JosephD1014
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Okay first off let me preface this with the fact that my g/f bought this game after hearing both her brother and I say what a bad idea it was to buy this game. However she absolutely loves penguins and there just wasn't anything I was going to say that would have stopped her from buying it.
That being said, the game was better than my initial fears (although still not saying all that much considering I thought it was going to be absolutely unplayable).
I'll go ahead and share what I know about the game since I've had absolutely no luck finding any sort of review anywhere.
Keep in mind that this is a children's game and I am an adult. I am rating this with adults in mind. Kids will like and have fun with this game, so if you have a lil' one that loves penguins and likes the Wii controller then this game will be fun for 'em.
We tried the first option for all three mini games (located in the "family" portion) and my g/f has gone through about 6 of the games on the story mode. The voice acting is a bit off in places (they definately didn't pay for the real actors and in some cases they didn't even get anybody close) but for the main characters it's close enough so far. You are graded with bronze, silver and gold medals on each stage with the ability to re-try for a better score. You unlock things by earning gold medals, but we haven't played enough to see if that actually does anything interesting yet. If we come across anything else interesting I'll come back and modify this to reflect it.
The game is basically three mini-games:
Dancing
Swimming
Slide Racing
Dancing:
Personally the dancing game is really boring and the worst of the three. You hit up down left or right on the D pad on the Wiimote at the appropriate beat. There are different difficulty settings, and we haven't tried hard yet, but easy and normal were both really easy. You also have the option of waving the wiimote in the particular directions, and this worked for the most part. It works better if you remember to re-center yourself after you swing.
Multiplayer dancing is a vs contest to see who can hit the most beats. I don't recall a score showing but it was keeping track of the number of beats you hit without messing up.
Hard mode might be more fun so I might come back and edit this after I've had a chance to try that.
Swimming:
Swimming is accomplished by holding the wiimote in the horizontal position and steering left and right by turning the wiimote left and right ala excite truck. Movement up and down is accomplished by twisting the wiimote forward and back. You have to keep yourself supplied with air by hitting air bubbles, collect items, and there are boosts to hit. In the single player mode there was also a stage where you are racing the clock and the items you collect add time to your meter. This stage was actually fairly challenging. Control takes a bit of getting used to, but for the most part you get used to it after a while and it's pretty fun.
Multiplayer is again a vs mode. You both swim and try to collect stars. You can run into each other and try to bump each other out of the way as well, and that can be fun after you are both used to the controls. You also have an air meter, but since we played the minigames before we played any of the main story we didn't realize we needed to hit the air, and we still completed the minigame. I think we might have played it on easy though, so that was probably it.
Sliding:
Sliding is pretty fun. Again, you hold the wiimote horizontal and steer by turning the wiimote left and right like a steering wheel. Rotating the wiimote does nothing, but you can jump by pressing the 2 button. The instructions didn't state so (the on-screen instructions given by the penguins anyway) but you can also jump by quickly moving the wiimote up. I presume physically jumping will also do the same thing, which sounds pretty fun and I'll have to try later. There are obsticles on the course to avoid and there are three types of terrain which influences your speed. There is rock, snow, and ice. You move fastest over ice. Jumping a few times on ice or snow seems to speed you back up as well. There are speed boosts scattered around some courses as well.
Multiplayer was strangely enough a co-op game. One player steers and jumps the penguin and the second player has to correctly wave the wiimote on the screen to break ice blocks that are in your way. For example while player one is steering and moving around you will see three arrows on the screen - up, up, down, etc - you would then need to wave the wiimote up, up and down in order to clear the ice from the gate so you can pass through it. This is also a good visual indicator of where the gate is sometimes as you can see the ice breaking after you finish the pattern. The player putting in the pattern definately has an easier time, but they can also enjoy watching the penguin sliding around on the ice as well. This is a great co-op game for two players with different skill levels while still letting both players feel that they are contributing to the effort.
Graphics: Compared to Gears of War it looks horrible. Compared to Pong it looks fantastic. It's your run of the mill game - I didn't gouge my eyes out while playing it or anything. Honestly I wasn't paying that much attention to the graphics.
Story: Follows the basic events of the movie so far, but they have to change a bit to make the mini-games fit. You're still following Mumble from birth to adulthood though and so far they haven't skipped over any key events that would make a fun video game (yes, I've seen the movie - it was kinda cute)
Replay: It does have different difficulty settings, but again they all seem pretty easy - you can easily select between stages after you clear them if you'd like to play a particular part though, which is pretty nice. Again I'm not sure what all the unlockables are, but at least they put some in there to give you some goals I guess.
Overall: I'd say to wait for this to drop in price because we all know it's going to pretty fast - It'd be an excelent purchase from the bargain bin but for $50 I don't think it's worth the price of admission at the moment. It'd be a fun rental if you know someone who has a wii and loves pengins though.
