While Sally’s Salon may appear extremely simple, and it is at the very beginning, you quickly realize that there is more strategy to this game than first meets the eye. The basic gameplay has you using the stylus to move your customers through the gauntlet of hair care machines as quickly as possible. The customers tell you what kind of hairdo they would like, and which hair treatments they would like (such as hair washing and blow drying).

The reason you want to be speedy is that each customer has a certain patience level (represented by hearts), and you can lose customers (and income) if you don’t attend to them quickly. At first, you singlehandedly run the customers through the machines and cash them out at the register, but you quickly realize that you need more machines, and you can purchase these as well. The game also allows you to hire assistants so that you don’t have to handle every single task. Eventually, you are doing more and more tasks as well, such as curlers and even doing their nails. The list of services that you offer your clients starts to grow as your clientele grows, adding to the challenge of keeping them all happy.

As the game grows in complexity, your job will be to manage the equipment, staff, and customers to maximize your income, so you can get larger locales. So even though the game has a very approachable and light theme, there is a real sense of tension as your shop fills up with impatient customers and you work to keep them all happy while offering the services they are asking for. The strategy portion of this game then becomes about managing your income and deciding if want to purchase additional equipment or hire additional staff to help you grow your salon.

The visuals in Sally’s Salon are predictably low key. 2D characters represent both Sally and her characters, drawn similar to characters usually found in Natsume games and from other Japanese publishers. It’s a nice aesthetic, and it fits the simple and lighthearted nature of the game. Even as you deck out your hair salon with new equipment and employees, the action is easy to follow. The upper screen is not really utilized for much other than giving you the target amount of money you need to make for the day.The audio is equally light and airy, and complements the visuals. Overall, the presentation in Sally’s Salon is on par with the PC version and what you would expect from this type of casual game.

Sally’s Salon will be familiar to the many people who have played at least the demo version of the game on PC. I was first exposed to it on PC through my wife, and it has made a faithful transition to the Nintendo DS. Being a casual game about operating a hair salon, it has a very specific target audience, and it does a competent job of providing entertainment that’s both fun and even slightly challenging at times.

In Mortimer Beckett and the Secrets of the Spooky Manor, you play as the titular Mortimer as he searches for clues in the mysterious disappearance of his uncle. All you have to go on is a cryptic letter and a willingness to break in to his manor via a window, but you soon find yourself looking for clues broken up into tiny fragments. The main task involves assembling the pieces by locating them in crowded, overstuffed rooms, then using the pieces to solve puzzles. You only need the Wii remote, since the gameplay consists purely of pointing at the pieces that you find scattered around the rooms and clicking on them to collect them.

Mortimer Beckett and the Secrets of the Spooky Manor is about puzzle solving and observational skills, so you won’t find any obstacles in your path aside from the occasional ghost that pops up when you’ve clicked too many times looking for pieces, but those go away pretty quickly, while others require you to shake the Wii remote to get rid of them. The best way to play is to have a friend hold a second Wii remote and help you find the puzzle pieces, which are cleverly hidden behind objects, or on top of similarly colored or textured items. If you’re having trouble locating all of the pieces (and trust me, some of the pieces are almost impossible to spot), there are hints that you can use to tell you which area contains a missing piece. There are a limited amount of hints available per area, so you only want to reserve the hints for when you are completely stumped. Once you’ve completed an area, which consists of finding all the item pieces, solving the puzzles and finding the entrance to the next area, you move to another part of the manor.

The game also features some competitive multiplayer modes outside of the main story mode, where you race to find the puzzle pieces, and you can replay the main story with remixed room layouts, but overall the experience of Mortimer Beckett and the Secrets of the Spooky Manor is rather short. The gameplay mechanic of finding items and solving puzzles is so addictive, that you’ll be disappointed when the story mode ends after just a few hours.

The visuals in Mortimer Beckett and the Secrets of the Spooky Manor are predictably simple, given the game’s online flash game roots. Still, it would’ve been nice to have a little more detail in the environments, especially when the entire gameplay mechanic revolves around you being able to identify hidden objects in them. It’s not that you can’t make out what’s going on, but the environments seem slightly compressed, so a more detailed rendering of the different rooms would’ve been appreciated. As is, there are only a few instances where the lack of more detail in the visuals hampers the search for items, and the hint system allows you to overcome those problems. Similarly, the audio in Mortimer Beckett and the Secrets of the Spooky Manor is plain, but effective. You’ll get typical haunted mansion tunes here, though I do wish there was more variety.

