Previous
Wii Roundup Review
Wii Review by Dan Whitehead
Page 1 of 3.
Page 2 
So, it turns out that Tom has been receiving angry letters from PETE, People for the Ethical Treatment of Ellie. Apparently forcing her to constantly review the dregs of the Wii barrel is cruel and inhumane, and PETE activists have now helped Ellie escape from her mini-games dungeon by building a special tower out of Boom Blox. Clearly, this is political correctness gone mad. Not that I'm bitter or angry. No, I'm quite happy to take Ellie's place while Tom hunts her down with his high-powered drug gun. It's fine. This stack of new Wii games looks...interesting. Right? They can't be that bad. And it's not as if the shackles are that uncomfortable. There's even some hay on the floor, which is a bit like a cushion. I'm sure it'll be fine.
Secret Files: Tunguska
- Publisher: Deep Silver
- Developer: Keen Games
With its pointy interface, the Wii is certainly ripe to take advantage of the adventure game revival, but it's just a shame that generic fare like Tunguska is leading the way.
I reviewed the PC version back in September 2006 and this remake, by German developer Keen Games, is almost exactly the same. The graphics obviously aren't as sharp, but the clue highlight feature has been retained, allowing you to instantly see all the points of interest in each screen. Control is simple enough - the B button examines things, the A button interacts with them. The nunchuk can be used to steer around the scenery, or you can just click on the things you want to walk to. As Exhibit A in the case of How Point-And-Click Can Work For A New Audience, it's pretty compelling.
That's more than can be said about the game itself, sadly. It's a rather clunky conspiracy thriller, in which you guide Nina, a stock post-Lara feisty female, on a search for her missing scientist father. He vanished while investigating the 1908 explosion which devastated the Tunguska region of Russia, and something fiendish is clearly afoot. The elements called into play to spin this yarn, however, are so predictable and the script so lacking in pace or personality that progress becomes a matter of beating the puzzles rather than striving to advance the story.
Point and click, now with more energetic pointing and clicking.
Puzzles are what the games has in abundance, though they're very much of the old-school adventure game type. No solution is too long-winded, and no sequence of object combinations too illogical. It's the sort of game where simply opening a door can involve an additional twenty-five steps, finding bits of wire and chewing gum to retrieve a loaf of bread from a shelf, which then attracts birds to a window ledge, which dislodges a pencil which you then use to make a hole in a box, through which you get a key. Using a magnet you found buried in a plant pot.
Okay, that doesn't happen exactly, but it's not much of an exaggeration of Tunguska's obtuse construction. There are plenty of adventure die-hards who thrive on such elongated nonsense, and will gladly plod onwards through uninspiring stories for the sake of some head-scratching riddles. Those people will still enjoy Tunguska, but those people also probably have a PC and have already played it. For the majority of Wii owners, I suspect this will prove simply too dry and convoluted to really catch on.
6/10
Are you excited about George of the Jungle on Wii?
View Eurogamer readers most anticipated games
Related Games
Secret Files: Tunguska
King of Clubs
SEGA Bass Fishing
Emergency Mayhem
George of the Jungle
Want to comment on this article? Log in, or register!
Comments: 1-40 of 40 in total
|
Xephon1970
30/05/08 @ 07:11
0
Oh dear. I suppose we'll have to wait for the next first party game for a decent title. Or until Capcom have another go.
Thank god for Lost Winds. |
|
JohnnyWashnGo
30/05/08 @ 07:33
0
Godammit, the Wii si becoming shovelware king this generation.
There should be a law agaist makinig games like these. |
|
FaceOmeter
30/05/08 @ 07:52
0
Actually George of the Jungle is my favourite game on the wii and I think that eg are stupid why insult a brilliant game with this review??? Why use a review to declare opinions I do not share??? EG just paid by microsoft to keep wii marks low because microsoft can't handle how incredible george of the jungle is LOL eg = shit god i hate this site which is why I read it all the time
|
|
DanWhitehead
30/05/08 @ 09:18
0
It's an adventure game. Where the pacing is low because some people like it, not because it's a broken Halo.
It's also an adventure game with a cliched story, terrible characters, inane dialogue and illogical puzzles. Now I'm off to play some more Halo. And scream GO USA for no apparent reason. Awesome. |
|
gingerlink
30/05/08 @ 09:25
0
@mkreku
I think I read some newspaper review which was trying to compare metroid prime 3 (the game being reviewed) to halo. those kind of reviewers should be gotten rid of along with all of this shovelware and the streams of lazy developers. and 9 year old kids on xbox live.
