Guilty Party Updated Hands-On

There's nothing quite like the pride you feel when you solve a good mystery on your own, but what's even better is solving it first and making everyone else feel bad. Guilty Party can be a solo, competitive, or cooperative endeavor, but let's face it, part of the appeal to winning is claiming victory over your little sister or teaming up to outsmart your parents. This Wii-exclusive original IP from Wideload Games will put your detective skills to the test as you try to uncover the truth before someone else in its competitive Party mode, which is randomized each time you play so that the experience is always new. For our first impressions of the game's Story mode, please read our preview here.

As you go through the game's Story mode, you'll eventually unlock six different locations that you can play through again in Party mode. You can choose to play competitively or cooperatively, but our demo focused on the competitive aspects, such as the use of savvy cards. Savvy cards are essentially detective power-ups that can either help you or hinder your opponent(s). Between turns in Competitive mode, you play as Mr. Valentine, the nemesis from the story and try to sabotage the other team. You can lock rooms to prevent people from entering, set up traps, or use a paranoia card to make a witness run away from the other players. The game is turn based (with a set number of turns to start with), and you have a limited number of action points to use. If you think you're close to nailing the crook and want to get ahead, you can use tokens, which will give you a longer turn.

The main goal in each game is to interrogate all the witnesses and jot down the clues that they give you until you have a profile of the guilty party--sorry, couldn't resist. In our example, we were trying to find the thief who stole a pocket watch. After the interrogation, the person's statement appears in your notebook, and you're armed with a trusty lie detector to see whether or not he or she is telling you the truth. Because your opponent can see what you see onscreen, you can always bluff by holding the 1 button discreetly so that no one will know whether the person who ate the pudding is round or skinny. You can choose whether or not to put the right answer into your notebook, but you can always mess around and hope that your competitor might take the bait.

There are more than 50 minigames in Guilty Party, and you can choose from three difficulty settings. When you choose your character in the beginning, the difficulty setting determines the difficulty of the minigames. Once you decide what kind of game you want to play, you can choose another difficulty to determine the length and complexity of the game. The harder it is, the more suspects and witnesses you have to question. Minigames are quick and easy, allowing you to use the remote to play the saxophone or to tickle a person's nose. There's a hypnotizing minigame where you tilt the remote in sync with the dangling pocket watch onscreen until your suspect is under your control.

Guilty Party has that quirky cartoon humor and visuals that can easily be tied to a Disney property. Even though the game isn't based off a series or movie, it certainly feels like it at times. We'll update you with more information as soon as it becomes available. Guilty Party is set to be released on the Wii in the second half of this year.