Nintendo Wii Review: Club Penguin: Game Day!

As collections of minigames go, Club Penguin's Nintendo Wii debut, Club Penguin: Game Day!, is one of the best this reviewer has ever played.  To this point, the Disney Club Penguin franchise has had a few games on the DS, a massive web presence, and some books, but the penguins certainly prove that they can hang with the big boys on a console here.

It is all an easy enough setup – there is a Story Mode, a Quick Pay mode, and a Tournament one.  In the story mode, where the heart of one player activity lies, you first creates a penguin (usable in any mode) or you can download a previously created one via Nintendo's WFC.  From there you choose which color team you want to be on (red, blue, yellow, green) and then have to visit the various areas of the island in order to convert them from an opposing team's color to that of your team.  Each area features a different combination of minigames and by completing certain tasks within that series (beat one team "x" number of times, come in first "y" number of times, etc.) you then gain the opportunity to play one more minigame in order to take control of the area.  The more games you play and win, the more activities and shop items get unlocked.

In minigame collections, it really is all about the actually games that one gets to engage in and whether or not they prove to be stimulating over and over again (because you will see the same minigames repeatedly).  With Game Day the answer is a very enthusiastic "yes!"  The games are of varying levels of difficulty and some of them change slightly each time you go through them. 

As for specific examples, one of the best is called Sumo Smash and puts you and three other penguins, each penguin covered with inner tubes, on a circular piece of ice floating in the sea.  The goal is to simply bounce into other penguins and knock them off the ice which gives you points.  Sometimes around parts of the ice are poles that help keep characters from falling, other times the poles have bumpers on them to push penguins back to the middle, and sometimes the edges of the ice crack making the field of play smaller.  For a very simple concept there is a lot more happening.

Article Author: Josh Lasser

Josh Lasser, formerly known as "TV and Film Guy," and complete with a Masters Degree in Critical Studies in said areas, gives his opinions on TV, Film, and Entertainment in general. All of which he does in a shameless attempt to try to get paid to do the exact same thing. …

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