LazyViews: World Snooker Championship Real 08

Intro

Play snooker on your Wii!

Good

• A really great well modeled snooker game, as much fun as Jimmy White's snooker on the Amiga
• Highly addictive, I've been playing for hours at a time.
• It has all the real snooker players modeled into the game. 
• Lots of other cue sports to try, shame you can only play most of them in practice mode.
• The cue attachment really makes it feel like real snooker.

Bad

• It sometimes feels very hard, it can be crushing when one of the top players demolishes you in one visit to the table.
• Limited play modes, the only one with any real depth is the snooker season mode. 
• No online multiplay (this is criminal!)
• If you don't like snooker it'll be of absolutely no interest to you.
• The cue attachment feels a bit flimsy. I'm sure I'm going to snap it every time I whack it on my head in frustration at another bad/frame losing shot.

Summary

A really, really great snooker game and one of the best sports games on the Wii, or on any console. The cue really does make a difference. It's just a shame it's not a bit more sturdy! You could probably gaffer tape a wiimote to a real snooker cue for the same affect though. What it lacks in breadth in gameplay it makes up for in depth. Would have scored a 9 if you could play multiplayer online. 

Score

8/10 Read the Eurogamer scoring policy

Opera

I posted a while ago about Google Chrome and how I was enjoying it as a browser. I've got all the web browsers on my machine for testing websites and have been mainly using Chrome and Firefox for normal browsing but the latest IE security flaw has highlighted that  apparently Opera is the most secure browser for password management.

I've been really impressed with the speed of the Opera browser built into my Wii, so I thought I should give it another go. Opera was great when it first came out but in version 5 they built adverts into the browser, and I stopped using it. Now it's ad free again (woo!), and does very well in password management security, where Chrome and Safari are rubbish.

It's also got a lot of the good features of both Chrome and Firefox, like Chrome it's very quick to load and render and like Firefox there are lots of plugins (widgets). Like Chrome you have your 9 pane top websites area when you launch a new tab, although you can define what those sites are.

So yeah, I like it. It might become my #1. That said, Firefox would still be #1 by miles if they hadn't totally crippled it's speed with version 3. 

LazyViews: Mario Kart Wii

Intro

The latest instalment of Mario Kart comes to the Wii with a brand new wheelshaped controller to stick your Wiimote in.

Good

• It's Mario Kart!
• The wheel controller works well. It's a bit weird pointing a wheel at the screen when you are using the mouse pointer, but as a wheel it's good.
  
• You can ride motorbikes as well as driving karts, and the bikes are a lot of fun.
  
• You can unlock the ability to drive as Miis so you can take on Mario et al. If not then look out for yourself in the crowd.
  
• The new tracks are really interesting and show off the new gameplay like tricks when you are jumping and the new drifting system
  
• You can engage in Wi-Fi play with your friends around the world or randoms
• You can download ghost images from top experts at the game from around the world, or from people who are just a bit better than you and find out how they do it and try and beat their times.
  

Bad

• Some of the items you pick up or get hit by feel a bit unfair or unbalanced. If you've been battling hard to get up to 5th place with Bowzer continuously knocking you off the track and someone picks up a Billy Bullet and shoots past you and off into the distance you're likely to be hurling your controller in rage faster than a stupid Canadian who failed to plug his laptop in properly would throw his laptop at the wall.
  
• Leading has never been great in Mario Kart but now it's easily the worst place to be, you can get hit by all kinds of nasty shit and your defensive items basically suck. I've even read a strategy guide entry that says on the tougher 150cc races the best tactic is to sit near the back and have a big push towards the end of the race.
  
• Some of the courses they've imported from old systems are a bit shit compared to the new courses and don't work so well with the new gameplay.

Summary

As always the real strength of Mario Kart lies in multi-player. They've possibly taken the concept that "anyone can play against anyone" a bit too far, but a better racer will win more often than a novice it just evens the odds a bit. And it's still just as fun as Mario Kart ever was with just about enough fresh ideas to make it interesting even for people who've played the previous games in the series to death.

Score

8/10 Read the Eurogamer scoring policy