Mortimer Beckett and the Secrets of the Spooky Manor is a fun, if short, point and click adventure that will entertain you as well as test your wit and observational skills. The game is also great to play cooperatively with a friend or loved one, given its laid back nature. Finally, the ability to play competitively with up to four friends helps to stretch out the game’s shelf life.

You play Family Party: 30 Great Games using the Wii Remote only, which is great because it means that the game’s controls will be relatively simple, but it also means that you will be doing a lot of waggling, even through events that don’t seem apt for them. For example, running by waggling the Wii remote seems unintuitive, while other games like the balance on a cushion mini-game make more logical use of the motion controls. The biggest problem plaguing Family Party: 30 Great Games is the lack of precision on some of the mini-games. Even after you’ve read the sparse instructions (there are no tutorials), you will have difficulty figuring out exactly how you’re supposed to play some of the games. In fact, there are still some games that I cannot win at because I’m not sure what the optimal way to use the Wii remote.

Thankfully, there are also mini-games that feel perfect in their execution and provide a lot of simple fun, especially when competing against human opponents. Unfortunately, there isn’t any way to select which mini-games you’d prefer to play in succession for tournaments, instead relying on how developer Tamsoft chose to group the games depending on their theme. As you compete in the main challenge mode, you unlock additional characters (which are initially representative of family members) and eventually you unlock all of the thirty games and all of the game’s themed environments.

Family Party: 30 Great Games features graphics typical of mini-game collections on Wii. In other words, they’re mostly simplistic and don’t contain any environments that will impress anyone, even for a Wii game. That’s not to say that the graphics are as bare as those in Wii Sports, however. The environments and characters are all rendered in 3D, and are thematically separated according to the zone in which you are competing. The character animations are competent, and so is the polygon count for the most part, but the game suffers from tons of jaggies and the occasional bad texture. The audio in Family Party: 30 Great Games is predictably cheery pop music. None of it ever really stands out or is memorable, but it does fit in with the rest of the game’s presentation.

In the end, Family Party: 30 Great Games doesn’t achieve what it sets out to, and that is to create a party game that the entire family can play. The lack of a good tutorial, clear instructions, and spotty controls means that newer players will have difficulty having fun with some of the mini-games in this collection. Still, Family Party: 30 Great Games does have some moments where it all comes together and you can have some real multiplayer fun. Of course, this is the type of game that gets exponentially better as you add players to the mix, so gamers who can get other family members to join them will find some fun despite the limitations. The final consideration is of course that Family Party: 30 Great Games is extremely budget priced, so the amount of fun you can have for the price makes the game a much more attractive proposition.

You control the action using only the Wii remote, using the pointer to select the pieces for the different puzzles, though you can use the nunchuck to look around in some of the puzzles. You never really use the motion control capabilities of the Wii, which is fine since not every game has to feature that control method. The game’s puzzles are all rendered in 3D, thematically consisting of cube variations. At first, most of the game is just plain white, but as you progress and “free” more and more Cubies, the game eventually becomes much more vibrant. Still, the visuals are pretty sparse and simplistic, even for a Wii game. The audio consists of a few catchy tunes, remixed to various forms, but you can create your own basic tunes in the game’s music editor.

So let’s take a look at some of the game modes included in Rubik’s World:

Classic Rubik’s Cube: You would think that, this being the game that inspired Rubik’s World, solving the Rubik’s Cube would be one of the better parts of this title. Yet Rubik’s Cube is awful. You can’t ever seem to get the right camera angle, turning the cube around to look at different parts is a pain with the Wii remote, and the simple act of moving pieces around is imprecise and frustrating. There is also a built-in tutorial that’s supposed to teach you how to solve the Rubik’s Cube in seven steps, but it’s terrible and I never got past step one.

Fit: In this game, you fit a group of Cubies through a series of walls. The walls are shown in the upper screen and your goal is to recreate their shape in the bottom screen before time runs out.

Switch: This game has you switching different color Cubies to create lines of 5 or more that allow you to clear the board. Switch is very simple in concept, and is easy to pick up and play.

