So I boot up the Wii for some Brawl action yesterday, and I have 1 message waiting for me, from Nintendo. The message informs me that a new Channel is available called the "Nintendo" Channel. Immediately I go and grab this channel, and while it's downloading I remembered reading something about a DS channel available in Japan a few months ago. I hoped this was it.
The channel downloads and I open it up. A video starts playing hyping up WiiFit and MarioKart, Brawl, and other games. Below a "VideoList" button shows you a list of the videos available. I select a DS game for Brain Age 2, and then hit the big red "Information" button. Once in there I scrolled down and found the "Download a demo for this title" text and we were off.

My Wii is now a DS download station. F'N awesome.

Demos tried:

Brain Age 2
GamePlay: Brain exercises if you wanted more tests. I failed miserably on the Rock Paper Scissors test, they show a hand and you have to either win or lose. For example if they show paper and it says win, you yell out "Scissor". Well I did suck at this but I will say that Scissor had the hardest time being deciphered by the game. It actually stopped and restarted due to the fact that it was having trouble understanding me.

Verdict: If you don't have Brain Age, pick it up. Since I do I would like to see more puzzles from the game in order for it to make me want to pick it up.

Jam Session
GamePlay: Very interesting game, lots of potential, clumsy interface. Had a lot of fun with this one, you can strum a guitar string, and based on the stylus' direction and speed the guitar sounds different. Very intiutive. Also, you have a chord selection by using the D-Pad or buttons based on your hand selection. This also worked pretty well. However due to things being locked for the full game you only had the 4 default chords to play, which was disappointing. The best part was you could record your songs, and they encourage you to sing with the built in microphone to have a full on jam session. But wait! The recording does not record the vocals! DAMMIT!!

Verdict:So all in all a very good concept, but due to the lack of a good interface for the menus and effects, plus the lack of recording the voice, I don't see this one being picked up.....pun intended.

Disney Friends
GamePlay: Kill yourself. The control scheme is just wrong, the graphics are trying to do too much and the objective of the game is pointless.

Verdict: Boil water, reach into bottom of pot, repeat.

Rayman Raving Rabbits 2:
GamePlay: Mini-game madness. I chose 1 minigame where you had to drag certain colored boxes into the funnel? and then you had a certain time limit to complete the task. The time limit wasn't clear and the dragging of the boxes was good, I just sucked.

Verdict: For quick fun, pick it up, it's nuts!

Labels: Brain Age, Demo Reviews, Disney, DS, Jam Session, Nintendo Channel, Rayman, Wii