OMG Nintendo

Remember when Game Factory sent me Zenses a long, long time ago? They also sent me a bunch of other games that I have neglected to finish reviewing between then and now, partially because I am a huge jerk and partially because other unassociated persons were being jerks. I'm trying to get cracking on wrapping those (and other outstanding reviews) up before January is out, so now I'm going to get cracking on the two Rubik's World games.

Rubik's World has a DS and a Wii SKU that look identical but aren't. The games are somewhat disjoint collections of smaller activities and you have to play so much of the game to unlock everything that's available, but fortunately the unlock requirements are mild. I had everything unlocked within about three or four hours of play on both titles. I can say in all honesty that I had some fun playing both games, and they also brought to mind how much I'm not a fan of attaching scores to game reviews (even though I'm quite the fan of critical aggregators like Metacritic). I'll go into why, and the details of both games behind the cut.

When Rubik's World shipped, a lot of people were expecting it to mostly be a Rubik's Cube simulator. This is a feature present in both games, but is not very good. The interface for the simulator is simple enough, focusing on the stylus on DS and Remote on Wii. The cube is essentially a physics object you can easily tilt and then spin the sides on. The main problem with both simulators is that the animations are inexplicably slow, and the tutorial, identical across both platforms, is not actually very good at teaching you how to solve a Rubik's Cube. I imagine most kids and certainly most Cube enthusiasts would rather spend their money on the actual toy, or play with freeware Cube simulators available online.

Now, this is where Rubik's World gets interesting. It seems that at some point, someone – either at Two Tribes or Game Factory – realized that their game wasn't going to fly as a simulator. So how do you turn it into a piece of quality software? Why, you add in lots of mini-games. Now, in most Wii and DS mini-game collections, either everything works fine or everything sucks, due to control issues. The controls in both versions of Rubik's Cube are flawless, but the actual quality of the games is wildly inconsistent between and within the individual SKUs. Essentially, two of the games are identical across platforms, two have the same names but are radically different on Wii and DS, and then each SKU gets an assortment of exclusives.

Most titles that were going the mini-game route simply throw you into the action, but Rubik's World's aspirations are higher. There is a little story concept that sets up the gameplay, by explaining that you are actually nurturing and training the baby cubes, or Cubies, who shall one day mature into full Rubik's Cubes. I have no idea how this charming ecology is supposed to work, whether the smaller single-color Cubies featured in most games begin exponentially increasing their mass, or if dozens of Cubies arrange complex polygamous (and polyhedral) marriages with each other upon reaching maturity. If the latter is the case, then I don't think you want to know what you're really doing to the Cubies involved when you go about the process of solving your Rubik's Cube.

Demented premise aside, a lot of the games are really quite fun. Unfortunately, the ones that aren't end up being completely, utterly not worth a player's time, and that makes figuring out whether or not you'd enjoy the game tricky. Here's a run down of the mini-games available in each SKU.

Fit: A game that is just different enough between the Wii and DS versions that it feels like something totally different. Both games involve arranging Cubies so that they can pass through a given shape in a wall that slides forward at them. In the DS SKU, the Cubies are arranged in a central mass and you have to get them into the right shape while making sure every Cubie is touching at least one other. In the Wii version, the Cubies are physics objects that you can fit through the shapes by squishing and distorting them, and you can also arrange them freely with the Wii Remote. Of the two versions, I thought the DS one made a lot more sense and offered more interesting puzzle solutions. The Wii version just feels arbitrary.

Switch: Despite the same name cropping up in both games, what you do in Switch changes radically between them. In the DS version, Switch is an interesting take your basic Bejeweled-type game. Cubies are spawning infinitely, clinging to each other, and you have to trim the pack down by matching groups of five of the same color. You can switch any two Cubies in the group by highlighting them with your Stylus. In the Wii version, Switch is more like playing the Challenge Mode of your Bejeweled-type game. Each puzzle has Cubies in a preset formation, and you need to swap them within so many moves such that you can eliminate all of the Cubies. This game is problematic across both versions, the DS version is too easy to be engaging while the Wii version gets incredibly frustrating.

Guide: This game is exclusive to the Wii version and I had a tremendous amount of fun with it. It's a bit like playing a simpler version of Mercury Meltdown Revolution, only with little cubes instead of a blob. Essentially, Cubies are programmed to act in a certain way in each level. You can trigger their movements, and before that, lay down tiles that will affect which way they move. Your task is to lay down tiles such that the Cubies all move successfully from their home tile to their goal tile. There are well over forty puzzles, and while the interface and display remain simple, the actual puzzle designs get fiendish as you approach the final ones. They're really a lot of fun to solve, and I'd happily buy a freestanding duplicate of this title n WiiWare.

