Dragon Quest Swords: The Masked Queen and the Tower of Mirrors review

Break out the Icy/Hot, kids - you'll never make it through Dragon Quest Swords: The Masked Queen and the Tower of Mirrors without loose joints. The game dispenses with the turn-based RPG combat and sprawling world map of other Dragon Quest games in favor of an on-rails, first person hack and slash adventure perfectly tailored to the Wii. A few things are thrown in for fans of the series - familiar music, typical character stereotypes, Akira Toriyama character designs - but for the most part, Dragon Quest Swords has gone in a new direction that almost works out.

Above: Trust us, this is harder than it looks

Everything in this game is done with the Wii Remote, but the only thing worth a damn is the sword swinging. We can hear some of you groaning as you picture jiggling your arm around like a monkey having a seizure, but fear not - this is the only game we've ever seen to have an arm swing produce a realistic sword swing. If you want to make a horizontal slash, you've got to move the remote in a horizontal smooth horizontal line; if you want to thrust at an enemy, you've actually got to thrust.

Scoring hits fills up a power gauge that your can use at full to perform a Master Stroke - which is the same as a normal stroke, but there's an interactive cutscene where you have to complete a series of Remote swings in the right order to score a big hit on your target. This slick mechanic, combined with the first person perspective, makes combat more strategic (and more demanding), than any other Wii Remote-dependent game out there.