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That's about it. Hope someone finds this helpful and if you have any questions about something I didn't think to talk about feel free to ask.
That being said, the game was better than my initial fears (although still not saying all that much considering I thought it was going to be absolutely unplayable).
I'll go ahead and share what I know about the game since I've had absolutely no luck finding any sort of review anywhere.
Keep in mind that this is a children's game and I am an adult. I am rating this with adults in mind. Kids will like and have fun with this game, so if you have a lil' one that loves penguins and likes the Wii controller then this game will be fun for 'em.
We tried the first option for all three mini games (located in the "family" portion) and my g/f has gone through about 6 of the games on the story mode. The voice acting is a bit off in places (they definately didn't pay for the real actors and in some cases they didn't even get anybody close) but for the main characters it's close enough so far. You are graded with bronze, silver and gold medals on each stage with the ability to re-try for a better score. You unlock things by earning gold medals, but we haven't played enough to see if that actually does anything interesting yet. If we come across anything else interesting I'll come back and modify this to reflect it.
The game is basically three mini-games:
Dancing
Swimming
Slide Racing
Dancing:
Personally the dancing game is really boring and the worst of the three. You hit up down left or right on the D pad on the Wiimote at the appropriate beat. There are different difficulty settings, and we haven't tried hard yet, but easy and normal were both really easy. You also have the option of waving the wiimote in the particular directions, and this worked for the most part. It works better if you remember to re-center yourself after you swing.
Multiplayer dancing is a vs contest to see who can hit the most beats. I don't recall a score showing but it was keeping track of the number of beats you hit without messing up.
Hard mode might be more fun so I might come back and edit this after I've had a chance to try that.
Swimming:
Swimming is accomplished by holding the wiimote in the horizontal position and steering left and right by turning the wiimote left and right ala excite truck. Movement up and down is accomplished by twisting the wiimote forward and back. You have to keep yourself supplied with air by hitting air bubbles, collect items, and there are boosts to hit. In the single player mode there was also a stage where you are racing the clock and the items you collect add time to your meter. This stage was actually fairly challenging. Control takes a bit of getting used to, but for the most part you get used to it after a while and it's pretty fun.
Multiplayer is again a vs mode. You both swim and try to collect stars. You can run into each other and try to bump each other out of the way as well, and that can be fun after you are both used to the controls. You also have an air meter, but since we played the minigames before we played any of the main story we didn't realize we needed to hit the air, and we still completed the minigame. I think we might have played it on easy though, so that was probably it.
Sliding:
Sliding is pretty fun. Again, you hold the wiimote horizontal and steer by turning the wiimote left and right like a steering wheel. Rotating the wiimote does nothing, but you can jump by pressing the 2 button. The instructions didn't state so (the on-screen instructions given by the penguins anyway) but you can also jump by quickly moving the wiimote up. I presume physically jumping will also do the same thing, which sounds pretty fun and I'll have to try later. There are obsticles on the course to avoid and there are three types of terrain which influences your speed. There is rock, snow, and ice. You move fastest over ice. Jumping a few times on ice or snow seems to speed you back up as well. There are speed boosts scattered around some courses as well.
Multiplayer was strangely enough a co-op game. One player steers and jumps the penguin and the second player has to correctly wave the wiimote on the screen to break ice blocks that are in your way. For example while player one is steering and moving around you will see three arrows on the screen - up, up, down, etc - you would then need to wave the wiimote up, up and down in order to clear the ice from the gate so you can pass through it. This is also a good visual indicator of where the gate is sometimes as you can see the ice breaking after you finish the pattern. The player putting in the pattern definately has an easier time, but they can also enjoy watching the penguin sliding around on the ice as well. This is a great co-op game for two players with different skill levels while still letting both players feel that they are contributing to the effort.
Graphics: Compared to Gears of War it looks horrible. Compared to Pong it looks fantastic. It's your run of the mill game - I didn't gouge my eyes out while playing it or anything. Honestly I wasn't paying that much attention to the graphics.
Story: Follows the basic events of the movie so far, but they have to change a bit to make the mini-games fit. You're still following Mumble from birth to adulthood though and so far they haven't skipped over any key events that would make a fun video game (yes, I've seen the movie - it was kinda cute)
Replay: It does have different difficulty settings, but again they all seem pretty easy - you can easily select between stages after you clear them if you'd like to play a particular part though, which is pretty nice. Again I'm not sure what all the unlockables are, but at least they put some in there to give you some goals I guess.
Overall: I'd say to wait for this to drop in price because we all know it's going to pretty fast - It'd be an excelent purchase from the bargain bin but for $50 I don't think it's worth the price of admission at the moment. It'd be a fun rental if you know someone who has a wii and loves pengins though.
---------
That's about it. Hope someone finds this helpful and if you have any questions about something I didn't think to talk about feel free to ask.
