Fun to look at and has an interesting soundtrack, but will bore you to sleep with shallow, Wii-typical game play.
I first discovered Mushroom Men: The Spore Wars in an issue of Nintendo Power over a year ago. I was kind of intrigued, and wanted to try it really bad--the art style was beautiful and interesting, and I'd been browsing around the website for the game, which got my interested.
I didn't buy it until yesterday...thank goodness it was on clearance for $14.99, because it's just not worth full price.
In short, let me just say that this game is INCREDIBLY BORING and is not worth your money unless you really want to try it.
PROS
*Visual style, concept, and perspective are just plain awesome
*Soundtrack is compelling and interestingly catchy
*Making weapons is somewhat interesting
CONS
*Gameplay, simply put, is just plain boring
*Combat is weak
*Average Wii graphics
*Very, very weak story
*Levels have a lack of a clear way to indicate where you're going
PREMISE AND STORY
The background for the series is that a comet/meteor(never specified entirely) crashes down onto Earthling suburbs and spreads magic green dust everywhere. The effect of the dust is dismissed by humans as "harmless" but it actually mutates the flora, fauna, and fungi down below and Mushrooms, Cacti, and Kuzu gained sentience.
The story for this game is that you take on the role of Pax, a lone bolete wanderer trying to find his place in mushroom society. The story is incredibly weak--you're literally wandering with no purpose at all.
PRESENTATION AND INTERFACE
The game's menus and interfaces take on the theme of "green goo", which is prevalent throughout the game.
In-game dialogue is presented by a simple, almost primitive interface that can be repetitive.
GRAPHICS (5/10)
The in-game graphics are very typical of an average Wii game and are nothing special to look at. They're almost disappointing.
SOUND (7/10)
One of the few areas where this game gets some credit, honestly. The soundtrack is very alien-sounding and tunes are often even catchy.
GAMEPLAY (3/10)
This is the core of the review.
You control Pax with the Wii Remote and Nunchuk, swinging the nunchuk to swing your weapon.
I've said this several times already and I will say it many more times in this review: this game is extremely BORING.
The story is very faint and weak so there is little drive to find out "what's going on".
Combat is repetitive and feels very weak, you'll be fighting the same monsters over and over again--there is little variety.
Making new weapons sounds fun, which it can be but it's not like the DS version where you combine items and see what you get--instead it's presented in a "recipe" style format, which takes the surprise away.
Now onto level design....levels are long and tend to drag on. There are no real check points so you have to start over if you leave in the middle of a chapter or level.
This game is so extremely boring that I just can't stress this enough. I've actually found myself literally PUTTING MY CONTROLLER DOWN and turning off my Wii to go do something else because the levels were just dragging on and it was boring me half to death.
I wish I could say this game played as good as it looked.
THE VERDICT
Don't buy it unless you really want to try it: you should be able to find it cheap like I did. It's extremely boring and lacks any depth whatsoever.