Oh, to be a fly on the wall in the planning meeting for this. “Okay, guys, we’re making a sequel to the biggest-selling videogame ever. Oh, and you’re going to have just eighteen months to develop it, and it’s going to have to be a showcase for this brand new motion peripheral which we’re attempting to sell to an audience that doesn’t know they need it because they probably assumed the Wii remote could do all this already.”

No pressure, then.

Wii Sports Resort represents a difficult balancing act - it’s a game which has to sell MotionPlus to the masses, convince the core gamer of both its value as a peripheral in its own right and its potential for future titles - especially in the wake of Natal and Sony’s new motion wand - and to help shift plenty of new consoles to keep Nintendo ahead of its rivals.

You could argue, quite convincingly, that it’s not entirely successful on any of those counts (though it’s obviously too early to determine the latter). You could also argue that none of that really matters - of greater importance is the question of whether Wii Sports Resort lives up to its predecessor as an accessible and enjoyable piece of mass-market entertainment. And there can’t really be any argument about that one.

First impressions are excellent - your route to the titular resort is from the air, as you’re bundled out of a biplane and sent spiralling towards Earth in tandem with a group of fellow skydivers. A semi-translucent remote appears over your Mii avatar, rotating in perfect harmony with your real-world motions. It makes you ache for a Wii Pilotwings. Not long after, you deploy your parachute, and the camera pans up and over the top of the divers, zooming in on your own, which bears the game’s title.

This is how you start a game.

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By most ordinary critical standards, House of the Dead Overkill isn’t a five-star game. However, it’s a long time since I played anything which put such a grin on my face throughout, and from gloriously profane beginning to genuinely jaw-flooring climax (seriously, no matter what you’re expecting, you have never seen anything like it) this thrillingly dumb rail shooter is just pure, unreconstructed fun.

It’s clearly been made with a lot of love and respect - both for its host console and for the grindhouse movies it parodies. The presentation is startlingly good - the title screen text appears from a blur as if a projectionist has just adjusted the picture, while a terrific film grain effect and deliberate continuity errors in the game’s cutscenes pay appropriate tribute to the genre. The Seventies-themed soundtrack, featuring delightful songs about decomposing mutant girlfriends and the like, is outstanding.

And then there’s the swearing. Make no mistake - Overkill has a big, red 18-certificate sticker on the box for a reason, and it’s not just the splatters of gore when you dismember or decapitate the attacking mutants. But it’s the utterings of protagonists Agent G and particularly Isaac Washington that stand out, the dialogue littered with variations on the f-word. It’s all done in such an over-the-top way that it’s hard to be genuinely offended, no matter how sick the story gets - and with sojourns into incest, necrophilia and a climax which brings a whole new meaning to ‘meeting your maker’ you’d better believe that it’s one seriously twisted tale.

It’s a lightgun game that feels at home outside the arcade - a slightly slower-paced and lengthier experience than the likes of Ghost Squad and its Japanese-developed predecessors, Overkill still feels frantic and exciting throughout, particularly if you activate the ‘extra mutants’ option. It takes you through houses, prisons, swamps and a circus, while a moving train level is among the highlights. The bosses look great, but aren’t the game’s strongest point, though the second encounter in particular is hugely creative and memorable. It’s perhaps a little too easy on the standard difficulty - particularly with another player in tow - but once you’re done with the Story Mode, you unlock the much harder Director’s Cut, which adds around a third to the length of each stage, with more mutants and only three continues. The combo system which builds from successive hits is the key to topping the scoreboards, which is where the real replay value lies. Finishing the game might be easy. Keeping your ‘goregasm’ chain going for the best part of a level (which is the only way to top the leaderboards) isn’t.

Its relative brevity and ease of completion don’t really matter. This is a game that’s a blast from start to finish, and has been designed that way, accommodating Wii’s expanded audience while staying true to its promise - it truly is “the hardcore you’ve been waiting for”. Get a couple of Hand Cannons in and get ready to grin - you’re in for a gory, sweary night of delicious debauchery. It’s melon-farming brilliant.