Guide: Move your Cubie towards the exit, one direction at a time while avoiding obstacles around a labyrinth-like board. This is yet another puzzle that challenges your spatial and logical reasoning abilities.

Compose: Handicapped by a lack of direction or a decent tutorial, this tool can nonetheless be entertaining. You can start with a preset tune, then add in your own sounds by tapping Cubies to create a remix. You can’t do anything too fancy or lengthy, but it’s cool to hear your tunes as the background to the game.

Create: Another free-form game type, create has you using different color Cubies to recreate real world objects. While the game does ask you to draw a specific object, you are free to really create it in any way you see fit. Your creations are eventually used throughout the backgrounds, which is a very nice bonus.

Deconstruct: You use the Wii remote to point at different parts of a structure and shoot white Cubies at the different pieces to peel them off the structure.

View: There are shapes at the top of the screen and you have to create those shapes (from a different angle) by using as few Cubies as possible. This puzzle challenges your ability to manipulate angles and visualize structures before you build them.

For the most part, these puzzles are all pretty straightforward, but if you are confused by any of them, the game’s instructions aren’t very clear and do a poor job of demonstrating what you are supposed to do or what the rules of each minigame are. Still, Rubik’s World has enough puzzles and requires enough creativity that both casual and more serious puzzle fans should find something to like.

Editor’s Note: Non-format specific portions of the Nintendo DS Rubik’s World review were used in this article.

The gameplay in Cradle of Rome is simple, yet addictive, which is the perfect combination for a puzzle game. You use your stylus to line up puzzle pieces in rows of three or more to clear them from the screen. Specifically, you’re trying to create these combinations over blue blocks to eliminate the blue blocks. So, while you can create combinations anywhere on the screen to earn points and supplies, only combinations created over blue blocks will allow you to clear the blocks and complete the level. You can only drag pieces over if doing so creates a valid combination, so it’s a bit difficult (and random) to create large combinations, but the thrill of seeing the board empty up after a big combination (then fill up again with new pieces) is quite satisfying. Each level is timed, so while you can generally goof off and earn points and supplies, you’ll want to clear the blue blocks as quickly as possible before the timer ends. As you create combinations and clear puzzle pieces, more puzzle pieces fall from above, so that the game board is always filled with puzzle pieces. As you progress, there will be obstacles such as chains that prevent you from clearing blue blocks or accessing the bottom part of a board until you create two combinations over the same area.

In an added bit of strategy, creating combinations of certain items, such as meat or wood, allows you to build structures in the short segments between boards. These structures eventually provide you with powerups such as a hammer, which allows you to clear chained blocks quicker. These powerups can make an already relatively easy puzzle game even easier, but since I’m not a hardcore puzzle game player, I certainly don’t mind the assist.

The graphics in Cradle of Rome are typical puzzle game fare. The boards are animated adequately and loaded with the game pieces, which range from gold and silver pieces, to wood and meat. The things that are critical for a puzzle game, like the ability to see the entire board and be able to easily and quickly make out all the pieces, are executed well here. Even when you have a board full of brightly colored puzzle pieces, it’s still extremely easy to navigate your way visually and identify the combinations that are available to you. The top screen has basic points information, as well as the timer. In between games, the visuals with the buildings you construct are also very nicely animated. Following the medieval theme, the music in Cradle of Rome is folksy, yet catchy and upbeat.

Cradle of Rome is a fantastic puzzle game. It can be both relaxing and hectic because of its laid back gameplay and the inclusion of a sometimes fast moving timer. Cradle of Rome is easy to pick up and play, but like any good puzzle game, it can be difficult to put down. Time just seems to fly while you work your way through the board creating bigger and bigger combinations. The Nintendo DS already has a wide array of great puzzle games available, and Cradle of Rome adds its own fresh take to this lineup.

It would be no surprise if most folks have tuned out by now, as Princess Debut is admittedly a product aimed at a very specific demographic (young girls), but for those still reading, let me explain how the game works. After being transported to the alternate universe, taking the place of another girl who looks just like you (while she takes your place in the “real” world), you’re quickly greeted by your butler-bunny friend who quickly explains your predicament: There is an important ball in 30 days and you have to woo a partner and practice a dance that will captivate everyone at the gala.

