Active Life Extreme Challenge Wii Review

Active Life Extreme Challenge

Nintendo Wii Review
Developer: Namco Bandai
Publisher: Namco Bandai
Released: August 2009

Active Life Extreme Challenge arrived in our office here from Namco Bandai and sparked quite a bit of intrigue for the Nintendo Wii fans. WIth that said, we jumped right in and were hoping for the best.

Active Life Extreme Challenge comes with a mat that will remind you immediately of the infamous Dance Dance Revolution games.

This pad works with the game along with the use of the Wii Remote.

What you basically have here is a collection of around 15 mini-games for you to play, some using the included pad, some just the WIi Remote, and some even with the Wii Balance Board.

The biggest issue I had with this is that there are just too many different control methods here, and unfortunately it seems as if the developer spent too much time working on all of them instead of just perfecting one.

The mini-games included here follow the Active Life franchise from Namco Bandai, and in the spirit of being extreme, you will do such things as doing some BMZ action, mountain climbing, etc.

The game has various modes of difficulty which attempt to keep the game going and add some replay value, and it succeeds on some levels.

For example, onc eyou finish with the Advanced tournament, you will move onto the Master difficulty.

Again though, a lot of the mini-games simply do not respond well to the control inputs, which can make things tedious as one mistake on either your part of the controller’s part and things can take a major turn south.

The biggest draw to this game in my honest opinion is the multiplayer action.

Some of the mini-games are more fun in multiplayer mode than others, but for the most part they are enjoyable and will have your friends challenging each other quite a bit.

Active Life Extreme Challenge is not a bad game for the Nintendo Wii by any means.

In fact, I would actually bet that casual gamers would find some real enjoyment out of some of the mini-games.

For those of you though who have already had your fair share of mini-game action on the Wii, this is nothing new and really does not bring anything unique to the table on the Nintendo console.

In the end, this is one of those mini-game collections that you may want to check out, just don’t expect a masterpiece.

Graphics: 6.5 The graphics are not the best I have seen on the Wii. More detail and texture-work is needed.

Audio: 7.0 Audio gets the job done, sound effects can get repetitive.

Gameplay: 7.0 Too many different control methods, with none being even near-perfect. The game gets too repetitive.

Replay Value: 7.0 The number of mini-games is a bit small, multiplayer is fun.

Final Score: 6.8