Nintendo Wii Reviews

Boom Blox

Fun for kids and the entire family, BOOM BLOX offers action-packed interactive activities that takes Wii play to a new level of creativity and fun with single player, co-op, and versus gameplay. Players can explore the visceral gameplay that keeps them destroying their way through brain-twisting challenges. They can interact with entertaining characters such as the Blox-laying chickens or the baseball-throwing monkeys, who bring personality to the Tiki, Medieval, Frontier, and Haunted themed environments. Additionally, players can remix any level of the game in Create Mode using props, blocks, or characters that have been unlocked during the game. Players can also virtually build anything they can dream up. Plus, their designs can then be shared with friends or used to challenge others to solve their newly created puzzle via WiiConnect24.

User Ratings and Reviews

3 Stars Not what I was expecting
I thought this game could be better. The game is not bad, in fact is quite interesting, but it is not so good for having 4 and half star. I think there are better games out there.

5 Stars Entertaining for single or multiplayer
I got this game because I was looking for one that would be equally fun when playing alone or with guests. This game has fit the bill and then some.

I will admit when I originally picked up this game I was skeptical of how fun it would be. Described as a ‘puzzle/action game’ it looked a bit basic in terms of skill level and complexity. I also worried that it would be something more enteraining for families with young children than twentysomethings. Happily this game proved me wrong and not only have my boyfriend and I gone through almost all the game play available, his mother also loved it so much she got her own copy.

There are many positives about the game. The first is that it is addictively fun. We have played it with many different crowds and have yet to find someone who doesn’t enjoy the game. Most are skeptical at first, but then addicted. It is an especially good game for newbies to the Wii because the game play is very easy to master and intuitive. Because of this less time is spent mastering the remote and more on enjoying the game. It also takes full advantage of the movement and possibilities of the Wii remote so it feels very different than playing a game on another system.

I also appreciated the variety of activities between a single game. Even though they are all different adapations of Jenga like games they are different enough to keep me entertained for hours. Each game felt different enough that even when I had made it through most of the levels the subsequent ones never felt repetitive or boring. There is even an in-game editor so you can build levels on your own, leading to seemingly endless gameplay.

Even though I can usually find some flaw with every video game I’ve purchased this was not the case with this game. If anything, I’m wishing it came with more levels so I could play longer.

Overall this is a great game that I would recommend whether you are into single or multiplayer gameplay. It is a particularly good game if you are new to the Wii system and want something you can master and enjoy quickly. It is easily up there with Mario Kart Wii with Wii Wheel and Super Mario Galaxy.

5 Stars Addictive Party Game
I’m a casual game. 20-30 minutes and I’m ready to do something else. I also like to play with friends as a social activity. This game is perfect for me because it’s essential the board game Jenga but with hundreds of interesting variations. The fun is in competing with your friends and talking trash, but it also takes some intelligence and spacial reasoning abilities.

If you like to play fun games that don’t have a steep learning curve so your friends can easily play, this is great game. Highly recommended.

5 Stars Great fun for young or old
This is a real sleeper of a great game.

You will have many, many hours of fun playing this one.

Give it a try and you won’t be disappointed.

5 Stars One of the best party games
I had never heard of this game until some friends and I went to rent a few games to play for the weekend. We found Boom Blox and thought it looked ok, so we took it home and played all night. I liked it so much I bought it.

The multiplayer mode is the best. We had tons of fun and played for hours, though, yes, our arms were sore the next day. Single player can be pretty fun, but it does get lonely after a while.

Buy/More Info

Animal Crossing City Folk and Wii Speak Microphone Bundle

If you were given the keys to your own community, what would you do? Go fishing, collect shells or watch fireworks with friends? Build a snowman, exchange presents with family or decorate your house for the holidays? Take a trip to the city, go on a shopping spree or visit friends from all over the globe? In Animal Crossing: City Folk, life moves at a relaxed pace, but the world brims with endless possibilities. Not to mention, this special bundle includes Wii Speak. With the new Wii Speak Accessory, it’s like you’re all in the same room. The microphone sits atop the sensor bar and picks up the conversation of everyone in the room to encourage a more inclusive experience. The Wii Speak accessory requires an on-line connection.

Build your own community

Enjoy mini-games against friends. View larger.

Get to know your neighbors. View larger.

Play at all hours of the day. View larger.

Feel free to have company over. View larger.

Gameplay
You make the whole story, as you and up to three other players move into a town and just live life. Befriend your animal neighbors, decorate your house with cool furnishings, fill up your wardrobe, get to know the local wildlife, hop on a bus to visit the new city and just explore the world. There are a million different ways to play. Every charming animal character has a personality: some are grouches while others are chatterboxes. And there’s no final goal or high score to hit. The game keeps going for as long as you want to play, and your town will always be there when you return. Move into town, buy a house and then do whatever you want. Time and seasons pass as they do in the real world, so there’s always something different happening. Collect more than 2,400 items, go fishing for rare and interesting fish, catch all kind of cool bugs, dig up dinosaur fossils and buried treasure, hang out with other players or spend the day in the city. There’s so much to do, and you have all the time in the world to explore it all.