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Time Hollow has a central conceit that’s hugely alluring - Ethan Kairos is a sophomore at high school who has a magic pen (the Hollow of the game’s title) which can open portals to an earlier time, allowing him to change the past. All he has to do is draw a circle and he can reach through and pass important memos to people, move items out of harm’s way, and generally tinker about to prevent tragedies from occurring. It’s a concept with plenty of potential that deserves a more thorough exploration than it gets here - because Time Hollow is just about as linear as games get, being no more than a couple of baby steps away from a visual novel. It’s a shame in some ways, but its failings as a game aren’t detrimental to the story it tells, which is utterly compelling - enough to forgive its shortcomings and to keep you playing until the brain-screwing climax.

The opening scenes are baffling, as Ethan eats an evening meal with mum and dad, before waking up the following morning to discover that he now lives with his uncle - his parents having been missing for the past twelve years. Upon discovering the powers of this mysterious pen he’s been given, he starts to tackle various unrelated problems - like grabbing an important object from a dumpster before it’s moved in the present, or handing over an envelope of money to prevent an argument that leads to a classmate going missing. The structure for all these interventions is the same - Ethan has flashbacks which form pictures of events he was never party to, but which are significant to his current reality. He then has to piece together the mystery behind each - finding out the time, the place, and what the even relates to. Upon ‘confirming’ the flashback, he can then open a time hole and fix the problem. Of course, his problems start getting bigger and bigger, as someone starts to take notice of his meddling, and the realities start getting more bleak - friends are accusing of attempted murder, dogs are killed by falling refrigerators, and two young girls are beaten to death. Yes, really.

In truth, while there’s a strong sense of foreboding to many scenes (the superb score invoking a genuine sense of unease), it’s not nearly as heavy as that sounds, feeling more like a superior teen drama than anything more adult. The central idea is handled delicately and with maturity - of all the time-altering films and TV shows you’ve seen, the tone is perhaps closest to Gregory Hoblit’s wistful drama-thriller Frequency, with one or two scenes rather touching in a pleasantly understated way. Characters are likeable, it’s all beautifully presented (the time motif is used well throughout, apart from the rather incongruous numbers in everyone’s surname) and the ending will likely buzz around your head for a few hours while you get your brain around it.

It’s just a pity that the game doesn’t ever credit its players with any intelligence. On one occasion it forces you into visiting a number of areas before the right one just so Ethan can rule them out. You’ll often work out solutions before the characters do, but it won’t ever let you plough ahead with your theories until Ethan has exhausted every other eventuality. One character who has vaguely psychic powers will sometimes help you figure out where to look, but often you won’t be able to do anything there until you’ve spoken to others in different locations. It manages to be both patronisingly straightforward and yet (at two points) GameFAQs-visitingly obscure - not because of the puzzles themselves, but in the order in which you have to do things.

Viewed as a visual novel, Time Hollow is something of a triumph. As a game, it’s fundamentally lacking. Put those together and you’ve got a solid three-star experience - one few will regret playing, as long as they know exactly what they’re in for before they tap the touchscreen to start.

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Elebits: The Adventures of Kai & Zero has been out for two weeks in the US, and there are but two Metacritic reviews at the time of writing. Two. If such ignorance from gaming critics carries over to retail, it seems likely this will be as big a flop as the original, and the similarly cute-but-ignored Dewy’s Adventure. While it might not quite live up to the childish joy of its Wii predecessor, it’s a thoroughly entertaining handheld adventure in its own right.

The story follows Kai, the young chap from Elebits, who, along with his pet Elebit Zero - of the special Omega variety - hops onto a magic bus which transports him into another dimension. Kai soon discovers that he needs the power of the other Omega Elebits to drive the bus, and so he sets out to locate them all so he can get back home.

It’s a top-down adventure not entirely dissimilar in looks to Zelda: The Minish Cap, and its 2D art style is well-executed and charming. Like the first game, you need to lift objects or shake them to uncover Elebits - here rocks and trees rather than microwaves and toilet seats - while some will be roaming freely around the various levels. Each stage contains one or more Omega Elebits, and getting to these rascals often involves an environmental puzzle or three - initially these are pretty basic, but as your Omega army increases, the game throws a few more head-scratchers your way. There’s nothing incredibly taxing, but it’s not nearly as simple as its cutesy looks might suggest.