The story moves quickly along and you are introduced to the prince candidates, one of whom you’ll have to select for the ball. You go through conversation trees with the different candidates, which is part of the gameplay mechanic of Princess Debut. You’re soon introduced to the other, more fun mechanic when the dancing minigame tutorial shows you the ropes. Basically, you follow a glowing dot along a pre-set route. You have to keep your stylus above the dot as it moves along increasingly complex routes. Because the game is aimed at younger gamers, the difficulty never really ramps up (Elite Beat Agents this is NOT), allowing you to contemplate the melodies and the 3D dance moves.

As expected, the visuals in Princess Debut are extremely bright and cheerful. The dance scenes are presented in decent looking 3D while you are guiding your stylus along. The conversations play out with 2D animated characters similar to other Natsume published games. The audio in Princess Debut is equally tilted towards the young and feminine, with lively and light tunes complementing the conversations and waltzy compositions accompanying the dance routines.

Even before you’ve received bonus dance gowns, dresses, and accessories, you’ll get the sense of who Princess Debut is targeting, and given the reactions of my younger niece, it does a good job at achieving its goals. The game is obviously not for everyone, but with the growth of gaming and the DS’ phenomenal sales, it’s very likely you know someone who would be very interested in a game like Princess Debut. With fanciful storytelling and a decent gameplay dancing mechanic, Princess Debut will likely dance its way into a few Holiday wish lists this year.

Elastomania DS has you steering a motorbike through an arena full of obstacles and dangerous falls. Your objective is to collect a few star objects scattered about the level as quickly as possible without falling victim to the stage’s perils. Besides the motorbike, you have a grapple that can be used to grab the star objects as well as to pull yourself up to higher platforms and to swing.

The controls are pretty simple, but some of the button placements are questionable in this preview build. You don’t use the stylus for this game, you use the dpad to steer your bike. The A button is the gas button for the motorbike, while the Y button shows you where the closest star object is located. The left trigger is a quick turn button, while the right trigger button is the grapple hook. The X button resets the level, and while having a reset button is good, having it as a face button might not be a good idea. The upper screen shows an overview of the arena, while the bottom screen displays your racer.

The gameplay took a little bit of getting used to, especially the floaty bike physics, but once you are accustomed to how your vehicle reacts to the environments, you’ll start racing through them and pulling off big jumps while collecting star items. You always have to be mindful of how your bike bounces and reacts to environmental objects, since approaching a wall or obstacle at the wrong angle ends your game. The grapple mechanic is also something that becomes very useful once you get the hang of how it reacts with the environments. As mentioned earlier, the grapple can hang onto some objects to allow you to swing or pull yourself up.

The graphics in Elastomania are rendered in 3D with 2D backgrounds, and all the arenas in the preview build were set in a desert stage. Considering the somewhat limited3D capabilities of the DS, developer Mobirate has done a decent job with the visuals. Sound effects for the motorbike were present in the preview build, while background music was not.

While the preview build had a few bugs, it also demonstrated quite a bit of potential. By tightening up the somewhat floaty controls and reassigning some of the buttons to make the experience more intuitive, Elastomania DS can be a promising and innovative title. Publisher ND Games expects Elastomania DS to ship sometime in Quarter 2 of 2009.

You control the action using the stylus, and aside from a few rare spots where you press the wrong area or where the game doesn’t seem to respond readily to your inputs, Rubik’s World controls as well as we’ve come to expect from puzzle games on DS. The game’s puzzles are all rendered in 3D, thematically consisting of cube variations. At first, most of the game is just plain white, but as you progress and “free” more and more Cubies, the game eventually becomes much more vibrant. The audio consists of a few catchy tunes, remixed to various forms, but you can create your own basic tunes in the game’s music editor.

So let’s take a look at some of the game modes included in Rubik’s World:
Classic Rubik’s Cube: You would think that, this being the game that inspired Rubik’s World, solving the Rubik’s Cube would be one of the better parts of this title. Yet Rubik’s Cube is awful. You can’t ever seem to get the right camera angle, turning the cube around to look at different parts is a pain, and the simple act of swiping the stylus to move pieces around is imprecise and frustrating. There is also a built-in tutorial that’s supposed to teach you how to solve the Rubik’s Cube in seven steps, but it’s terrible and I never got past step one.

Fit: In this game, you fit a group of Cubies through a series of walls. The walls are shown in the upper screen and your goal is to recreate their shape in the bottom screen before time runs out.