DS Suitcase Mode
The DS Suitcase lets you carry your character from your Wii console to a friend’s, thus giving people without an Internet connection the ability to experience multiplayer modes. Additionally, you can move your character from Animal Crossing: Wild World on Nintendo DS and play as him/her in Animal Crossing: City Folk.

Key Game Features

• There’s Always Something New To Do: In the living, breathing world of Animal Crossing: City Folk, days and seasons pass in real time, so there’s always something to discover. Catch fireflies in the summer, go trick-or-treating on Halloween or hunt for eggs on Bunny Day. If you’re in the mood for something a little faster paced, take a bus to a new urban city area that’s unique to Animal Crossing: City Folk. There you can catch a show at the theater or check out the sales at Gracie’s boutique. But if you don’t show your face back home for too long, your neighbors will miss you.
• Play With and Hear Up to Four Friends: Up to four people from your household can live and work together to build the perfect town. Design clothes and patterns, write letters and post messages on the bulletin board for each other, or play online using your broadband connection and invite up to three friends to visit your town using Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection. With the new optional Wii Speak microphone (sold separately), it’s like you’re all in the same room. The microphone sits atop the sensor bar and picks up the conversation of everyone in the room to encourage a more inclusive experience.
• Get to Know Your Neighbors: The heart of Animal Crossing: City Folk is building relationships with the animals in your town as well as with other players. Befriend your animal neighbors by exchanging letters, gifts and favors. Animals can also move from town to town, bringing their memories and stories from their old towns with them. And since animals are notoriously loose-lipped, they spill all the juicy details.
• Express Your Personal Style: Customize your town, your house and yourself by collecting bugs, fish, fossils, art, furniture, clothes and accessories. You can also go to the salon in the city to change your hairstyle and get a Mii makeover. Plus, if you design clothes in the tailor’s shop, animals will wear them and maybe even bring them to other towns.

Your Neighbors
Familiar faces such as K.K. Slider, Tom Nook, Blathers and Mr. Resetti all appear, as well as a bunch of new characters like Festivale host Pav?and Bug-Off judge Bud. Many characters who occasionally visited your town in previous Animal Crossing games have now set up permanent shop in the city, so you can see them anytime.

Special Powers, Weapons, Moves & Features:
Use the Wii Remote pointer to type letters, use items, draw designs for clothing or wallpaper, drag clothing or items onto your characters, interact with animals or objects, or lead your character around the world. Use Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection to hang out in real time with up to three of your friends. You can also send them e-mails and text messages from the game. Play at different times of the year to experience different activities, holidays and seasons. And when visiting a friend in another country, experience the holidays native to their culture.

Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection
Up to four people can play together in real time via Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection. The host opens his or her gate to allow friends into the town, where they can perform all sorts of activities: fish, write letters to townsfolk, shop at the store, swap items, play hide-and-seek … anything. Up to four players can interact in real-time, communicating via text chat, mic chat and emoticons.

WiiConnect24:
Using WiiConnect24, you can buy and sell items to friends by participating in silent auctions, view actual players’ homes in the Happy Room Academy office or send letters to other players’ towns.

Wii Speak:
With the new Wii Speak Accessory, it’s like you’re all in the same room. The microphone sits atop the sensor bar and picks up the conversation of everyone in the room to encourage a more inclusive experience. The Wii Speak accessory requires an on-line connection.

User Ratings and Reviews

4 Stars Animal Crossing is pretty good
Animal Crossing is really good for those that like the series. its a daily task and you need to play it a few minutes a day to get the full benefit.

4 Stars Something Magical…
It is really hard to call any of the Animal Crossing titles a “game”. More like a “Life Simulation in a crazy, mixed up cartoon world.” That is not to say the titles aren’t fun, they are! If you like the other AC titles, City Folk adds to the formula that has been working since I first played Animal Crossing on the GameCube. The addition of voice-chat sounds like it could be nice, but I haven’t had the occasion to try that as of yet. You do not have to look very far to see touching, real-world stories involving the past Animal Crossing games bringing families closer to each other. There seems to be something truly magic about this family of titles.

5 Stars holy cow! How ADDICTIVE is this?
Haven’t slept in weeks! MUST PLAY ANIMAL CROSSING!!! Need I say more? This game is addictive and fun. We all love it! We especially love being able to play with friends using Wii speak. Absolutely great!

5 Stars Great game for rainy days
Name your own town, get a part time job, buy a house and pay your mortage, earn money by selling items you find or catch (like fish – some are worth a lot more than others), buy things at the town store, save your money in a bank account and figure out the secrets of the city or take a bus to the big city for some new adventure where you can do things like get a makeover, have your shoes shined or spend some of that hard earned cash at a boutique. There are so many things to do in this game that the whole family is always trying to get a turn to play. I guess the only problem is that you can only play one person at a time and before you know it you’ve already spent an hour on your turn (Oops, sorry daughter, son and husband!). Cute game the whole family can enjoy! We haven’t even gotten to all of the features yet.

