Nintendo Wii Review: The Munchables

In this game, two players can enjoy tasting a simple, edible world as heroes/devourers, Munchy and Chomper.  The two battle through waves of invading aliens including the likes of Don Onion, a robot King Pumpkin, and UFOs.  All in all,  The Munchables has more than 150 different digestible defilers in a colorful world of tabemon monsters.

Guided by the Great Elder, Munchy and Chomper get down to business, doing what's necessary to save their world and themselves. The basic scenario revolves around the protagonists’ need to eat, which lines up nicely with battling countless waves of homeland invaders. The common sense actions require the heroes to break up their food into small particles — for easier digestion, of course — and they also predictably get bigger with each consumption, which helps them get around some pretty big obstacles in the environments.

Character abilities progress as players navigate using the Wii remote/nunchuk controllers or the classic or GameCube controllers.  The developers have add topical features, such as vines, fences, and ponds as well as slopes and varied land heights to the levels. There are also fountains and cannons which provide quicker movement in a level. 

As for difficulty, the levels range from easy to moderately hard. Jumping with the Wii remote are an occasional hassle, though most control functions work very smoothly.

Players should be able to easily follow the level text and accompanying nonsense sounds.  The sound effects pack a punch, but the actual eating action resembles gore more than it does eating. Baddies are dispatched with a burst of colors and the resulting visuals look like gushing blood, not food-shrapnel leftovers. More graphic detail could have improved this element of the game and made for a more realistic action-based eating game.

Some navigational elements like shooting yourself across the homeland in the cannon provide some variety, but most movements involve medium-speed crawls. The "Mirror" mode boosts replay value as players complete stages in reverse order while a "vacuum" mode concentrates on eating speed.

The three save slots, bonus foods, varied musical scores, and character customization are pretty standard while the time attack mode doubles the single digit hours of playtime it takes to conquer the levels. The eating action does not vary, which would’ve given the game some extra flavor, and unfortunately, you can’t zoom in with the camera views either. An affordable fun feast at $19.99, reduced from $29.99.

The Munchables is rated E (Everyone) for comic mischief and mild cartoon violence by the ESRB.