Ah, Rec Room Games. Winner of many awards, praised for terrific graphics, and outstanding music. Ok, actually, none of those things are true. This is really just another shovelware game for the Wii. Virtually unknown, stupid ways to use the Wii remote motion controls, and average PS2 graphics, are all the main traits of many 3rd party Wii games. And this one isn’t much different from the norm. 


So how this one works, is you have 20 different minigames to choose from. Each is supposed to represent a game that you can play just in your basement (hence, the name). Some are compatible with the Wii MotionPlus. They are: bowling, ski ball, disc toss, Smack-a-Squirrel (whack-a-mole), darts, gorodki, and disc toss (Frisbee).




   The ones that don’t use the Wii MotionPlus are foosball, table hockey, rubberband sharpshooter, hillbilly golf (ladder ball), air hockey, dodgeball, trashcan basketball, and tic-tac-toe toss. And then there are a few that don’t really even make sense. I mean, really? Cards, Chinese checkers, peg, and box maze? That doesn’t even make sense! But they are there nonetheless.







   Controls: 6.5 - Now, most of them work how you would think. Bowling, although ten times worse than the Wii Sports version, works just the same way. And the peg, cards, and Chinese checkers pretty much just uses the A button or D-pad. Really, the controls are simple. Most of them involve flicking your wrists, and just the Wiimote. But there is a BIG problem: the controls are broken for most of the games! Even something simple like Smack-a-Squirrel seems to be hard to get you pointer to the right spot, even with the sensor bar. And the smallest difference in speed can be the difference from over throwing or completely under throwing your ladderball, bowling ball, dart, etc.




   But the worst are air hockey and foosball. Air hockey should be banned from video games, because it’s impossible to get the controls right. You will always lose control of your paddle, and the occasional “paddle jump”, where the puck goes under your paddle is horrible, although not as bad as some other games like it. And then there is foosball. And I don’t think I've played anything with worse controls than this. Trying to twist the Wiimote the right way to control your character is almost useless. Your only real hope for this one is that the other person Wiimote happens to be doing worse on that exact game.




   There are some that work alright though. The tic-tac-toe one actually works surprisingly well. Ski ball, while not the best is pretty decent, and the rubberband launcher is spot on. Dodgeball has to be the best controlled game here, because it doesn’t try to utilize the Wiimote in stupid places. It is just used for throwing the dodgeballs, and it works perfectly.




   Gameplay: 6 - However, the problem with this unless you are playing it with somebody else, you will feel like the game is cheating. In fact, that is how the whole game feels. With this being a party game, the only time you will ever have fun playing it is if you are playing it at a party. Playing single player will keep you happy for about an hour. And even with friends, it still isn’t all that fun. The now, the game wouldn’t be nearly as boring if the game was faster. The game seems to go in slow motion for about half of the games. And it isn’t even just because the game is really just too slow.



Some games, like ladderball, you will be at it for forever, because it is really hard to ever even get it on the bar, but you need to get over 20 points. With four players, this could take up to twenty minutes to finish. There is no option to make the game shorter, with the acceptation of gorodki, where you can pick how many rounds you want to do, and darts, where you can pick between a few different options.







   And as if this isn’t bad enough, I still haven’t gotten to the worst. Games like cards and Chinese checkers don’t belong in a game like this. The card games are played by simply pressing A, and can pretty much be done in your sleep. No skill required. Chinese checkers is slightly better than cards; however, still, you are better off playing the real deal. It doesn’t feel right playing this on a video game.



Now, I have been beating up on it, but it’s not really all that bad. Like I said, dodgeball can be fun with friends, ladderball is fun, but you might just want to play to a smaller number, and rubberband sharpshooter can be fun a few times. The main problem with it is you will barely have fun with it more than once.







   Addictiveness: 3/ Depth: 8 – There are plenty of games here; 20 different minigames to play in all, giving you plenty of options. But the problem is that you won’t even enjoy most of them, and in the case you do find one that is fun, it won’t be for long. Part of it could be that most of the games are controlled the same way, and with the setting always being the same, is probably one of the reasons that it will get boring quick. The only time you will take this game out again is once you maybe have some people over that don’t normally play video games, that don’t know what a fun game is.







   Graphics: 6.5 – Well, like I said, the game’s graphics are standard Wii shovel ware quality, meaning you could do better on the PS2. However, that’s not even the worst part about how the game looks. The game is very bland. Most games have the same boring basement background as the last game. You feel almost like you are stuck in an awful house with no good games to play. Yes, I know it’s supposed to be a recreation room, but they could maybe change it up a bit. I got bored just from looking at the same exact room for 20 straight minutes. There isn’t anything in the game that would be considered “stunning”. The only word that I can think of to explain this game is bland. No colors that will really jump out to you, and nothing will ever make you think that they even made an attempt to get anywhere near the Wii’s graphical limits.







   Sound: 1 – I didn’t think I could ever reason rating something a 1. But here it is. You open the game to a simple tune. It kind of matches the type of game it is, with it being more of a laid back kind of game. But you might want to get used to that tune. Because that one tune, and one other that is a little more “in the game”, but still pretty laid back, are the only songs you will hear in the ENTIRE GAME! I think I would rather listen to Rebecca Black’s songs back to back for an hour instead of these so called “songs”. Nyan Cat has about as much variety as this game as far as music.




   And there are also extremely repetitive and annoying sound effects. The sound effects are pretty normal. The regular pings or the dodgeballs and ping pong balls going back and forth. They will get annoying quickly, but I don’t really know what they could have done to really improve it. But then there are also cheers when you get a goal, point, or really whatever the goal in that game is. But there isn’t any variation of it. You will hear that same cheering constantly. This makes me kind of wish they just had Navi talk to you instead.







   Difficulty: 8.5 – It’s pretty hard to say much about the difficulty here. For one, not really too many games will have you facing a CPU player, making them mostly you against your high scores, which aren’t even kept in the game. So this is mostly you facing off against your friends, making the difficulty hard to judge. But for some games where there is a CPU, it’s usually pretty easy. You don’t see what they do much, so you can’t notice anything that could be consider cheating or anything like that. I'm rating it high though, because the controls are so bad.






   
   Story: 10 – Why did I rate the story a ten? Well, it’s because it is the best part of the game. There isn’t any story to it. You are just playing games in a game room. But at least they didn’t attempt to mess this part of the game up to by trying to add a stupid story to it. This was something that was best left untouched.







   Overall: 5.5 – This is a classic example of a 3rd party company trying to make a Wii game using Wiimote gimmicks. Terrible gameplay, bad controls, awful music, and some of the shortest time you will ever spend playing a game without turning it off and wanting to destroy the game. If you see this in the clearance bucket for about $0.99, it would be worth it, if you want to pay a dollar for an hour of fun, or two with a friend or two. But I wouldn’t justify it being much more than that.

Sounds pretty bad.

Nice review here. I feel like I know the game now, so you did a good job painting a mental image for us. Only thing I can say here that I see as a problem is, you should leave the story rating blank if there is no story. Though I do see that you rated it ten to contrast the rest of it, which made sense.

Eirinn : Well, I actually rated it a zero for my rating, but like you said, comparing it to the rest made it seem like a 10. And yeah, I was looking for some more positive things to say, but I really couldn't think of anything.

Yeah, I saw that when I went to rate it. Nice. lol And hey, you can only do so much with what you're given to work with in a review. lol It was real good though.