Yesterday, I received in my mail the Help Wanted demo disc for the Nintendo Wii that I requested a week ago. Developed by Hudson Soft., the demo contains 9 out of 50 jobs - or should I say mini motion games? - that are found in the final retail release available for purchase today. The playable jobs in the demo are:
Bodybuilder - Strike a pose when your turn comes.
Farmer - Pluck out carrots from the ground.
Haunted House Crew - Scare off patrons while switching to proper outfits.
Fisher - Throw a large net into the sea to catch fish.
Grill Cook - Flip over the meat on the skewers before they get burnt.
Dairy Farmer - Milk a cow. Yeah.
Stuntperson - Jump a car over a row of vehicles.
Tailor - Sew a shirt.
Clown - Juggle balls.
Farmer - Pluck out carrots from the ground.
Haunted House Crew - Scare off patrons while switching to proper outfits.
Fisher - Throw a large net into the sea to catch fish.
Grill Cook - Flip over the meat on the skewers before they get burnt.
Dairy Farmer - Milk a cow. Yeah.
Stuntperson - Jump a car over a row of vehicles.
Tailor - Sew a shirt.
Clown - Juggle balls.
Judging from the overly-energetic attract sequence at the beginning that introduces the game's 6 playable characters (boy, girl, dad, mom, grandpa, grandma), Help Wanted does contain some sort of story mode but it is greyed out in the demo. Seems rather epic in that Incredible Crisis sort of way.
A large meteor is on a collision course with Earth.
So working odd jobs is the solution to this problem?
You know it's super-epic when the elderly gets giddy with each other.
For humor's sake, I of course couldn't help but select the grandma character. Having her subjected to some of these crazy and humiliating jobs is probably the most fun aspect of this offbeat little game. As mentioned previously, these are all motion games and after a try or two, they do get extremely repetitive and annoying because some of the motion commands are dodgy at best. They should have waited for Wii Motion Plus. They mostly follow logical and natural control schemes though like moving the nunchuk and the wiimote upwards at the right moment to juggle the balls in "Clown" and alternating the up and down movement while milking the cow in "Dairy Farmer". I don't understand why you must use the D-Pad on the wiimote to select the skewers in "Grill Cook" when you can just move the wiimote left or right. The game's graphics look pretty good - they are bright and colorful while managing to avoid looking like something made during the early PlayStation 2 years, a problem that has cursed many Wii games.
Fly grandma! Flyyy!
Flex 'em muscles like you mean it!
Overall, I found the game boring. Probably because I don't see the reason why I would want to repeat these activities over and over again. The story mode may actually tie the whole thing together and from what I have seen on the game's website, some of the other mini games look absolutely hilarious. It is one of those family party games that everyone can play. Might be fun to play with my significant other but the chances of that is of course, slim to none. They should have added a little more to this demo because it really fails to create any sort of excitement over the game's true potential.
FIRST IMPRESSION: 2 out of 5
1 comment:
That all looks very strange indeed!
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