Kai can be guided with either the stylus or buttons, although a combination of the two seems to work best - using the d-pad to move and jabbing your stylus at the Elebits to pick them up with your capture gun, or sliding back and forth to shake trees, for example. Given that you also have to tap your Omega to activate its special power (or to collect the Elebits you’ve stunned with the capture gun) this can get finicky, particularly as the viewpoint is zoomed in further than is entirely necessary. If you can collect five or more bits in one go - before your Omega’s power meter runs down - you’ll get some bonus watts for your trouble. This does result in the game feeling a little stop-start on occasion, but once you’ve adjusted to its unusual mechanics, it settles into a pleasing rhythm. And the boss battles are really quite inventive, commonly spreading across both screens and requiring judicious Omega-swapping to damage them.

With forty Omegas to capture - some with unique powers, others merely stronger versions of ones you’ve previously collected - you’ll often have to delve into the menu to switch between the few you have available via the touchscreen at any one time. While this isn’t too time-consuming, it has the side-effect of turning some into one or two-hit wonders, used for a couple of dilemmas and then shelved for the rest of the game. A few Omegas with several powers each would have been preferable.

Still, it’s refreshing to play a handheld game with some nice ideas of its own, and an appealing art style which makes the adventure that much more pleasurable. It may lack the elegance of a Phantom Hourglass, but Kai and Zero’s adventures don’t deserve to fall off the radar as completely as their current Metacritic status would suggest.

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MaboShi’s Arcade

Finally! Four months on from its PAL release, MaBoShi finally makes it to the US WiiWare service. And it’s a strange one, for sure - neither as gloriously minimalist as Cubello or Orbient, nor as accessible and constantly restless as World of Goo, it’s a game which takes a while to get its hooks into you, but reveals itself to be quite an ingenious little puzzler.

I say it’s not that accessible, but its controls are - for two of the games you’ll need just the A button, while the third simply requires you to use the d-pad. The first game sees you trying to spin a ball around a circle, hitting nasties before they reach the edge. Should just one venture outside the circle, then it’s game over. Hitting A merely changes the direction your ball spins in, so it’s all about timing your presses, and making sure you take into account the obstacles in the ball’s path. The second game sees you holding A and releasing it to propel a spinning stick forward, demolishing blocks and hitting enemies. Should one of said beasties crash into the stick’s circular core - wallop, game over. Game three is like a slow-paced version of Snake, except here your trail sets blocks on fire, the idea being that they’re all destroyed before they reach the bottom of the screen, and that you don’t fence yourself in by slithering down a blind alley. Fail to leave yourself enough wiggle room and that’s it.

The stroke of genius here is that all three games fit together, affecting each other in different ways. When playing alone, the two other games will be taken up by computer-controlled players, and their performances affect yours. The stick can encroach on the circle’s game, whacking the ball or sending blocks to destroy monsters, while defeated foes often spiral off into the other displays, helping to pull off combos by killing multiple enemies in one go. You can even save your own replay data and play it in one window, using that to pull yourself out of a sticky spot in another game. It’s a concept that’s difficult to really get your head around at first, but once you’ve seen it in action, you’ll find it a useful tool to get closer to that elusive score of 1,000,000 points. I’ve not come anywhere near so far, needless to say.

It’s occasionally a little capricious, and its cause-and-effect mechanic is undoubtedly going to be too much for some people, but this is one seriously brain-twisting puzzler which deserves the plaudits its had so far from those who’ve bothered to play it. It’s generous too - offering DS owners the chance to download the game to their handheld for free. Brilliant. 

Pool Revolution: CueSports

A reduction in price (from 800 points to 500) makes Hudson’s ball-potter even more appealing on its US debut. It might not have the presentational razzmatazz of Gameloft’s Midnight Pool - nor that game’s amusing story mode - but it does play a slightly better game of pool (and snooker if you’re that way inclined) and even offers an online mode. Though the latter is marred by the fact that the game uses individual Friend Codes, and not your Wii’s own. Bah.

