This year Crave seemed to have a limited amount of games to feature, but that could be because the room the appointment took place was a broom closet that was shared also by Natsume. Still, they are bringing some interesting games with a few different genres that might be great for families to engage in.



Defendin’ De Penguin

I didn’t think much of this game when I first heard about it. When the representative for Crave told me that it was an real time strategy for kids I was a bit interested. The game features a penguin that you’ll be helping to defend towns against invaders. It takes a bit of Desktop Defense Force and puts it in 3-D and adds a few new elements.

Placing weapons down to fortify your gauntlet is a thoughtful process, but since this is geared towards kids it does lean towards easy. What’s different than DDF however is the fact you can move the penguin around and man different defenses to make them stronger. Also instead of collecting building currency automatically after a kill, you must send him off to grab them. The element of selling back the weapon you choose is there as well and retains the no full refund for your purchase. Lives in the game aren’t done with hearts, but fish. You run out of fish, you’re pretty much dead. I’m told the DS version is similar to this, but instead of using the Wii remote, you’d use the stylus.

I’m looking forward to checking this game out and seeing if this would be a good one to start those youngins out on RTS games early.


King of Clubs

If you like mini golf like me you might be vaguely interested in King of Clubs. This mini golf game allows you to select a character and go through numerous courses. The way you’ll play is using the D-pad, move around the position of your shot. If you don’t like the way a shot looks you can always switch to the overhead view to check out what’s going on as well as look at the rest of the course. Everything up to that point is great, unfortunately the controls seemed to be slightly lacking, but this could be attributed to not having the appropriate space in order to perform the moves correctly. You’ll hit A then tilt the controller to tell it how powerful you want the shot, hold down A then swing and let go. Seemed like it would have been easy, but it takes just a bit of getting used to if the Wii even picks up the fact you are swinging at all.
Aside from controller issues, the game seemed to be coming around nicely.


PBR Out of the Chute

I really am not too keen on bull riding and so I don’t follow the sport, but apparently it has a huge following. So much that this game is in development. The Wii version is being worked on so I was shown the PS2 version. Graphically it didn’t look that great, but this was a pre-alpha game I was shown. In this game you can not only control the rider, but the bull and you’ll be able to try to buck people off. Using the analog sticks and the X button I was able to stay on the bull for a good few seconds until the bull finally got the better of me. While you are the bull you’ll be bucking and moving around to get the rider off you as soon as possible. When they’re off you can go destructive and start breaking the signs.

During career mode, you can actually cause ham for a rider so that he has less grip next time he goes to ride a bull. I’m told that the Wii version will use the Wii remote for the actions that I performed during the demo. Nothing too special but it was quite amusing to be a bull for awhile.
 

Conspiracy Entertainment

Summer Athletics

Track & Field games really were never my forte since I didn’t care for the genre. As much fun as I had waggling with the demonstrator for Summer Athletics, I don’t think that’s going to change. The game itself seemed fine and will feature 7 events with 26 disciplines. It also will allow up to 4 players to play via split screen so you can get you and your friends together for a work out. Workout indeed is the keyword here, when I tried out the hurdles, I was feeling a bit of the burn by flailing my arms as fast as I could rapidly up and down to make my character run. For this particular event that was the motion. For others you’ll be moving your Wii Remote and Nunchuk in certain directions ala Dance Dance Revolution to get the character to perform the action.

Speaking of the characters, while I was using a pre-made character, there are also custom character creation options available. Although this isn’t my cup of tea, I can see where others such as Kiwi would enjoy the type of game play and challenges presented.

Overall

It seemed like a solid showing for what the company puts out.  I’m always interested in mini-golf games so it’ll be interesting to see how King of Clubs will pan out among these titles.