Nintendo Tours America, Stops in Philly, Disappoints Us

Well that’s not entirely true. What is true is this: Nintendo straight up drives across the country (we’re talking Shiggy and the Regginator, on a road trip together, showin’ the world), demonstrating to the diaspora of game journalists (and non-game journalists, for that matter) their woeful non-bounty of games currently on store shelves and about to ship out. Wouldn’t you know it, our pal Chris Grant over at Joystiq was nice enough to invite us to tag along (Thanks Chris!). We’d be lying if we were to say it wasn’t exciting to drop by a completely random parking lot in the middle of nowhere to play a number of games we hadn’t before. Hit the bump for hands-on with Personal Trainer: Cooking, Animal Crossing: City Folk and Wii Music: Another Colon!

First up was Personal Trainer: Cooking, which is apparently the first in the “Personal Trainer” series. This “game” is for all intents and purposes simply a virtual cookbook — albeit far more interactive than your average literary companion. With over 200 recipes and a number of different ways to choose what type of meal you’re interested in making, the “game” (again, in quotations) is decently well fleshed out. Can you add your own recipes? No. Can you mix and match ingredients to create new recipes? Also no. Clearly there’s room for improvement (and FoodNetwork.com is mighty helpful… and free), but for $20, the “game” makes a great gift for that chef-to-be you know who happens to own a DS — there’s even voice controls in case you’re too busy stirring the sauce or whatever it is that chefs do. It’s arriving just in time for Thanksgiving too (Nov. 24th), though that may be too late to save your Holidays.

Next up was Animal Crossing: City Folk and to be fair, I’ve never played a single moment of Animal Crossing other than this experience. My hands-on time with it was heavily dusted by stupid questions about basic functionality on my part, but I did learn a few things. As far as gesture-based controls (read as: waggle), the only one in the game is for fishing. Additionally, when you go from town to city, you have to take a bus with a perverted driver, creating an awkward situation for all people playing the game. Finally, based on my very limited knowledge of previous AC games, there doesn’t seem to be much of a difference with this one. Added online support? Check. A new part of the world to go to? Absolutely. Updated graphics and in-game actions? Not even kind of. In fact, even though this game’s roughly a month away (Nov. 16th), they didn’t even have the Wii Speak setup for us to check out. Le sigh.

Though I truly checked out Pokemon Ranger: Shadows of Almia (another game with a colon in the title? come on!) last, I’m going to spare you the reading time and not say too much about it. There’s pokemans (intentional), you collect them and then in order to fight with them, you draw circles furiously around your opponent. I played it for about five minutes and those were a painful five minutes. If you’re not already really into Pokemon Ranger games, chances are this isn’t your cup of tea (or mine for that matter).

Wii Music, the game we spent the most time with, is another animal altogether. Though this game is already out (Oct. 20th), I was shockingly impressed. Comparing this game to Rock Band or Guitar Hero would be amazingly short-sighted and almost unfair — it’s simply not the same kind of game. Are they all music games? Yes, in the same way that Amplitude and DDR and Guitar Hero are all music games (which doesn’t make them all comparable to one another). The actual song playing part of things is pretty lite on the “game” elements and it’s more akin to a coloring book; there are lines and a general structure provided, but creativity is encouraged. This part of the game is so lite on game elements that it actually allows you to score yourself for future reference (a nice way to eschew traditional scoring without taking away record keeping). Furthermore, you can play an enormous array of (sometimes completely ridiculous) musical instruments — including a cat/dog suit, a rapper and of course, the marimba. What was most compelling for me (as a gamer) was the mini-game collection the game packs in. This is where you conduct an orchestra and learn about pitch, two components that help to make this game more music theory based than either Rock Band or Guitar Hero. I liked Wii Music so much that I am vowing now to track down a review copy for Geekadelphia. And that’s that.

In summation, Nintendo didn’t forget about you, they’re just targeting those younger than you and their parents. It’s just like they did when we were kids — only now they’re better at it.