The cueing mechanics are solid, although it can take quite a while to adjust your aim, particularly when there are plenty of balls left, as the cursor moves much slower when a ball is targeted, allowing you to fine-tune your shot. Still, with several options to tweak your game - from rule adjustments to different ball sets, tables and arenas - as well as a (limited) replay function and a trickshot mode, this represents great value for money, and makes for a fairly enjoyable (if basic) multiplayer experience.

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Books - knowledge-enhancing, life-enriching, train-journey-killing books. They might make you look pretty clever if you’ve got a hundred of the buggers lined up on your shelves, but unless you’re some kind of neat-freak, they’re bound to gather a fair bit of dust. To save those of us with mite allergies, Nintendo has teamed up with publisher HarperCollins to bring us 100: Classic Book Collection - as its name suggests, a collection of 100 classic books, which are all stored on the one thumbnail-sized cartridge. Technology be a wonderful thing, arrr.

(Sorry, I’ve been reading Treasure Island all day.)

It’s certainly a space saver, but is the DS really well suited to this sort of thing? Well, yes and no. It’s undoubtedly more convenient than lugging around a hundred novels, but there’s no real substitute for paper and print, and the DS screens don’t offer too many words per page - on the smallest font setting, Les Miserables runs to a whopping 11,600 pages. Myopics can increase the text size, but that ups the page count to 17,938. It’s a good job Tolstoy isn’t represented, really.

Still, given the DS’s limitations, developer Genius Sonority has done a pretty good job here. You can simply rifle through the virtual bookshelf by swiping the stylus to either side, then tap to select the novel you want. If you’re unsure what to go for, then you can choose to be asked a series of questions to see which title suits your mood. If it suggests MacBeth, then your mates will know it’s probably not the best day to ask you for that fiver back.

From Adam Bede to Wuthering Heights, there’s a decent mix of genres covered, though the selection is fairly safe. You won’t find any Catcher In the Ryes, 1984s or Clockwork Oranges here, while Shakespeare seems a little over-represented. But then again, these are all titles where copyright has expired, so we were hardly going to get modern classics like The Road or Jordan: A Whole New World.

If you’ve got an iPhone, you might be better off with an e-reader, with which you can grab hold of a much larger selection of titles, with plenty available legitimately for download if you know where to look. But does that give you ambient background noise of parks and train journeys to listen to as you flick through hundreds of virtual pages with your stylus? Nope. There’s even a neat virtual bookmark which saves your place.

Once you’re done with each tome, you can review it with a star rating and pick from a series of words which best represent your feelings on what you just read. You can then upload your rankings via the Wi-Fi connection, which also allows you to download a further 10 novels to add to your already-impressive collection.

It’s certainly well-presented, and at around £19 is fairly attractively-priced. Libraryphobes will find this a worthwhile purchase - others might just prefer the pleasures of a well-thumbed, dog-eared paperback.

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Fun! Fun! Minigolf is perhaps the most convincing argument yet for a Wii storage solution and an upping of the size limit of WiiWare games. In its current state it’s more of a playable demo than a complete game, and at 900 points is really not worth the bother.

I’ll give developer Shin’en - creator of DS shooter Nanostray - its dues; this is one of WiiWare’s most technically-accomplished titles to date. Its courses are bright and lively, with little background animations adding to the visual appeal - indeed its presentation is superior to many of the cheap minigame compendiums you’ll find for around £20 or less at retail.

Press A at the title screen and you’ll simply be given the option of selecting the number of players between one and four. Thereafter you can select from one of four avatars for each player - two male, two female - and thereafter you pick your course - America is easy, Asia intermediate and Europe hard. The first course is a nice, simple introduction to the game, and allows you to get accustomed to the swing mechanic, which is simple and effective - flick the controller forward to meet the ball as a circle passes across it - middle it and you’ll get a straight shot, or you can curve it to either side. You can have practice swings, too - just hold A and swing forward as soon as you’re ready and once you think you’ve determined the force of swing to get the power you want.

