It’s not a teddy bear, it’s a dog! Ok, yeah, the puppy is sporting an anthropomorphic tummy like a teddy bear would, and the overall effect is very similar, but even I can tell the difference! On the whole, though, I think I prefer the son in his school uniform, but the ears are so cute!

Welcome to the character selection screen in Family Party: 30 Great Games. Not only is it a party game for you to play with you family, it’s a party game to play as a bunch of cute blood-relative (or at least adopted) characters.

You can play up to six minigames in a session, so we piled a few up and got right to it. Our first event was an obstacle race where the by-now-commonplace method of Wii minigame running (shaking the remote) is used between smashing through walls with the B button or jumping over water with A.

Less frantic was a game called Bombardment Bridge, where we took turns tapping the 2 button to walk across a bridge with a shield (to be tactically deployed to the right or left by tilting) while other players sniped from a distance.

Inner Clock made me instantly put the Go Byou Man song in my head, keeping me from correctly guessing when the invisible timer had reached 20 seconds. By the time you have to count to thirty, it gets a little boring…

Luckily we were on to the next game, which had us once again running and jumping, except this time we also had to crawl beneath nets by holding A and B while jabbing the remote back and forth like a saw.

Survival Rope was by far the most amusing, even if it was tricky and went on a bit long. The idea is to flick the remote to jump rope, but the twirlers vary the speed so it can be hard to keep up at times. Watching all four players fall flat on their faces simultaneously cracked us up enough to make it worthwhile.

Finally, our last event: Balance Bridge. Another one where you’re tapping to cross a bridge, but this time you’ll have to tilt the remote against the tilt of the bridge itself. I managed to get by without falling off at all.

That’s a taste of six out of the 30 games. Like most titles of this sort, the fun is really who you’re playing with and teasing each other when you mess up. Whether you’re up for another mini-game collection or not in the first place is the real question, but this one comes conveniently priced ($19.99) in time for the holidays. For the gamer gamers on your shopping list, it might not be the thing, but for the people who aren’t sure what to do post-Wii Sports, this could be a decent expansion.

Tags: Family Party: 30 Great Games, minigames

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1 Comment » FamilyWiiDownloads on November 28, 2008 7:17 am Its really cool how the Wii is bringing the family together. Did you know you can turn your Wii into a complete family entertainment center? Yeh, there are services for downloading Wii games, and also downloading new movies and TV shows to your Wii. The selection is enormous, so there is something for the whole family. RSS feed for comments on this post. Comment Now Note: Commenting on Ripten does not currently require registration, however to be eligible for contests on the site, you must be a registered user. Name (required) Mail (will not be published) (required) Website Commenting Rules: No hate speech allowed. If you must argue, please debate intelligently. Comments containing selected keywords or outbound links will be put into moderation to help prevent spam. Ripten reserves the right to delete comments and ban anyone who doesn't follow the rules. Thanks. Notify me of followup comments Tired of the Goomba? Upload your own custom comment avatar.