Wreckateer
SCORE: 71
Wreckateer was one of the few big family
friendly titles that Microsoft announced at E3 2012. There was a high
volume of excitement here at Family Friendly Gaming. Yet as I played it,
I felt let down. I suppose Wreckateer is family friendly if you consider
all of the blood, and gore games out there. But it has an in your face
kind of attitude about it.
We smash castles in Wreckateer because they are infested with goblins.
Nothing like throwing the baby out with the bath water eh? The more we
smash the higher score we receive. There is a score multiplier that can
help us attain extremely high scores. We are provided a set number of
balls to shoot down as many castles as possible.
The kinds of balls will change in Wreckateer. Think of Angry Birds in
this regard. We may get two regular balls, and two bomb balls (for an
example). Planning what we trash with which ball is part of the strategy
of playing Wreckateer. This also means Wreckateer has one main path to
victory. Certain things have to be done right or your score will suffer.
If you feel like you are failing horribly in Wreckateer, you can raise
your right hand for two seconds to restart the level. You will do this
on more than one occasion. At times this made me feel like a pro
wrestler standing on the turn buckler with one arm raised as part of my
in ring entrance. So the fans can take pictures of me - in case you did
not understand what I was talking about.
Wreckateer looks okay. I honestly was not very convinced by the physics.
I would roll a ball up to a tower and watch the minor contact bring the
whole thing down. I was thankful since it gave me more points, but at
the same time disappointed with the physics engine. The real excitement
comes from trashing multiple towers at the same time. I felt like a
wrecking crew demolishing an entire city block.
Parents need to be aware of certain things Wreckateer encourages us to
do. One of them is to hit the goblins in the face - for a bonus. I think
that is a little rude - hence the ESRB descriptor. We are launching a
variety of objects to destroy the buildings in Wreckateer. If you have a
problem with that, then you will want to avoid Wreckateer.
The controls in Wreckateer are spotty. I can't think of another way of
saying it. Sometimes they worked great, and other times I was fighting
with them to line up a shot. A few times it launched without me. Here
are how the controls work. We step into the first area and bring our
fists in front of our chest. We step back, line up the shot, and throw
our arms straight outwards to launch. This thrusting of our arms outward
is also used on certain balls.
Wreckateer is a downloadable game over one gig - just in case your Xbox
360 has memory issues, or your family does not have a hard drive on your
unit. Family Friendly Gaming was provided a download code for this
review. You can decide for yourself if Wreckateer is right for your
family. I had some high expectations, especially considering recent
Kinect titles from Microsoft Game Studios.
- Luke
Graphics: 73%
Sound: 69%
Replay/Extras: 82%
Gameplay: 61%
Family Friendly Factor: 70%
System: Xbox 360 (Kinect)
Publisher: Microsoft
Rating: 'E10+' - Everyone 10+
{Crude Humor, Fantasy Violence}
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