While the courses look nice, the design is unfortunately left wanting. After the gentle introduction of the American stage, Asia has a couple of one-shot deals - get it wrong and you have to start again. Europe is even worse for this, with one hole which is incredibly difficult unless you hit it at a very specific point. What makes this even more annoying is that you can’t play the percentages - a soft shot which remains in the course will often be classed as ‘out of bounds’, even if it’s still possible to hole from the next putt - there’s a relatively small area around most holes where you have to putt into - anywhere else and you’re screwed and have to start again. What’s particularly odd about the European course is that it offers several holes in a row where each shot is either perfect or out of bounds, and then finishes off with two very simple holes that are nigh-on impossible not to par.

It’s true to life to a certain extent - I’ve played crazy golf enough times to know there are plenty of courses as irritating as this - but that repeated ’out of bounds’ announcement when your shot rolls down the ramp after falling agonisingly short of the perfect length once again is a remote-chucking moment like little else on Wii. And while the ball physics aren’t bad, it’s most perturbing when your seemingly ideal set-up shot winds up out of bounds thanks to the ball actually gaining speed from rolling around the edge of the supposedly flat course. Oh, and ‘albatross’ doesn’t just have one ’s’, does it?

It’s a pity, as with a little more content - a few minigames here, a couple of extra unlockable courses there - this could have been one of WiiWare’s strongest titles. As it is, Shin’en has focused on presentational polish over content, and when the few courses that feature aren’t exactly perfect, 900 points suddenly looks a little steep.

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Released a week ago to absolutely no fanfare whatsoever, Unsolved Crimes is a neat detective sim which doesn’t deserve to go unnoticed. It’s far from perfect, and appears to have been made on a budget of tuppence, but it spins a series of solid and enjoyable cases around a central story involving your female partner Macy’s missing sister, a model called Betsy Blake.

We’re in Seventies Noo Yoik, and there are a series of murders to be sorted out while Macy frets about her sis. In each of these smaller cases, you’ll be sent to a crime scene with a few bits of info and usually statements from and info about three or four suspects. Once you’ve reached the scene it’s a case of doing your best David Caruso impression - before realising a zinger and a walk off camera isn’t going to cut it and you get down to some crime scene investigation, touchscreen style.

You move around with the d-pad, and use the stylus to rotate the view and to raise or lower the camera. It’s a little clunkier than it needs to be, but it’s satisfying when you duck down under a desk to find that piece of evidence that everyone else has missed. During your investigation, Macy asks you several questions, which form ‘queries’ - solve these and you’ll likely increase your ranking at the end of the case, with stars taken away for wrong answers and added on for particularly skilful pieces of deduction. Get enough clues and you’ll report back to your boss, before returning to pick up more evidence. It’s often possible to get most if not all key items and observations out of the way on your first trip, making return journeys a little pointless - you’ll just stand there until you’ve answered Marcy’s riddles and then hotfoot it back out, but it’s nice to think you’re one step ahead of the game. You even get the chance to finger a suspect early on if you’ve a hunch they did it - it’s unclear whether you get a points bonus for your educated guess being right when you’ve uncovered the real murderer, but again it’s satisfying to say you were right all along.

The cases are pretty short, but there are plenty of them, and quite a few throw in new ingredients to keep you on your toes - you might have to spray luminol to find blood traces, or fill in the missing details on a rather vague map. Between cases, when you’re chasing the leads in the Betsy Blake kidnapping, there are even a couple of action sequences to add variety, though in truth these are pretty woeful - particularly the final escape through a mazy underground area which is about to collapse.

It’s clearly been made on a shoestring, though there’s a certain charm to Marcy’s strange poses and the chief’s forced smile. The 3D crime scenes are pretty decent, and the sound is genuinely excellent, with wailing sirens and radio chatter among the many spot effects adding to the atmosphere, alongside a bit of Shaft-esque wacka-wacka guitar and cheesy muzak that perfectly evokes the era. The stories often come up with red herrings to throw you off the scent, while one or two late surprises will ruin your hunches. Sometimes it seems a little unfair in the occasional late revelations, and one or two occasions where you have to provide multiple pieces of evidence to back up your claims can feel unnecessarily exacting, punishing you with a star reduction when you miss something not immediately obvious.

