WiiWare Roundup

Pirates: The Key of Dreams

• Developer: Oxygen Interactive
• Release Date: TBC
• Wii Points: TBC

Oxygen's nautical shoot-'em-up ties in with their Pirates title on the DS, but it's a totally standalone game in its own right. It's also very, very simple. You control a ship which "sails" through a variety of maze-like levels, defeating enemy ships, picking up treasure and secret weapons, upgrading your powers and, well, defeating more enemy ships.

We put "sails" in inverted commas, because this makes no pretence of being a simulation. There are a few control schemes you can use, but the one we liked best had us holding the Wiimote horizontally, turning left and right with the d-pad, and moving forward by pulling the trigger. You could also push down on the d-pad to reverse, which was obviously common on old pirate ships.

The result is something that plays a bit like the Atari classic Tanks. You move around and shoot at enemies that are moving around you. The difference is that here your standard weapon fires sideways (when you fire, it works out which sides enemies are on, and shoots your left or right cannons appropriately - or both), while weapon power-ups, which include a flamethrower, chain-linked shot, rockets and a devastating buzz-saw flinger, fire forwards.

The multiplayer mode confirms our suspicion that this is really a slightly damper Tanks update. Up to four players (padded out with CPU adversaries) battle it out on a single-screen, non-scrolling arena, full of respawning power-ups. You can choose from one of three ships (fast and lightly armed through to slow and heavily armed), but aside from a simple upgrade system, that's about the height of the complexity.

So the biggest problem with Pirates is that it's incredibly simple. There's nothing actively wrong with it, but it's likely to be a few minutes' occasional entertainment at best. In its defence, however, it's definitely fun in short bursts - and if its priced at a cheap enough level, it might be worth a fling for any old Atari fans craving a shot of old-school action.

Pop

• Developer: Nnooo
• Release Date: TBC
• Wii Points: TBC

Of all the launch window games, this is probably the toughest sell. The screen is full of bubbles, and you have to pop the bigger ones to keep your time meter filled up, while smaller ones score points. That, essentially, is the whole thing. It sounds simple, and possibly a bit rubbish.

It's not. In fact, it's strangely satisfying in single-player, with an almost flOw-style relaxing, gentle play style, assisted ably by soothing visuals. Where the game comes into its own, however, is in multiplayer. Up to four players can compete, and the strategy of keeping your timer full while racking up the best score possible becomes a major factor.

Other nice little touches also become apparent in multiplayer. Again inviting comparisons with flOw, you quickly notice that your pointer gains an increasingly long tail as you hit more bubbles in quick succession, which gives nice feedback on how well you're doing. More importantly, power-ups in multiplayer allow you to do things like nuking all the bubbles of a specific colour, thus upsetting a rival's attempt to build a combo.

Perhaps the nicest aspect is that the whole game is a "jump-in, jump-out" experience. You start it simply by picking up a Wiimote and popping a few bubbles - then friends can join in at any point by doing likewise. We can see this being a popular party game (no pun intended), in a strange way, and out of all the games on WiiWare thus far, it's the best example of a simple and original idea being implemented well.