- A nice, family-friendly
interactive variation on the board game Clue that will appeal to
younger gamers
- Randomizing the “guilty party” on already-played levels
increases replayability
- Most of the mini-games, which are
just placed in the game for the sake of placing Wii-centric
mini-games into the gameplay, are too easy and don’t provide
much challenge
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Guilty
Party
Score: 7.0 / 10
One time or another, almost everybody
enjoys playing amateur detective, whether it’s solving the mystery in
the novel they are reading or the TV show or movie they are watching or
the board game they are playing. In fact, it’s the most famous detective
board game, Clue, which serves as the inspiration for Disney Guilty
Party for the Wii.
Providing plenty of mystery-solving party-style gameplay with Wii-centric
features, most notably the mini-game a la WarioWare: Smooth Moves that
takes advantage of the physically interactive nature of the Wiimote,
Disney Guilty Party is very similar
to Clue in how gamers play one of its many
mysteries. Gamers must find clues, interrogate suspects and then guess
whom the “guilty party” indeed is based on their traits provided by the
discovered clues. There are some other elements involved, including the
Savvy Cards that can open locked rooms, or have suspects advance their
movement (they move around from room to room, making them
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harder to interrogate), but it all boils down to interrogating suspects
via mini-games, gathering clues, then solving the mystery.
Each locale looks like a huge dollhouse, each opened up large on-screen,
revealing all the areas of the locale and showing which potential
suspect is in what room. Selecting a particular suspect zooms the gamer
into that room they are occupying.
While gamers can solve the mystery alone or compete against up to three
others in a board game-style party game to see who can solve the mystery
first (cooperative play is also available), in any case there is a story
told through animated cartoon cut-scenes.
As a member of the world-famous Dickens Detective Agency, not only do
gamers have to deduct who the guilty party is, they must give the three
correct reasons, from the plethora of clues they gathered by
successfully completing some of the 50 mini-games, as to why that’s the
correct guilty party. If gamers use the wrong clues, the guilty party
stays a suspect, but isn’t revealed as the culprit. If gamers try and
accuse a suspect with the wrong clues too many times, the mystery is
over. Of course, if the correct three clues are used, the guilty party
is revealed.
However, although it may sound as if Disney Guilty Party is challenging,
it’s not a very difficult game at all. With the Disney name attached,
it’s meant to be more kid-friendly sleuthing that gives just as much
emphasis to the mini-games as it does the mystery-solving.
The premise is simple: play the mini-game and unlock a clue. And just as
simple are these mini-games. Even younger gamers won’t find them much of
a challenge at all. While there are a lot of mini-games, most don’t make
much sense relative to the mystery. One requires tickling a suspect’s
face with a feather. Another, gamers must peel back wallpaper to uncover
hidden notes. In yet another, there’s a “thumb war” between the gamer
and the suspect. They are part of the sleuthing just as an excuse to
insert mini-gaming into the gameplay.
Playing the story mode and successfully solving the cases unlocks even
more mystery settings for amateur detectives to sharpen their inner
Sherlock Holmes investigation skills. From the cruise ship, aquarium and
those good-old mystery standbys, the mansion and a passenger train,
Disney Guilty Party has enough different locales straight from the pages
of a classic Agatha Christie novel.
A nice feature is that even once gamers solve a particular mystery at a
particular locale, the game randomizes the guilty party so that
replaying that same locale doesn’t have the same mystery-solving result.
Those same levels also are the setting for the multiplayer gaming. The
only real difference in the party mode is obviously that gamers are
trying to be the first detective to find the culpable culprit.
Although not much of a gameplay challenge for anybody over the age of
10, the Clue-like gameplay structure of Disney Guilty Party provides a
nice little mystery party for wannabe detective Wii gamers.
