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Video Game Review:

What It Is

Parents and adults with young sports-gamers in their homes are probably familiar with the Backyard Sports line of DS and Wii games. Backyard Sports is one of the best selling kids’ sports video game series that features popular sports games, such as baseball, for kids. These games have increasingly added new features, power-ups and objectives that turned the series into a game on par with sports franchise games for adults. Recent Backyard Sports baseball games have played up the MLB license with popular major league players from today as well as past heroes of the sport. Unfortunately, the games were starting too look too much like teen and adult baseball games and the Backyard Series looked like it was headed for a 7th inning yawn. So Atari took a page from Hollywood’s play book and treated the series to a reboot with a totally new Backyard Sports game, Sandlot Sluggers!

Backyard Sports: Sandlot Sluggers, takes the baseball game back to the basics that made the earliest versions of the game so much fun by returning the ball game to the back yard. Players join a diverse group of kids and play ball in one of eight interactive fields, each of which is themed to match one of the game characters.

Sandlot Sluggers is a baseball video game that utilizes the Wii-Remote. Pitchers use the Wii-Remote to throw the ball across the plate with the ability to throw a Fast, Curve or Screw Ball simply by pressing the “A” or ...

By Jeff McKinney
Video Game Editor 
 

What It Is

My generation is the first to grow up with video games in our homes and we are now having kids of our own who are playing video games at much younger ages—you should see my four-year old nephew with the Wii. So I’m always interested in games that adults can play with kids and both age groups will actually have fun playing together. Help Wanted: 50 Wacky Jobs is the perfect example of such a game.

Help Wanted: 50 Wacky Jobs is a collection of mini-games that involve the player going to work in some crazy job environments. The jobs (mini-games) cover a wide and bizarre spectrum including Bodybuilding (who knew that was a job?), Sushi Master, Clown, Tailor, Pinch Hitter, Astronaut and one of my favorites, Haunted House Worker.

You earn money throughout the game based on how you perform on each job, which is a great scoring system because everyone will find a different job that they excel at. Say for example that Stunt Driver isn’t your strong suit and you only earn a few pennies. You might go on to discover that you are a master at being a Sumo Referee and can make up that lost income in the ring.

The ultimate goal of the game is to use the money you have earned to purchase items that will save the world from an approaching meteor, which is a bit odd and unnecessary.

Why It’s Fun

The reason I call the “Saving the Earth” element unnecessary is that the jobs are so much fun that the game doesn’t need this out of place story line. There are 50 different jobs to play and each is a short challenge with simple, easy to master control requirements and plenty of offbeat humor. For example, as a Dairy Farmer you have 60 seconds to milk a cow using the Wii-Remote and Nunchuk controller as the cow’s utters, which based on my complete lack of real-life farming experience, I’m going to assume is exactly like the real thing. You earn money based on how much milk you can get, however, keep an eye on the cow’s anger meter because she needs a break every now and then and if she doesn’t get it in time, you are done.

Don’t let me stop you from saving the world from that asteroid but I think you will find that the fun in this game comes from the jobs and trying to earn more money than the person you are playing with or trying to beat your own best record when playing alone.

Who’s Going To Love It

As I mentioned earlier, this is a great game for kids and adults to play together. At the start of each job you have the option of changing your difficulty level, which is a nice feature when you consider that most games have you select your level at the start of the game and you are stuck with that selection throughout the game. This feature allows you to keep the playing field level when kids and adults want to play together although I imagine that more times than not, it’s the kids who will be c...

By Jeff McKinney
Video Game Editor 
 

Just When You Thought Mini-Games Couldn’t Get Any More Bizarre...

What It Is

Squeeballs Party is a wacked-out collection of mini-games in which cute, little, living toys called Squeeballs act as the gear in a variety of sports challenges. The challenges range from the everyday activities of bowling and racket sports, where the Squeeballs are bowling pins and balls (respectively) to the more bizarre Stampede Challenge in which the player has to launch bombs at approaching Squeeballs before they can “overwhelm you with their love” (for real).

Why It’s Fun

Call me lazy but a game that requires a lot of reading before you get to any playing is too much work and not enough fun. Don’t get me wrong, I love to read but I’m not going to stand in front of my TV with a Wii-Remote in hand when I want to curl up with a good story. And most kids aren’t going to do that either. If you’ve watched kids play video games, you know they want to turn on and jump in. Fortunately, Squeeballs is so simple that most kids will be able to pop this game in the Wii and start playing within seconds. Controlling the game is extremely intuitive and anyone who has played Wii Sports will figure out Squeeballs in a flash.

Squeeballs also features a Head-to-Head challenge mode that allows two people to play against each other and adds a fun competitive element to the game.

Who’s Going To Love It

Although the game is rated Everyone 10+ (more on that in a second) this game is mainly going to appeal to young kids between the ages of 5 and 10. Beyond that age group, this is strictly a novice gamer’s game and anyone with moderate to a lot of gaming experience will find Squeeballs to be extremely easy.

As for that “+” after the 10 in the game’s rating. Some of the challenges are a little twisted such as the Stampede challenge I mentioned earlier and especially, the Cooking Challenge. In the Cooking Challenge, players are required to make meals for a large Squeeball character using smaller, living Squeeballs as ingredients. There’s no blood and it sounds grosser than it actually is but some kids might find it odd that they are making a sausage by grinding and cooking one of the cute and giggly Squeeballs. I did.

Evidently, however, the ESRB thinks that cannibalism is okay for kids over 10. Sometimes we don’t completely understand why they make the choices they do.

What To Be Aware Of

The challenges in Squeeballs are fun and simple to play, unfortunately, they aren’t very original and we have played them in other mini-game collections for the Wii.

The game is also a little too easy. Even beginning level gamers will sale through the first few rounds without too much of a challenge.

That said, kids who are new to these games and new to the Wii will be more likely to be engaged by this than a more experienced...