Dedication's what you'll need
The invasion of the Wii mini-games began with the successful launch of Wii Play and since then developers haven’t missed an opportunity to capitalise on the ever-increasing casual game’s market with store shelves currently full of such pick-and-play titles as EA Playground and Game Party.With a group of friends (preferably children or drunken adults) such games can offer some spontaneous multiplayer fun on that cold winter night, but aside from a few exceptions, most notably Rayman Raving Rabbids and Mario Party 8, most have failed miserably to entertain (see Carnival Games and Celebrity Sports Showdown.)
Step forward The Guinness World Records: The Videogame, the latest set of mini-games to throw itself under the spotlight of the mini-game critics by offering dozens of the kind of pick-up-and-play games designed specifically to take advantage of the motion-sensing functionality of the Wii Remote. On offer here though is the motivation of breaking actual world records by waggling, waving and thrusting your controller and Nunchuck in order to compete in such record-breaking feats as the ‘Fastest time to pop 100 balloons’ or the ‘Highest BMX jump.’
If you do play Guinness World Records offline, the records that you attempt to break are ones that have been set by the developer, just something for you to aim for, but hook up to Nintendo Wi-Fi and your scores are checked online against other players. If you do manage to break the real world record then you can upload your score to the official adjudicators who then assess whether your attempt is valid. If it is you could end up in The Guinness Book of Records Gamer’s Edition.
That incentive alone was enough to spur us on to almost do ourselves some serious ligament damage trying to frantically tear five phone books as quickly as possible by twisting the two controllers in different directions and then pummeling them alternatively in and out as quickly as possible to simulate a tear. Sadly, we didn’t break any real world records, but with the Guinness Book of Records license behind it, it certainly gave us some added motivation to try our best and it does give the mini-games some added replay value.
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