SouthPeak’s Wii offering this year, as was sadly the norm with several of my appointments, consisted of smaller-scale offerings when compared to their other titles such as Section 8 and Raven Squad. I did, however, find at least one diamond hiding in the rough, and a hint of great things to come.
The first title shown to me was Roogoo: Twisted Towers for Wii, a rather odd little puzzle game. You are presented with a series of circular platforms, with shapes cut out; as shapes fall from the sky, you need to rotate these platforms so that the shapes fall through the correclty shaped holes. You’ll build up towers of shapes, which may push themselves downward eventually, or shoot back up, forcing you to change perspective and direction. I was also told there would be hammer throwing, boss fights, and DS connectivity involved, but I didn’t really get to see any of these in action. The core mechanic, though, is fairly addicting. I wish I could have seen more of the game, to know for sure if it would end up being a worthy buy, but it managed to keep me hooked for the length of time I had with it. This title will arrive this summer.
Even more addicting, for me, was Fast Food Panic, also on Wii. For those who have played Diner Dash, or Order Up!, you have some idea of what to expect from this timing-based restaurant game. You’re responsible for greeting customers, saying goodbye to customers, frying fish, flipping burgers and buns, boiling spaghetti, assembling food, calculating checks, sweeping trash, and more, and usually at once. You’ll have to handle five to six tasks at once with excellent timing, making sure you don’t overcook food, or forget to serve a customer, or anything to that effect; if you like that sort of gameplay, this is one of the better titles I’ve gotten to play. If you passed by me while I was playing, you would have heard me frantically muttering "fry, shake shake shake, hello, flip, ketchup onions lettuce" under my breath. The controls at this point could be a tad more refined, but overall they work fine; it wasn’t often that I had trouble getting done what I wanted to do because of control errors. This is a title I will most likely keep an eye on; it comes out this fall.
The last title I had a lot of hands-on time with was Sushi-Go-Round, a DS title very similar to Fast Food Panic. The basic premise of the game is the same, though instead of cooking burgers or spaghetti, you’ll be rolling sushi to hungry customers, taking their orders and whatnot. There are two gameplay differences that should be noted, though. Firstly, unlike Panic, you’re going to have to memorize a lot of sushi dishes, because looking them up in your booklet wastes a lot of precious time. Secondly, you’ll have to keep an eye on how much of each ingredient you have, because you can run out, and you’ll have to order more. These two factors made this game harder than Panic, though it was about as addicting, all things considered. We did run into a problem, though, in that two different dishes ended up having the exact same recipe; development will have to hear about that one. This game is also slated for a fall release.
Three other games caught my attention at SouthPeak, though I didn’t get hands-on time with them. The first was a baby-simulating game for the DS whose name eludes me right now; I seem to have misplaced my notes, sadly. It’s the sequel to the original, where players would take care of a newborn; this time around, you’ll have to tend to the needs of a young toddler, such as reading them a story and putting them to sleep. Another game shown to me was the DS incarnation of the Horrid Henry book series, which is very popular in Great Britain; it seems like a standard licensed 2D platformer. Henry will wander around the house looking for items with which to cause pranks, while trying to retain his dignity instead of his health.
Lastly, SouthPeak had a display advertising the Bright Dawn Treatment Center, which caught my eye because I had received a piece of mail from this alleged psychiatric hospital a couple of weeks beforehand, causing my family to temporarily wonder if I needed mental help. As it turns out, this blood-stained display was an advertisement for Dementium II, which SouthPeak is now publishing; NintendoGal readers will remember that I greatly enjoyed Dementium: the Ward, and I am quite excited to hear that this next title will be building on the original in pretty much every way. Keep an eye out for that one.
Thus wraps up another summary of impressions; a couple great titles mixed in with less great ones, though everything I played was pretty fun. Keep an eye out for more E3 updates.
