The game is scheduled for release just a few days from now, but last night's Konami press event marked GameSpot's first opportunity to check out Epicenter Studios' first WiiWare offering, Critter Round-Up. Described by Konami as a "puzzle/action" game, Critter Round-Up tasks you with building fences to segregate different species of animal as they roam around the playing field and, in some cases, pose a threat to one another. Regardless of how cute they look, all of the animals are deadly as far as you're concerned, and you have to take great care to avoid them as you run around leaving a trail of fences behind you.
Eurogamer writes: "It's always nice to be surprised (unless the surprise involves a clown shining a torch in your face in the middle of the night) and MaBoShi is a very surprising game. It's a quiet, unassuming little thing, sitting there on the Wii Shop shelf and doing very little to alert you to the evil genius lurking behind its obscure title.
It's a compound word, you see, made up of the abbreviated Japanese words for Ball (maru), Stick (bou) and Square (shikaku), and these are the geometric shapes around which the three mini-games within revolve. Often literally. As the suffix suggests, this is a game made up of three parts - one game for each shape, all using minimal controls. The Ball game involves a constantly rotating sphere trapped in a wooden circle. Pressing the A button reverses the direction of the rotation, and you must use this basic Newtonian concept to manoeuvre the ball around the play area, hitting tiny enemies before they can escape."
A teeth-grindingly stupid premise belies a few okay gameplay ideas. But you're better off getting your animal/puzzle fix from Toki Tori.
You'll love:
- Animals have behavioral quirks
- Powerups add a little depth
- "Funny" premise
You'll hate:
- Killer chickens... yeah
- Mostly just Qix, plus fluff
- Irritating herding-work
1UP writes: "Don't expect many surprises with Critter Round-Up -- its delightfully literal title delivers the long and short of this WiiWare animal-wrangling venture, which owes an unexpected debt to 1981 arcade classic Qix. Instead of claiming territory on a playfield (like in that Taito hit), Critter Round-Up has your unnamed protagonist fencing in various animals without mixing species, all the while avoiding contact with said critters. The ability to produce fences at a rapid pace hardly tops my wish list of fantastical videogame powers, but Critter Round-Up parlays that odd premise into a pretty traditional arcade-style experience, with power-ups, a cumulative score, and a limited number of lives."
