole.

No other game romances the Wii remote like Smooth Moves. It gives every remote movement senor a proper workout and it's the first title to fully embrace the fling-your-body-into-it ethos propagated by those terrible Wii adverts. While the adverts have the models, sorry, gamers leaping over sofas and striking ridiculous poses behind remotes, no other game actually works with such a posing style of play. WarioWare demands it.

Easy-peasy

It's not all arm-rotating joy, though. Maybe developers overestimated the challenge gamers would face in adapting to the remote, because the game that's been biult around it is the easiest WarioWare yet. Although the 15 remote forms make this the most technically complicated instalment - after all, how could the four D-pad directions and single button controls of the GBA and GC versions compete with the all-singing, all-dancing remote?  - it lacks the same challenge of earlier Wares.

The games are more basic than normal. Very few require precise timing and can only be failed by completely missing the point of the motion involved, such as lifting up when you should be pushing forward, or moving when you should be still. We missed having to chop wood just as a power bar was at its max or trying to catch a glass as it slid along the bar. Tilting the controller back to drink a glass of water is too simplistic; you can either do it or you can't. Also, switching poses between each game means that the whole mad, speedy dash of minigames is slowed right down. It seems a little naive to assume that gamers will trip up through physical exertion - the single-player is easily beaten in two hours.

Considering that the multiplayer doesn't open until you've trawled all the way through the single-player, this may actually be seen as a good thing. However, once you've unlocked multiplayer you won't be as impressed - it doesn't support simultaneous play. What happened to 'Wii play together' Nintendo? What's the fun in mwaiting in an orderly queue to throw your body around for five seconds? We're sure the official line will promote this as an act of generosity, perhaps a multiplayer that you don't need two remotes for, but we can't help feeling, it's a real shame.

Gone is the excellent turtle-balancing of Wobbly Bobbly and the manic four-way survival mode that made GC's Mega Party Games a must-have. Survival round still exists, but not even importing your Mii as your in-game avatar makes up for the trudging one by one play. The only mode that warrants a single remote has you passing the controller back and forth. If you lose your minigame the controller explodes; if you succeed, you can choose what form your opponents next game will take, allowing you to choose the pose they're most cack-handed at. Cue evil-megalomaniac-style laughter.

Pass the remote

While GameCube's multiplayer was ace, its single-player mode was somewhat lacking. The same can't be said here. This is the most full-bodied single-player Wario yet. The minigame groupings are organised through characters, but they now possess short animated stories before and after, which are genuinely funny. The sight of Jimmy T, the blue-afro sporting disco godfather, bringing stray cats into his disco, only to get down for the boogie of the century is a real crowd pleaser.

A few minigames are padded out into high-score challenges. Can-shoots, balancing falling blocks on a wobbling platform, a ripped-off version of Monkey Ball's semaphore flag game - they're all simple but admirable attempts to lengthen the experience. With the more health-conscious player catered for by Crygor's exercise machine and even the credits converted into a high scoring minigame - a lovely touch that has you moving a hole under the Miis of the development team as they bow on stage to send them plummeting downwards - there's no denying its charming playfulness.

There's a lot to love about Wii's WarioWare; it's never been as funny or as innovative to control before, but likewise something has been lost in the transition. For all its body-lunging madness this is a slower and - due to the lame 'pass the controller' mentality - politer WarioWare; part of us can't help mourn the dulling down of a proper Nintendo bad-boy.

SUMMARY

Smooth Moves has the best and worst of WarioWare. What can be done with the remote will amaze you, but the games are a bit lightweight and you'll miss the mad multiplayer of old.

83

If you're among the many players who expect a significant difference from the norm in their Wii games, Excite Truck is likely to please and disappoint in equal measure. Different it most certainly is, but for something as unconventional as a racing game where winning is less important than driving at great speed between trees, it's disappointingly, predictably familiar.

The objective in the main racing mode is to beat a certain points target on each track. You earn up to 50 points for winning but some courses won't be beaten unless you score well over 200. Holding a skid through a long corner earns up to five points, as does jumping for a long distance (like about half a mile), smashing into other cars, soaring through airborne hoops...

As you become more adept with the sometimes sticky controls, you find that there's little point zooming off into the lead. In fact, leading the race can be quite a disadvantage, because the other vehicles aren't actually racing you at all. They're simply mobile obstructions for you to ram into for points, with a 'rubber band' catch-up system that prevents you ever getting too far ahead.

Easy does it

Equally, you can never fall very far behind. You can crash 10 times on the first lap and still be in the lead by the time you start the second. Or you can race three laps of perfection without ever seeing another vehicle only for two of them to come zooming past when you make a bit of a hash of the last corner. So the correct technique is to collect as many powerups and do as many tricks as you possibly can, no matter how risky, and treat crashing as an unexpected bonus. Blast through the field, taking out every other car on the way, and you'll see that a wipe-out can be almmost as good as a victory. And in the end, no matter what happens, you'll probably still win anyway.

Light entertainment

While Excite Truck doesn't quite have the competitive thrill of top class racing games, it certainly knows how to have fun. The sense of speed is great, especially when you grab an invincibility powerup and take an exhilirating tree-splintering shortcut through the woods.

The other powerup available warps part of the scenery ahead, creating huge jumps for you to catch some air or puddles to cool the temperature gauge of your nitro booster. Unfortunately you can't just use these everywhere - they're simply switches that, when driven through, activate a preset deformation. If you're lucky, you'll get to throw some of the computer cars off the top of your newly risen mountains, earning yet more points. When the terrain changes to form different routes, it's briefly obscured by a cloud of dust. If you don't remember exactly what's about to happen you'll often wind up skewing your jump and sailing towards another part of the course.

Sometimes this works to your advantage. You might discover a huge shortcut or a hidden area strewn with trees and invincibility icons. Or you might end up in the water, where there's no telling whether or not you'll sink. Or you might just slide down a giant wall of yellow chevrons that spawns in front of you, ending up at the bottom of a valley, from where it's impossible to see the road. When you do get lost, the quickest route back into the race is to smash directly into the nearest tree and then wait for the game to put you back on track.

Supplementing the main racing action, there's a challenge mode that offers three simple minigames - driving through checkpoints, jumping through rings and smashing other cars in a go-anywhere track freed from the constraints of those yellow chevrons. As enjoyable as they are, there are only two courses for each one, so they won't take long to finish.

Excite Truck is definitely a little short. Unlocking the Super Excite difficulty level can be done in your first evening with the game, and since Super Excite doesn't appear to be significantly tougher than ordinary Excite, it won't be much longer before on the final bonus track.

Without so much as a time trial mode, and with no unified high score table t show how well you're doing compared to the three other people who can set up their own profiles in the game, replay value is going to be severely limited. There's a definite 'wow' factor to be had from zooming around the wide courses and pulling jumps with more than 10 seconds of air time, but the game always favours quick thrills over long-term depth and, as such, should have been a bit cheaper. A rental, maybe.

SUMMARY

A skimpy package that you'll probably finish in record time. Definitely exciting, but also a great advertisement for videogame rentals.

77