I’ve been spending less time with my 360 and more time with Wii in the past few weeks. Since Nintendo finally bothered to sort out the storage problem (that shouldn’t even have existed in the first place), I decided to download a few WiiWare games too now that I had the space.

Little King’s Story

I bought this after reading pretty much universal praise from everywhere that mentioned it – 9/10s from Edge, gamesTM, GameCentral and Eurogamer. Playing like a cross between Animal Crossing, Harvest Moon and Pikmin, your aim is to expand your kingdom by defeating enemies and taking  over their land. As well as this, you must keep your citizens happy and occupied by assigning them various jobs to do such as farmers and guards. There is also a decent story element to the game and you are given plenty of quests to do. I’ve put around four or five hours into it so far and definitely enjoying it. I’m getting vibes of the same charm that made Little Big Planet’s characters so likable.

World of Goo

I tried out the demo of this on Steam way back when it came out at the end of the last year, it was alright bit didn’t blow me away. That was probably due to me buying Peggle around the same time and being glued to that. Fast-forward to now. I had spare points burning a hole in my Wii Shopping Channel and had yet to buy a WiiWare title so I decided to give this a try. The Wii pointer controls are perfect for this game, in fact it makes me wonder why there hasn’t been a Peggle game released yet. The object of the game is to get the little goo balls to the exit by building bridges and other structures to get them there, and physics play a big part in this. There is also an extra mode with an online leaderboard of sorts where you try to build the highest tower possible. It’s got Peggle-levels of addictiveness about it.

Bit.Trip Beat

I’ve been looking forward to this one for a while. It’s a rhythm game that plays like a mash-up of Pong and Rez. You control the paddle on the left of the screen by tilting the Wii remote, and you have to hit the blocks coming from the right. It starts off with a simple beat but as you progress the complexity of the music and blocks gradually increases. It can get pretty tough but it’s great. I also love the retro 8-bit visuals and the music perfectly complements it.. I wasn’t sure how I felt about it being motion controls-only but quickly found out that these offered a lot more accuracy than simply using an analogue stick or d-pad. It’s only 600 points, which is just dearer than a NES game on the Virtual console and it definitely comes recommended at that price.