Story mode is as robust as ever. Every character looks unique and thanks to all-new recorded voice tracks, they sound even more scornful of your clothes, your face and just about everything else. That gave us an excuse to try out the fighting. The Wii-mote and Nunchuk function as your left and right fist and you can string combos together by jabbing them in the right order. After beating up a bully and a couple nerds we set off on our first mission.
The appropriately named Nutcrackin' mission sent us to the music teacher, Ms. Peters, who told us to dress up in a Nutcracker costume and attempt to hammer out several Christmas songs in the same way we had for Music class. We were told that all the school music was recorded by an actual bad high school band. Maybe the development team just ran out of money, but it also added to the awkward teenage charm of the game.
Above: This image is from the Wii version
Our last mission was in the nearby town, helping the "real" Santa earn some cash by getting rid of the fake Santa and his elves. To do this we used a baseball bat and tore up his Christmas wonderland. Fake Santa was off-limits for baseball practice, but it turns out, you can fight about 4 pint-sized elves at a time without too much trouble. The elf bashing won our hearts so we'll say that it's very unlikely that this great game's update will be anything less than equally great, but whether there's enough new content to be worth $50 rather than finding a PS2 version in a bargain bin is a question we'll save for our review.
Above: This image is from the 360 version
Feb 13, 2008
