The Wii is a funny old thing. Having opened up gaming to everyone and their gran, we now have to deal with the inevitable deluge of shovelware and minigame collections cobbled together and sold by the thousands to unsuspecting families hoping for something that’ll bring the family together. In this brave new world there’s very little incentive for developers to make these games anything even approaching playable or innovative, and so Squeeballs deserves recognition for making a bold attempt at bringing something new to the evolving party-genre.
The set-up is pretty typical – right off the bat you get to choose from a bunch of minigames, which you then proceed to blast through with your friends and family. The games range from simple Wii Sports-style bowling to more complicated catapulting affairs. What separates Squeeballs party from the horde of similar games are the titular squeeballs themselves. The idea is that they’re stuffed toys that need to be tested to ensure they’re safe for children. At once adorable and completely expendable, these squishy little monsters will be catapulted, crushed, maimed, exploded, electrified, shot and knifed to death by your own hand, all in the name of point-grabbing. Whilst a few of the games will require you to protect or guide the Squeeballs, the vast majority will judge your performance based on how many you’re able to destroy before the timer hits zero. All make no mistake, they’ll be staring up at you with their big adorable eyes the whole time.
I simply cannot see this ending well.
This might lead you to think that Squeeballs is a morbid affair – but the whole package is presented with enough primary colours, comic-book stylings and comedy sound effects that the violence never detracts from the fun, and if kids are still the little maniacs they were when I was little, they’re going to have considerably more fun bashing virtual monsters with a hammer than they ever could throwing a virtual frisbee or heading a virtual football.
The music is alright – there’s only really one looping theme, but it’s catchy enough, and the visuals are charming. No single miningame is perfect, and the controls could use some refinement across the board, but some of the games are things we haven’t seen before, and any attempt at innovation – even if it doesn’t always quite work – is appreciated. Particularly nice was the slingshot minigame where players must pull back the wii remote Bart Simpson-style, and fire Squeeballs at a massive canvas in a paint-by-numbers bloodbath.
As a final note, I was deeply impressed that this game lets you rack up utterly ridiculous scores in the normal course of play. Check it out:
That's one hell of a score
Normally that would probably be considered something of a bug, but frankly it’s brilliant. I’d give this game a 5/10 under normal circumstances, but I’m happy to bump it up to a 6/10 due to this delightful glitch.
