Back before the Wii was just known as the Revolution, NCL President Satoru Iwata said in an interview that one of the reasons for the limited hardware and what would become WiiWare was to give new concepts an idea to be developed without the need to have a multimillion dollar budget or worry about appealing to demographics. Nearly 19 months since the launch of WiiWare, Nintendo finally gets around to releasing an original game developed internally.
Eco Shooter: Plant 530 comes from Intelligent Systems, responsible for the Paper Mario, Fire Emblem and WarioWare series, is reason enough to justify a purchase. Eco Shooter is an on-rails shooter that has players controlling a plant worker shooting trash. But you don’t play for the bares bones plot.
A twist to the on-rail formula was the energy/ammo system. Retrieving energy left behind by shooting cans allows players to shoot more cans and stay alive. However, with only three stages and a challenge mode, this nifty mechanic isn’t nearly given enough time to be more than merely interesting. And since it on-rails, you only play to increase your own score. That’s it-no extra stages or difficulties. The limited appeal also extends to the visuals, which fail to be anything more than ho-hum and drab.
Eco Shooter: Plant 530 is certainly a worthwhile purchase with a simple control scheme that lives up to the promise of what the WiiWare should be: cheap, interesting games that are simple to pick up and enjoy, despite its limited nature. Now if Nintendo can actually get around to promoting this, maybe more games will be developed with this mindset.
Grade: B-
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Sounds exactly like what Wii games should be like – good summary!
Correction: sounds exactly like what Wii games should be for 4-year-olds.