5 Stars A game perfect for Parent/Child fun!
Even though it is only set-up for 1 player mode at a time. You can have up to 4 citizens for your city on the disk. This means 4 people in your house can play and help the city become a perfect city!!!

Our older children love to sit there to help out with the game as for the toddlers in our household. They love to move the toon around with the wii remote. Gives us all something to do and teaches my toddlers patience with siblings and games. Then of course they get bored with it after awhile.

WONDERFUL reading level for BEGINNER READERS! Highly recommend for those 7 yr olds to have aide with the adult from time to time!

What else does this do? As your build your house up. You learn to go to work for a while for Tom Nook. Who also is the one you pay your mortgage off to. Then help keep the city growing with planting and keeping it clean. Hit the city for fun events like learn new emotions and get your shoes shined for different colors, get a new make-over, visit the fortune teller and the only members club that you get only by invitations from other members. Great colors and great graphics for a friendly family game!

Buy/More Info

Boom Blox

Fun for kids and the entire family, BOOM BLOX offers action-packed interactive activities that takes Wii play to a new level of creativity and fun with single player, co-op, and versus gameplay. Players can explore the visceral gameplay that keeps them destroying their way through brain-twisting challenges. They can interact with entertaining characters such as the Blox-laying chickens or the baseball-throwing monkeys, who bring personality to the Tiki, Medieval, Frontier, and Haunted themed environments. Additionally, players can remix any level of the game in Create Mode using props, blocks, or characters that have been unlocked during the game. Players can also virtually build anything they can dream up. Plus, their designs can then be shared with friends or used to challenge others to solve their newly created puzzle via WiiConnect24.

User Ratings and Reviews

3 Stars Not what I was expecting
I thought this game could be better. The game is not bad, in fact is quite interesting, but it is not so good for having 4 and half star. I think there are better games out there.

5 Stars Entertaining for single or multiplayer
I got this game because I was looking for one that would be equally fun when playing alone or with guests. This game has fit the bill and then some.

I will admit when I originally picked up this game I was skeptical of how fun it would be. Described as a ‘puzzle/action game’ it looked a bit basic in terms of skill level and complexity. I also worried that it would be something more enteraining for families with young children than twentysomethings. Happily this game proved me wrong and not only have my boyfriend and I gone through almost all the game play available, his mother also loved it so much she got her own copy.

There are many positives about the game. The first is that it is addictively fun. We have played it with many different crowds and have yet to find someone who doesn’t enjoy the game. Most are skeptical at first, but then addicted. It is an especially good game for newbies to the Wii because the game play is very easy to master and intuitive. Because of this less time is spent mastering the remote and more on enjoying the game. It also takes full advantage of the movement and possibilities of the Wii remote so it feels very different than playing a game on another system.

I also appreciated the variety of activities between a single game. Even though they are all different adapations of Jenga like games they are different enough to keep me entertained for hours. Each game felt different enough that even when I had made it through most of the levels the subsequent ones never felt repetitive or boring. There is even an in-game editor so you can build levels on your own, leading to seemingly endless gameplay.

Even though I can usually find some flaw with every video game I’ve purchased this was not the case with this game. If anything, I’m wishing it came with more levels so I could play longer.

Overall this is a great game that I would recommend whether you are into single or multiplayer gameplay. It is a particularly good game if you are new to the Wii system and want something you can master and enjoy quickly. It is easily up there with Mario Kart Wii with Wii Wheel and Super Mario Galaxy.

5 Stars Addictive Party Game
I’m a casual game. 20-30 minutes and I’m ready to do something else. I also like to play with friends as a social activity. This game is perfect for me because it’s essential the board game Jenga but with hundreds of interesting variations. The fun is in competing with your friends and talking trash, but it also takes some intelligence and spacial reasoning abilities.

If you like to play fun games that don’t have a steep learning curve so your friends can easily play, this is great game. Highly recommended.

5 Stars Great fun for young or old
This is a real sleeper of a great game.

You will have many, many hours of fun playing this one.

Give it a try and you won’t be disappointed.

5 Stars One of the best party games
I had never heard of this game until some friends and I went to rent a few games to play for the weekend. We found Boom Blox and thought it looked ok, so we took it home and played all night. I liked it so much I bought it.

The multiplayer mode is the best. We had tons of fun and played for hours, though, yes, our arms were sore the next day. Single player can be pretty fun, but it does get lonely after a while.

Buy/More Info

Welcome to yet another interesting selection of health posts for your Thanksgiving reading. There’s plenty to choose from, so get comfortable, grab a drink, and start clicking through all the selections… Aparna from Beauty and Personality Grooming looks at how Energy saving fluorescent bulbs may cause skin rashes, citing a recent study has found that some of these energy-saving fluorescent bulbs (particularly those ‘open’ light bulbs, which are not surrounded by a glass case) can caus