Quibbles aside, this quirky and original little game definitely deserves a sequel with a bigger budget to make good on the promise shown here.

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As with previous Art Style title ORBIENT, Nintendo’s latest WiiWare release is essentially identical to one of the Japanese-only Bit Generations game - in this case probably the most straightforward of the entire series, colourful puzzler Dialhex.

Small triangles fall into a large hexagonal display, with the object being to rotate six of them via your similarly-shaped cursor to form a smaller hexagon, which then disappears, dropping the surrounding triangles. You’ll start off with two colours - lime green and orange, and, once you’ve completed enough hexes, the game throws yellow, then green (annoyingly similar to the lighter hue at first glance), followed by red, and then…well, I’ve never got further than that.

And that’s because ROTOHEX, like Dialhex before it, is hard. Reaching red opens up the game’s Endless mode - which plays out pretty similarly to the standard clear mode - but because the display doesn’t reset as you advance, you’ll invariably be up to your eyeballs in increasingly fast-falling triangles when you reach that point. The only respite comes with special tiles which either allow a hole to open up for shapes to drop into, or destroy triangles of the same colour. But it’s only a temporary reprieve from the advancing tide.

The Wii game offers the same two-player mode as the original, plus a choice of a pointer control scheme which seems to be a little awkward compared to the standard NES controller style, though you can tweak the sensitivity which may well improve things. The only other change is the music, which builds as you complete more hexagons - that feature was there in the original, but the tunes are different, and build more impressively, with more depth to the tracks.

ROTOHEX definitely seems to feel more at home in its handheld form, and that, coupled with its lack of improvements, makes it the weakest Art Style title to date. It’s still worth a look for a mere 600 points - especially if you’ve had your fill of the other Art Style games - but if you own the GBA original, there’s absolutely no reason to get this.

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It’s taken a while for me to get round to playing this for a long enough time to give it a fair review, mainly because we’re right smack bang in the midst of silly season and I’ve had umpteen other games to try and get through. It’s telling that CUBELLO has managed to squeeze out the likes of Fallout 3 and Tomb Raider Underworld for a couple of hour-long sessions in the past few days. Yep, it’s really good.

The idea is pretty simple - there’s a rotating 3D shape made up of several small cubes, at the centre of which is the Cubello. The idea is to eliminate all the surrounding cubes, leaving just the Cubello on its own, spinning away in a void of white (well, greyish-white, really). This is done by creating a block of four connecting cubes - they can be linked in any way, not just two-by-two or one-by-four - and is executed by aiming your remote cursor and pressing B or A - a display shows you which colour is in your cube gun’s chamber, while a underneath shows which colours are to follow in the ammo magazine.

Initially you’ll start with just a few ‘bullets’, and you have to build up your ammo level by knocking out cubes, and - where possible - chaining combos for more ammo and to attempt to complete the puzzle in fewer moves. That’s generally going to be the last thing on your mind, though - CUBELLO’s levels are tough enough to finish, never mind solve in the lowest number of moves. It’s a tricky proposition because not only do you have to engage the puzzle-solving side of your brain, but success depends on your accuracy under pressure. Sometimes the shapes rotate really fast, giving you a small window of opportunity. Others are really slow, but you’ll only really have one shot at getting it right.

It’s an addictive little bugger of a game, and its art style (you says the title, you wins the prize) is oddly charming in a colourful if slightly sterile way. The robotic voice commentary is amusing - “launch orange, eliminated” - particularly when it says “great” and “awesome” when you chain successful hits. Be warned, however, that it constantly accompanies your every move, so anyone in the same room may find it irritating - you’ll likely find it provides useful feedback and so won’t be quite so annoyed by it. The music’s great, too.

With a host of stages (each one is broken into three levels) and a where-did-the-time-go Endless mode, there’s plenty to keep you occupied - and it’s one of those great games where you just seem to do that bit better each time, which is hugely satisfying. At 600 points, you’re getting a bit of a bargain, and this for me is just about the pick of the Art Style bunch so far.

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