This is the time of year when game publishers come to New York so I can check out their upcoming games and sigh about how they put most of the work into their non-Wii titles. And so it is with Namco Bandai, whose most interesting game, Enslaved: Odyssey to the West, combines action, platforming and strategy in a dual-character setup reminiscent of Prince of Persia: Sands of Time. Meanwhile, NB gives Wii gamers party games. Let the sighing commence.
Active Life Explorer is the Namco Bandai game I’m expecting to have the most fun with, since I liked the first game in the series, Active Life: Outdoor Challenge. Not a lot has changed in terms of gameplay since the first game, which consisted of a series of jumping and running mini-games played on a Dance Dance Revolution-style mat. Some mini-games are suspiciously similar to those of the original, such as one where you jump over streams of fire that seems virtually identical to one from the original game where you jump over rolling logs. It’s still fun though, and there are some mini-games that seem less familiar, like an interesting one where you run, jump, grab a vine and jump off a the right time. You can actually play with up to 4 players, although the mat isn’t that large so they’d have to be pretty small to squeeze in (i.e. kid-size).
There is some sort of “adventure mode” that has players traveling a world map, but I didn’t see enough of it to decide whether it adds anything. Explorer does continue the tradition of completely exhausting me, and it’s definitely going to be, like the first one, a terrific workout. It is set for a fall release.
Pac-Man Party is one of those games that takes a popular brand and uses it for something completely irrelevant to what the brand is known for. In this case, the Pac-Man name is slapped onto a boardgame-style party game, in which players roll virtual dice and travel along a virtual board. I generally find these games tedious, because you spend way more time sitting there watching the other players do their thing than actually playing.
Pac-Man Party has an interesting solution to this; no one has to wait for anyone else, because everyone takes their turns at once. The game then quickly moves virtual characters where they belong on the board and tosses players into mini-games (twirl and toss pizzas, cover a floor with the most paint) in which all the players compete. Honestly, when I played the game I was kind of into it; it was the first time this sort of game didn’t have me inwardly rolling my eyes and wishing it would just end already. Sure, it doesn’t have a thing to do with the old Pac-Man games (although you can apparently play those within Pac-Man Party), but a fast-paced Wii party game could do well for Namco Bandai. We’ll find out when the game is released this fall.
