Wonder World Amusement Park (Wii)

GameSpot editors' review

• CNET editors' rating: 2.0 stars Mediocre
  Detailed editors' rating
  Overall score: 4.0 (2.0 stars)

• Reviewed by:
  Austin Shau
• Reviewed on: 07/22/2008
• Released on: 07/08/2008
• Originally published on GameSpot: Wonder World Amusement Park (Wii) Review

Going to the amusement park is a great way to spend time with your friends and family, but it's quite the expensive trip. Majesco is now offering a way to bring the amusement-park fun to the confines of your living room with Wonder World Amusement Park for the Wii, promising 30 minigames and five unlockable "rides." However, once you partake in the dullness that this virtual amusement park has to offer, you'll likely end up wanting to overspend on the real thing.

Wonder World Amusement Park is broken up into five different themed areas, each with six minigames. As you play through these games, you earn tickets (which are good only for the area in which you earned them) for prizes and passes that unlock the other areas. Buying every prize in an area unlocks its ride, which is effectively another minigame that gives out more tickets for a good performance.

The assortment of minigames is dominated by Whack-a-Mole variants and different point-and-shoot activities. Some games require that you pump the Wii Remote and Nunchuk in alternation to win some kind of race, whereas others will have you pointing to fish, frogs, or piranhas out of water. There's even a version of Memory buried in the sandy beaches of the Pirate-themed area. If all of this sounds entirely mundane, that's because it is. To be fair, the control is mostly adequate, and there are at least a few exceptions to the mostly unmemorable minigames. Bag-a-Bug has you maneuvering a honey-covered stick with the Wii Remote to attract as many insects as possible while avoiding those that will destroy your progress. Where the Heart Is requires you to throw a stake into a vampire doll's heart in the dark, with only its glowing eyes to guide you. But by and large, you'll be fed up with the deja vu that you get when you stumble across your third shooting-gallery variant.

Wonder World Amusement Park's rides, though they initially appear to offer something different, don't do much to pull the whole experience out of the doldrums. In the majority of them you're still either pointing and shooting at things or pumping your arms alternately. What's more irritating is that you have to earn a significant amount of tickets to purchase every prize in an area first, all to unlock something that ends up being as tedious as what you've just put yourself through.

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