Calculate: This game reminded me of Brain Training, where accuracy and speed are rewarded. You have to map the solutions to math problems by plotting them on a grid. This game is simple in concept, but quite entertaining in practice.

Switch: This game has you switching different color Cubies to create lines of 5 or more that allow you to clear the board. Switch is very simple in concept, and is easy to pick up and play.

Roll: Move your Cubie towards the exit, one direction at a time while avoiding obstacles around a labyrinth-like board. This is yet another puzzle that challenges your spatial and logical reasoning abilities.

Compose: Handicapped by a lack of direction or a decent tutorial, this tool can nonetheless be entertaining. You can start with a preset tune, then add in your own sounds by tapping Cubies to create a remix. You can’t do anything too fancy or lengthy, but it’s cool to hear your tunes as the background to the game.

Create: Another free-form game type, create has you using different color Cubies to recreate real world objects. While the game does ask you to draw a specific object, you are free to really create it in any way you see fit. Your creations are eventually used throughout the backgrounds, which is a very nice bonus.

Color: This is one of those puzzles that require you to look ahead, sometimes very many steps ahead, to plot out the path of the Cubies to safety. Using a pre-set selection of arrows and other aides, you place them on the board in a way that will allow the Cubies to reach the exit point. Once you have laid out your aides, you set the Cubies off and hope that you calculated all their movements correctly ahead of time.

For the most part, these puzzles are all pretty straightforward, but if you are confused by any of them, the game’s instructions aren’t very clear and do a poor job of demonstrating what you are supposed to do or what the rules of each minigame are. Still, Rubik’s World has enough puzzles and requires enough creativity that both casual and more serious puzzle fans should find something to like.

Using the dpad or the stylus, you navigate through the world of Naruto: Path of the Ninja 2 until you run into one of the very frequent random battles that the game throws at you. Whether you like that mechanic or not is pretty subjective, but at least the battles themselves are relatively quick thanks to the intuitive menu system that allows you to quickly select commands. Again using either the dpad or stylus, you move through a scroll-wheel type menu that’s simple, yet efficient and allows you to quickly pick your attack type and target. My preference was the stylus for battles and the dpad for navigating through the world, but either option works fine for this game.

Either way, you will probably tire of the endless battles against opponents that quickly become too easy. It is only when fighting boss battles or some of the tougher regular battles that the game’s fighting mechanic and strategic squad member usage and positioning come into play. While I’m usually not a fan of tough role playing games, less battles against slightly tougher opponents would’ve made better use of the game’s battle system. The game allows you to tag party members in and out of battle, and allows the player to reposition their player either closer or farther away from enemy combatants, affecting how much damage you can deal to that enemy.

Naruto: Path of the Ninja 2’s visuals are akin to a Super Nintendo-era RPG, albeit with much more going on, and the benefit of a second screen to keep track of vital stats. The most impressive part of the presentation are the two-screen battle animations that occur when a player uses a jutsu attack. Fans of the series will enjoy watching their favorite characters perform powerful moves that range from summoning to substitutions. The rest of the game plays out using 2D sprites and scrolling screens, in a style very similar to countless other 2D role playing games but of course featuring the Naruto universe.

The audio in Naruto: Path of the Ninja 2 is fairly lively, with tunes and voicework that will be instantly familiar to fans of the television series. Even if you have never been exposed to a Naruto game, the game’s vibrant score matches the tone of the visuals and provides a solid aural background to the action playing out on-screen. The one drawback to the sound design is that the included voicework tends to get repetitive after a while, mainly because of the frequency of random battles throughout the game.

One of the best parts of Naruto: Path of the Ninja 2 is the addition of Wi-Fi battles via Nintendo’s Wi-Fi Connection service. After progressing through a bit of the story, you are able to access an area that grants you the ability to battle either friends or complete strangers online. The battle mechanic works much the same way online as it does in the main storyline itself. Aside from a slight tweak in how you use chakra (and the ability to block or lessen jutsu attacks), you’ll find a similar pacing and flow to the online matches.

Tomy has ensured that players have incentive to battle online, awarding Wi-Fi points and special ninja cards for players who log on and battle. As a bonus, battling through Wi-Fi on Saturday yields extra points for players. When you go online to battle, you use the same lineup of characters you have equipped in the main quest, along with their attack list, armor, and stats.

