disappointing Wii games

It's a new year and the post Christmas reevaluation of my material possessions is in order. Mostly, I'm talking about trading in some of my Wii games for more Wii games. Here is the list of Wii games that I've decided to part with.

Super Paper Mario:
This was actually a really great game. I really enjoyed many of the platformer/RPG elements of this game. It was fun to play, it had a zany sense of humor, and was challenging enough to satisfy my gaming itch. I really liked the whole flipping from 2D to 3D aspect of the game. It gave it an interesting element of problem solving and obsessive easter egg hunting that I like in a game. There were some really funny moments like Otaku Castle on world 3-4 was absolutely indulgent. Sadly, the reason that I'm returning the game is because it has little to no reply value. After playing it through once, there's no real reason to play it through again. They tried to make the game play a bit longer by having cards and things to collect, but I'm not interested in collecting cards. If I had other friends that owned a Wii, this would be the type of game that I'd just pass around.

Red Steel:
This was one of the games that came out at the release of the Wii. I was pretty excited about it because it looked like a pretty cool. For the most part the gameplay was acceptable for the time. It had a few control issues, but a decent FPS for the Wii. (Personally I don't really like FPS so I may be a bit biased) The only problem is that the story was cringingly bad. You would have to be a ridiculous wapanese to appreciate this poorly put together story. Get this, you play a white guy that is hired in Tokyo to be the bodyguard to a beautiful and rich Japanese girl. Then logically the two of you fall in love and decide to get married and so you fly to America to announce your engagement to her father. Then it turns out that her father is a retired Yakuza boss and your fiance is kidnapped as a part of an interfamily rivalry. The voice acting is miserable and the lines are worst than watching a Hong Kong action movie. The supposed "sword play" in the game is really sloppy and unsatisfying. You can only use the sword in pre-determined parts of the game and your frantic swings seems to have nothing to do with what actually happens on screen. All in all, Red Steel was a big flop and I doubt the sequel would be any better.

MySims:
I was actually really excited about this game too. I really like Sim games. It appeals to my desire to create perfect societies. The sprites are adorably cute, you just see them jump around you just wanna cuddle them to bits. The ability to build and create things was quite impressive and offered a limitless amount of customization. The only problem was that there was almost no Sim element to the game. The location and choices of buildings and people in the game had almost no impact on your little society as a whole. The only things that any of your residents seem to care about was getting stuff that matched their personality. For the most part it was less of a sim game and more of a virtual doll house game. That in itself is not so bad if you like playing with doll houses. So if you want to "simulate" the experiences of being a doll house hobbyist, then MySims is a great game. Personally, I'd rather have more gameplay in my sim games than just building things.

After returning these games I got 51 Gamestop credits. I'm not sure what I'll get with them, but we shall see.