Solving it (cntd)

The same can't be said for the boss fights. Some of the developers must have worked for Nintendo at some point, because there were times I cursed them as loudly as I have Nintendo. Fighting the Jackalope was probably the worst. We spend well over an hour before figuring out just how to kill the bugger, and then still had to repeat the trick three times before he finally kicked the bucket. I say "we" because someone else took over from me after I had thrown away the Wii-mote in disgust. Between the two of us, we figured it out eventually.

Indicate!

When the game asked me to connect the Nun-chuck to the Wii-mote, I was not happy. Many games that I have played on the Wii that required me to use the attachment, turned out to have horrible controls. Mushroom Men surprised me by having great controls and working the Wii-mote and Nun-Chuck at the same time felt entirely natural. Even the special actions like the 'sticky hand' (grappling hook) work great with the cursor changing to a hand whenever you hover over a surface that you can latch on to.

Not so natural, was the camera behavior. In most places, the camera was working fine but especially during fights, it ended up choosing weird viewpoints, even to a point that I couldn't even see Pax on the screen anymore. You can control the camera yourself and fix whatever the autocam messed up but in the thick of the fight, you really don't have time to do so. Worse, in some areas the manual control has been switched off, a decision that I really don't understand.

There is very little that betrays the health status of your enemies when you are fighting them. A beastie that is near dying will puff green clouds of smoke from its body, but until that moment you have nothing to go on. On smaller enemies this is no issue as they are disposed of soon enough, but on larger enemies and bosses, this is a real miss.

Tunes

Mushroom Men proves that great looking Wii games can come from other hands than Nintendo's own studios. The game is colorful, rich in detail and looks great even on my 42" flat-screen. The animations of animals, mushrooms and gameworld are top notch and among the best I have seen on the Wii.

The sound too is worth mentioning. Many of the tunes are upbeat and seem to change in intensity when the gameplay warrants such a change. There is much variety too and I often found myself wanting to play a particular tune again. Alas, there is no mechanism in the game to do so.

A win?

Scoring Mushroom Men: The Spore Wars turned out to be harder than I thought. The camera behavior does get frustrating at times and I could have done without some of the boss fights. The game is riddled with clever and often subtly disguised jokes that come out at the oddest moments. It is a shame that some of these jokes are geared towards a North American audience and many will not be understood by European players.

Yet none of these things are showstoppers and the balance is firmly leaning towards the positive. The game looks great, has some refreshing puzzles and leaves the player in control of his or her progress. Ultimately, there is just one thing that you need to really need to know about this game: Mushroom Ninja's rock!