Review: Rubik's World (Wii)

What happens when you mix an instantly recognizable hand-held puzzle icon and a team of developers known for making imaginative puzzles? You get a product like Rubik’s World for the Nintendo Wii and DS. Two Tribes, in association with Game Factory have put out a new puzzler on the Wii that should garner nice attention this holiday season. While veteran puzzle players may shy away from the sometimes overly simplistic design, Two Tribes has successfully melded a challenging puzzle game that can appeal to a younger audience who may not be as hardcore of puzzle solvers.

Gameplay

Rubik’s World isn’t without its challenge and difficulty. Offering several different areas to explore giving you the ability to solve complex stacking puzzles, shoot similar blocks without hitting off colored blocks and even creation mode where you can use your imagination to create just about anything out of the many colored cubes. Speaking of creation, one of the areas you explore in Rubik’s World is strictly for creation of objects in your game world. The puzzle will give you an area in which to insert blocks in a 3D environment and tell you to create a tree or a cloud. There really is no right or wrong answer here because what you soon find out is that the items you’re creating populate your once grayish “world” in which you navigate through the different puzzle sections. The clouds you create will move slowly across your virtual sky and your attempt at making a tree will sprout from different areas of the game world. This immersion into the game lends itself well to what initially seems like a rather bland presentation.

The puzzles themselves have varying difficulty levels that really seem to ramp up as you go through them. They all start out relatively simple to give you an idea of what to expect from that puzzle area, but quickly start adding challenge and difficulty to the equation to keep you on your toes. One of my favorite sections pits you against a timer where you have to stack cubes in a certain pattern to fit through the inevitable hole in the wall that makes its way towards you. You’re tasked with flattening or stretching out the blocks to suit your needs and make sure they all make it through the hole in tact.

Graphics

It would be unfair to say that the graphics appear a bit blocky since the game is about stacking and assembling blocks into shapes. With that, the game starts off rather mundane graphically and the world in which you’re exploring shows nothing but uninviting tones of grey. As you delve deeper into the game and develop your own landscapes, the world is quickly populated with custom colorful block shapes to give it life. The puzzles themselves are clear and easy on the eyes.

Sound

Ambient sounds are all around in this game from the fitting music to the sound of the blocks colliding with one another; nothing seems out of place or obtrusive. There is a board where you have to flatten out blocks in order for them to fit in a certain shape and even those sounds are fitting and pleasurable to the ear.

Controls

Navigating through the 3D environments to specifically place the blocks can be a tad difficult with the Wii remote, but its not really a fault of the game, so much as the inaccuracy of the remote and the person pointing it. A few times I noticed that when trying to place a block in a specific place, that place would change to one position over when it was time to pull the trigger. A little compensating and concentration on my part overcame this, but it still took longer than it should have. The team did a fine job mapping the controls to the Wii remote, but sometimes a delicate hand is needed and that’s where the controls fall flat. Again, I’m not sure this is so much a fault of the game as much a fault of the controller.

Conclusion

While the game does have a few faults, its nothing that will hurt this game from catching people’s attention this holiday season. With enough puzzles to keep new puzzlers and veterans entertained, its not hard to see that this title should sell well. Hardcore puzzlers may be more interested in Two Tribes’ other offerings, but younger crowds will find this game as a pleasant introduction to the genre.