View: Another marvelous Wii exclusive. View is a sort of 3D construction puzzle that makes very good use of the Wii Remote. You have to build a shape within the target cube whose shape satisfies certain requirements. The difficulty of the puzzles ramps up very quickly, but the puzzles are also extremely logical and friendly to experimenting. I wasted a good dozen hours on this one without quite clearing it all, and it's another mini-game I'd happily buy by itself on WiiWare. The puzzle designs get simply vicious as you move toward the final entries, but there's always a sense that you could solve it if you could just think a little bit harder.

Deconstruct: One of the few Wii exclusives that's a misfire. It comes off like playing a lousier version of some of Boom Blox's destruct modes. You have Jenga-like towers of blocks, and to beat levels you have to meet a certain target score by shooting Cubies at the towers to try and knock them into the abyss. The problem with this mode is that the physics don't feel authentic. Towers feel like they're too sturdy and have too much inertia, and setting up chain reactions of block-toppling feels arbitrarily hard. The physics also aren't consistent, so it's pretty hard to predict how a given tower is going to fall after a shot.

Create: This mode is in both games and sucks equally in each SKU. The idea is to arrange Cubies to create an image of something-or-other specified in a given challenge. The problem is that you can pass the challenges regardless of what you create. You don't even have to try to make the specified object, you can just throw in random Cubies.

Compose: Another sucky mode in both games. Like Create, all you have to do to progress here is write songs for the Cubies. Your interface is a bit like Mario Part but frankly a lot less robust, and of course, you can pass challenges regardless of what you make in the composer.

Roll: The DS-specific mode that you get instead of Guide. It's about as much fun and the gameplay principle is similar, but the game was rebuilt around stylus control. Now you pick a particular Cubie and choose to send it rolling in a given direction to complete a puzzle. Hazards work about the way they do in Guide, but in Roll the arrow placements in levels are pre-designed. Roll is also a bit more enjoyable just because you can work away at it while watching TV or doing something else, a luxury you don't have with Guide.

Color: An amazingly fun little puzzle game that is far and away the best mini-game on the DS SKU. In Color you're trying to guide one of many Cubies toward your goal. The movement rules are the same as for Roll and Guide, but the puzzles here emphasize the fact that two Cubies of the same color always clump together. In this game you can color each side of a Cubie whatever way you want, and the puzzles force you to come up with some really clever and intricate color schemes in order to get your Cubie to the goal.

Calculate: A DS exclusive that's honestly pretty lame. What you do in Calculate is basically solve very, very simple Picross puzzles. The puzzles aren't especially difficult, but this game doesn't even really try to have much to do with the game's goofy little premise. (You're... teaching the Cubies math?)

When it comes to visuals, both SKUs of Rubik's World share a lot of assets. The look across both games is clean and simple, and it works very well for the basic nature of the gameplay. Music fares more poorly, with both games featuring only a very bland selection of background tunes. Even on the Wii SKU, I eventually did most of my playing with the sound off. The Wii SKU does support multiplayer versions of some of the games outlined above, but none of them proved to be more fun with more players involved. If anything, the more puzzle-oriented games on Wii actually feel a bit more frustrating with a group than they do solo.

I don't quite think I can recommend either SKU of Rubik's World, though neither game is really bad. As far as Rubik's Cubes go, the actual toy is way more worth your money. If you view the games primarily as mini-game collections, they're both glutted with crappy activities that take away from the really fun ones. The Wii has better activities overall, but the basic puzzle gameplay the game emphasizes feels a bit more natural on the DS. Playing either game feels distinctly like going through half of a really good game that happens to be attached to half of a lousy game.

If Game Factory ever broke up the mini-games in Rubik's World's and distributed them individually on WiiWare for 500 to 1000 points each, I could happily recommend the good ones. I could also recommend picking up either SKU if you happened to catch it on sale. for less than $20. Neither game is worth buying at its full retail price ($29.99 for DS and $39.99 for Wii) because the quality is just way too uneven. Two Tribes has some serious puzzle game design chops, and the best Rubik's World activities have the same simple charm that the developer used so well in Toki Tori on WiiWare. Rubik's World is a classic case of a developer struggling against a license that probably seemed like a good bet on paper, but in practice just didn't work out.