My new Wii games: Wario Ware: Smooth Moves and Blazing Angels: Squadrons of WWII

[Thorin]

So we picked up a couple new Wii games.

Wario Ware: Smooth Moves (I'd read quite a few good reviews).  Wow, now I know what the term "micro-game" refers to!  I have no idea what the storyline really is, all I know is that with the Wii remote you learn things called "forms", and the different micro-games use different forms as their starting point.  For instance, if the micro-game is to saw a tree trunk in half, you start off in the "tug-of-war" form and move the control forwards and backwards.

All but one or two of the micro-games have intuitively made sense to the kids, which I think says something for the time the developers must have spent coming up with micro-games.  I'm happy with this purchase, and recommend it to anyone who likes lots of zany little three-second games in a row (they're connected sort of into levels, with a "boss stage" at the end).  You have to complete the single-player mode before you can play two-player mode, which is too bad because I'm sure the kids would love to compete and we're just not there yet.  There's room for 12 different users to save their progress, which is way more than most.

If you want to play this as a party game, just do what we did and pass the controller from one player to the next whenever a level is finished or the player loses all four of their level lives (they only count for the level you're playing).

Blazing Angels: Squadrons of WWII.  I've been looking forward to this game since first hearing about it.  I wondered what kind of awesome gameplay there would be with the new Wii controllers.  Well, the game's pretty good if you're not a jaded gamer (and I'm not), but don't expect a flight simulator - there's pitch and roll and throttle up and down and gear raise/lower, and of course there's the separate triggers for machine guns/cannons and bombs/camera/rockets/torpedoes.

There's supposedly twenty missions in total that get harder as the game goes on.  I've made it to mission five (part of the North Africa campaign), and I'm having trouble finishing all the objectives in the mission.  But like I said, I'm not a jaded gamer and I'm sure I'm not using my save-games to fullest extent like some reviews have suggested.  The graphics are decent (keep in mind it's a Wii playing on a 52" CRT standard-def TV), although I crashed lots while flying through the sandstorm over the desert - I couldn't figure out how close the ground was until it was too late to pull up!  But hey, that's sorta realistic.

Probably one of the weirdest things in this game (to me) is the ability to fix your plane in flight.  Huh?  Why not just have enemy guns do less damage?  It's too bad there's no online play, either.  If I had an Xbox 360 there would be, but then I wouldn't be able to use the Wii remote to duck, dip, dodge, dive, and duck the enemy...

I'm happy with this purchase as well; I'm sure I'll be playing it for a while yet.

[Lazybones]

Thanks for the report...

Also to continue our conversation about Rayman... At least one of the mini games is 4 player. It is the one where there is a paper cutout of a buny and when the lights go out you need to put your part back as close to the original as possible. When playing multi player each player gets a different part of the bunny, up to 4 players.

[Thorin]

I can't believe it - I've been stuck on the last boss stage before unlocking multiplayer mode in WarioWare: Smooth Moves.  Literally as we were starting to search for cheat codes (I'd poured hours into trying to beat this boss mode), my seven year old beat it!  (and me...)  I guess those years of dance training helped her get the rhythm she needed.  Yes, it was a dancing boss stage.

Now to unlock the multiplayer mode in Rayman.

[Lazybones]

Now to unlock the multiplayer mode in Rayman.

Well there should be several available already.. Just specific minigames. There is the memory game with the cut out bunny that can be up to 4 players at onces. Nearly all the shooting mode games can be played coop, VS or back and forth play, and the dance games should all support two players.

Just go into score mode activate 2 or more controllers and look around.

[Thorin]

Anyone who has played Blazing Angels: Squadrons of WWII far enough through on the Wii to get to the Top Secret (aka the Ice Canyon) mission will know what I mean when I say, "AAAUUUGGGHH!!!!!".  Yes, it's hellish.  You're flying through a canyon with ice on either side and the ground.  Sometimes the ice is grey and the open path is white, sometimes vice versa (thus you can't simply aim for a single colour).  Throw in a timer that's too short for you to fly at normal speed and the fact that the screen blurs when you're flying faster a la Need For Speed: Underground, and you get hours and hours and hours of frustration.  I think I've put in at least 15 or 16 hours just to play this stage.

Well, last night I cleared the mission!  Until last night, after 12 or 13 hours of already playing, I'd never made it past the first checkpoint (either crashing into ice or running out of time).  Last night I decided to play the Arcade mode with the FW-190A, the default plane you get for this mission.  Playing and beating the Arcade mode makes the airplane you did it with better.  In this case, more speed and better agility.  Then, once the airplane was upgraded I made it past the first checkpoint for the first time ever.  Turns out at the end of the first canyon is a clearing with ships that try to shoot down your buddy, and you have to sink them all before moving on.  Then there's a second canyon, then a second clearing, then a third canyon, then a third clearing with factories built in the water, and then you have to sink a submarine that is carrying heavy water.

I tried different controller layouts (there's five different layouts each usable in Arcade and Simulator mode).  In the end, for the ice canyons I used just the Wii Remote stuck in one of those plastic steering wheels as it kept my hands from cramping up - when using just the Wii Remote you hold it in both hands like an old NES controller, tip left and right to roll, and tip forward and back to climb/dive.  When holding just the remote my hands cramped up and I twitched too much, causing my plane to crash.  The steering wheel attachment made it bigger so it was easier to hold flat.  For the combats I switched back to the nunchuk-and-remote layout since it works way better for dogfighting and bombing.

In the second and third ice canyons, enemy plans with tailguns spot you and fly in to shoot you down.  After crashing ten or eleven times trying to shoot them down, I decided to see if they were good enough shots to down me.  They're not.  And if you don't shoot them down, they actually show you where to fly, since they don't crash into the walls most of the time!  So yeah, I left them alone and let them show me the path.

So if you ever play this game and get stuck, I recommend upgrading the plane by playing it in Arcade mode and then trying again.  And I'm really glad there's checkpoints that you can restart from after crashing!

Now to beat the Liberation of Paris mission.

Oh, if I sound frustrated with the game, I'm not.  All of the levels up to Top Secret have been fun, and once I figured out to upgrade my plane I started getting past the first checkpoint in Top Secret as well.  I'd still recommend it as a fun WWII flying game if people have money to spend on new games.