Edited 1 times,
most recently on 30/05/08 @ 10:25
|
|
FabricatedLunatic
30/05/08 @ 10:01
0
No solution is too long-winded, and no sequence of object combinations too illogical.
This is why I gave up on the PC version of Tunguska. Well, that and the appalling voice "acting". |
|
magicpocket
30/05/08 @ 10:14
0
SEGA are on a roll with games that have the word ass in at the moment.
Viking: Battle of Assgard SEGA ass fishing Virtua Tenass And to top it all off they're all brilliant fun :) |
|
DanWhitehead
30/05/08 @ 10:22
0
And it deserved a 6/10? Go go, great scoring skills!
Well, did I underscore it because I'm a mindless Halo kid or overscore it because I'm an adventure game nostalgic? You're gonna have to pick one line of criticism and stick with it, I'm afraid. |
|
0
Good question! Which one is it?
"...cliched story, terrible characters, inane dialogue and illogical puzzles..." or 6/10? You're the almighty reviewer, you tell me, the lowly reader. It couldn't be that 6/10 is an attempt at getting away with reviewing a game you didn't even care to play through? I mean, 6/10, right in the vanilla, who would ever care or notice if you played the game or not? Just get it over with so you can get back to shouting puerile nonsense in Halo 3 multiplayer, right? |
|
DanWhitehead
30/05/08 @ 11:09
0
I already reviewed the game on the PC last year. It's still a generic point-and-click with a weakness for convoluted puzzles. To me, that's a 6/10. I suppose it could've been a 5/10, but then you'd probably be even more angry, so I'm not sure what you're after here.
And stop with the Halo nonsense. The first game I ever played was The Hobbit on the Spectrum, and I'm far from being some mindless FPS fan who doesn't understand why none of the characters are shooting each other. Compared to everything else in its genre, Tunguska is nothing special. It's that simple. |
|
0
Massive amounts of Kudos to DanWhitehead for taking his time to reply to complaining fuckers in the commentary section. I would never have bothered.
If this was Kotaku (its not!) alot of people would get banned every time an article is published. While i think it would be right to just get rid of fanboys/dickwits, and would also make the commentary section a better place, I admire EG for putting up with it and letting people speak freely no matter how much of an idiot they end up looking like. |
|
Pac-man ate my wife
30/05/08 @ 12:12
0
@ Spongebob
While the first party games are often the best on Nintendo platforms it's not fair to say it's doesn't get any decent 3rd party titles. It could obviously do with more but Boom Blox is great, but so are PES2008, Zack & Wiki, No More Heroes and Trauma Centre. As are Resident Evil 4, Bully, Guitar Hero and Geometry Wars if you've not played them elsewhere. |
|
0
Actually George of the Jungle is my favourite game on the wii and I think that eg are stupid why insult a brilliant game with this review??? Why use a review to declare opinions I do not share??? EG just paid by microsoft to keep wii marks low because microsoft can't handle how incredible george of the jungle is LOL eg = shit god i hate this site which is why I read it all the time
:D Hahaha! Brilliant work. |
|
0
I really don't care if the game got a 5 or 6, I would probably have scored it the same myself. If you read my original comment, it said nothing about the score. My point is that it's too obvious you don't like the genre and just want to get the review over with. Playing an adventure game complaining about bad narrative or obtuse puzzles is OK, those are valid complaints. Playing an adventure game and complaining about the pace being too low or that point-and-click is "old school" are not!
If you review Halo, do you think people are interested in reading stuff like "Halo is so old school, same old gameplay since Wolfenstein 3D, it needs to evolve"? It puts a negative shine on the entire review when you KNOW the game won't be scored fairly because the reviewer is uninterested. I think it was IGN who had to withdraw a review once because they ended up in a shitstorm when they let a guy who hated D&D review Neverwinter Nights 2. At least they had the balls to admit their mistake. |
|
DanWhitehead
30/05/08 @ 15:59
0
Playing an adventure game and complaining about the pace being too low or that point-and-click is "old school" are not!
