Cranium Kabookii
Wii, £29.99, cert 3+ Ubisoft, 3/5
Kabookii offers a multiplayer Wii experience that challenges the brain rather than the body. Based on the Cranium boardgame series, an unlimited number of players can participate using just one Wiimote via turn-taking teams. Various activities in the Cranium spirit let you test your word, memory, general knowledge and artistic skills.
Brief pre-challenge instructions direct you, then it's a race to accumulate the 24-point target. The Wiimote works well with all challenges, be it onscreen drawing, mimicking actions or simply hitting notes or spelling words. Plus the red-tinted goggles that let you see special onscreen coded clues are a laugh. Sadly however, you can often read these without the glasses. Combined with the players' need regularly to inform the game of their success or failure, the design flaws are apparent.
More a game for special occasions than regular sessions, Kabookii is a civilised, fun gaming experience.
Keri Allan
Tabula Rasa
PC, £19.99 plus £9 monthly subscription, cert 16+, NCsoft, 3/5
Tabula Rasa is the latest entrant for massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPG) genre. Developed by Richard Garriott, it's being pitched as something different. Combat requires a small amount of reflex and aim, rather than lining up moves in traditional MMORPG style. And unlike most MMORPGs , Tabula has more dynamic battlefields that give the illusion of a wider war. However, it isn't a huge leap forward.
Choosing a sci-fi setting over fantasy is hardly pushing the envelope. And the core of the game still revolves around the standard kill/deliver/converse quests that make up every other MMORPG. But some interesting elements, such as the ability to experiment with character classes without penalty, mark Tabula Rasa out as one to watch as it develops over 2008.
Greg Howson
Sight Training
DS, £19.99, cert 3+ Namco/Nintendo, 3/5
Nintendo's ceaseless quest to make us better people continues apace with this cheap and cheerful set of daily exercises designed to keep our eyes in shape. It is, of course, from a similar mould to Brain Training, although is a much more insubstantial offering.
It contains two sets of exercises - Core Training, in which, for example, you'll have to reproduce numbers that quickly flash on the screen or identify the direction in which various capital-Cs face, and Sports Training, in which you play mini-games derived from the likes of volleyball, boxing and table tennis, before winding down with an eye-relaxation programme. All of which are designed to help visual acuity, peripheral vision or hand-eye coordination.
Although far from an essential purchase like Brain Training, Sight Training will appeal to those who are worried about things like the ravages of sitting in front of a monitor all day.
Steve Boxer