This integration of online battles into Naruto: Path of the Ninja 2’s main quest helps to motivate players to log on, and indeed I had no problems finding random strangers to battle online during the evenings. Unfortunately, as with other online titles on Nintendo platforms, the actual interaction with non-friend players online outside of the battle is non-existent. There is no voice chat, or any way to communicate with the persons you are battling online. Another issue is that the matchmaking doesn’t seem to worry itself with player skill level, which means that players looking to join the Wi-Fi battle community early on will be crushed by players whose characters have much more powerful attacks and equipment. Indeed, I was crushed several times until I was able to reach further in the main quest and level up my characters.

The Nintendo DS is home to many good role playing games, meaning that Naruto: Path of the Ninja 2 faces some stiff competition for a gamer’s attention, yet having the benefit of the Naruto license and the lure of an active online battle system will likely be this game’s biggest draws. Naruto: Path of the Ninja 2 will please all but the most hardcore role playing game fans, despite some of its flaws. And of course, fans of the series and role playing games will be impressed with how thoroughly the developers have enveloped the franchise around a solid and lengthy main quest.

Naruto: Clash of the Ninja Revolution 2 adds a ton of characters to an already large cast from last year’s game. In all, a whopping 35 characters are available for battle, including some fighters created exclusively for this title, consisting of new Anbu characters. Adding to the large amounts of new and exclusive content, there is a very long single player campaign with an all new storyline based around the aforementioned special black ops group, the Anbu.

Gamers will be happy to know that Naruto: Clash of Ninja Revolution 2 allows the player to control the action using either the Wii Remote/nunchuck combination, the Wii Classic controller, or the GameCube controller. I chose to play using the Wii remote, which allowed me to take advantage of motion controls to recreate the series’ trademark hand signs. At times, I found that some of my motions didn’t properly register, rarely costing me a round. Still, Wii owners know that this problem isn’t unique to any one specific game, and for the most part, using gestures was just as effective as button presses. Pulling off special moves is relatively easy, as is character switching during battle. The game features a few minor tweaks to their fighting engine from last year, including the ability to use paper bombs. Overall, if you became familiar with last year’s game, you’ll feel right at home here. And, in a nutshell, that can be the biggest complaint that you’ll have with this title-its similarity to last year’s Clash of Ninja Revolution.

Multiplayer battles are fun, even more so than in last year’s Clash of the Ninja Revolution game. Up to four players can brawl at the same time, which is great, though sometimes the four player battles get a little too crowded with players doing special movies. Unfortunately the game STILL doesn’t support online battle through Nintendo’s WiFi Connection service. This omission prevents this game from being the AAA blockbuster it clearly has the potential to be, and will probably limit its replay value for owners. The gameplay and presentation for this series is so refined, that it’s hard to imagine another sequel to this game that doesn’t include online battles.

Graphically, Naruto: Clash of the Ninja Revolution 2 delivers solid, cel-shaded graphics with widescreen (16:9) support and progressive scan support (480p). If you played the original Clash of the Ninja Revolution, you’ll know what to expect, though the animations have been improved and of course there are new characters involved. The fighting arenas are also more varied this time around, though they remain relatively static and lack substantial interactive elements. As a bonus, there is a new opening movie created by Studio Pierrot, and 3D rendered cinematic sequences to move the story along. Overall, it’s a pretty slick presentation for a Wii game.

The sounds in Naruto: Clash of the Ninja Revolution 2 are well executed, and contain all the little details that help immersion, such as echo effects in cavernous arenas and other similar touches. There is quite a bit of text during the game’s lengthy story missions, but there is a good bit of voice acting as well during the cinematic sequences. Of course, the full array of familiar Naruto sounds are present during battles, and the sample quality on those are as solid as ever.

Naruto: Clash of the Ninja Revolution 2 is easily one of the best fighting game on Wii, a console with a deceptively solid lineup in that particular genre. If you’ve played the original Clash of Ninja Revolution, you will definitely get a case of déjà vu early on, but that will quickly fade as you dig in to all the new content presented in this year’s update. Given the dearth of first party titles on Wii this holiday season, or competent third party titles for that matter, Naruto: Clash of the Ninja Revolution 2 should definitely be a consideration for any Wii owner’s holiday wish list.