I didn't say either of these things. I said the script was poorly paced - which it is. The story takes an age to get moving, and keeps stopping for pointless conversations and silly distractions. I love adventure games, and have a lot of fondness for point and click. Tunguska is simply a rather thin example of the genre, and the criticism in the review was clearly directed at that game rather than the genre as a whole. I do think that adventure games in general need to move away from the ludicrously arcane inventory puzzles of old, just as platform games have evolved past the one-hit-kills of yesteryear. Relying on illogical combinations of inventory items is a silly throwback that is actively preventing the genre from moving forwards. Here's what I said in my review of the PC version: Here's a crazy idea: rather than coming up with a way to help gamers find the impossibly tiny, random objects needed to solve linear puzzles, why not create a point-and-click adventure game where finding impossibly tiny, random objects simply isn't necessary? A game where you can actually come up with your own solutions to problems, using genuine lateral thinking, rather than trying to piece together the solitary linear solution deemed "correct" by the developer? It's not really fair to judge Tunguska too harshly for failing to completely reinvent its genre, but it does raise the question of how many pointless gameplay quirks we'll tolerate simply because we've come to expect them. Praising a game for continuing to use illogical puzzles, simply because that's what other games have done, seems like backwards thinking in this day and age. And that's the informed opinion of someone who has been playing and enjoying adventure games since 1982, not a drooling Halo fanboy who doesn't "get" adventure games.
Edited 1 times,
most recently on 30/05/08 @ 17:04
|
|
0
Actually, while reading through the horrible MGS4 comments thread (still only on comment 500-550!), I found this quote from you:
"I don't think criticism can - or should be - an objective pursuit, no." I think that's where we differ. When I used to write game reviews, I usually started with a silly paragraph to draw attention, a couple of relatively boring paragraphs describing the game objectively, before finishing it with my own take on the game, a conclusion and a score. When you fail to describe the game objectively in any part of a review and instead permeate the entire review with your aversion towards the game, the impression the text leaves is not of a bad game, but of a bad attitude towards the game or the genre as a whole. "Here's a crazy idea: rather than forcing players to shoot enemies, why not create a FPS game where shooting enemies simply isn't necessary? A game where you can actually come up with your own ways of killing enemies, using genuine lateral thinking, rather than using the weapons deemed "correct" by the developer? It's not really fair to judge Halo 3 too harshly for failing to completely reinvent its genre, but it does raise the question of how many pointless gameplay quirks we'll tolerate simply because we've come to expect them. Praising a game for continuing to use boring ways of killing enemies, simply because that's what other games have done, seems like backwards thinking in this day and age." I slightly remade your provided quote. Do you think it still works? Is it possible that your criticisms against the entire genre of adventure games might be because you just don't care much for said genre?
Edited 1 times,
most recently on 30/05/08 @ 17:24
|
|
DanWhitehead
30/05/08 @ 16:33
0
When you fail to describe the game objectively in any part of a review and instead permeate the entire review with your aversion towards the game, the impression the text leaves is not of a bad game, but of a bad attitude towards the game or the genre as a whole.
These are roundup reviews. I could spend a few hundred words explaining what a point-and-click adventure is, but there's no room and little point. And this idea that criticism of a minor game like Tunguska somehow extrapolates to my disliking adventures in general is baseless nonsense. By that logic, the George of the Jungle review must mean I despise platform games. I slightly remade your provided quote. Do you think it still works? Not really, since that implies that poorly thought-out puzzles are integral to the adventure genre just as shooting is integral to the FPS. And that's something I fundamentally disagree with. Puzzles are an important part of adventure games, but these drawn out "combine the bacon with the bicycle to retrieve the stuffed moose that contains a map to a key" affairs are a bad habit that needs to be broken. There are better ways of doing it. It's perfectly possible to retain the point-and-click framework but come up with more intuitive and logical ways for players to advance the story. Is it possible that your criticisms against the entire genre of adventure games might be because you just don't care much for said genre? No. In a nutshell. There's obviously no way to convince you of this, but if I criticise an aspect of the adventure genre as being outdated it's because I enjoy adventure games and want to see the genre thrive, not stagnate. It almost died out completely, but is now becoming commercially viable again. I don't want to see that potential squandered just because fans are incapable of getting past an old fashioned idea of what adventure games must be. |
|
0
Godammit, the Wii si becoming shovelware king this generation.
There should be a law agaist makinig games like these. And there should be a law against bad spelling. The large amount of average games just shows you how popular the machine is. DS anyone? I'm definitely getting SEGA Bass Fishing btw, was super cult on the Dreamcast. |
|
0
Speaking of MGS4, how come someone there can claim an 8/10 (points deducted because it's made for the fans and noone else) means the end of the PS3, while the Wii is drenched in MANURE - and tons of it - and noone calls for its imminent demise news at 23:00? Ppl R weird.
Edited 1 times,
most recently on 02/06/08 @ 23:16
|
Comments: 1-40 of 40 in total
Want to comment on this article? Log in, or register!
