Artoon's (the same team behind Yoshi's Island DS) new side-scroller is a peculiar little offering. It's essentially a bizarre mix of tennis, Peggle and R-Type. Yes, we're quite aware of how ridiculous that sounds, but stay with us.
You take control of a little yellow blobby thing called Zip. As the screen scrolls automatically from right to left (or the other way if you're a southpaw), you have to 'fling' Zip about with waves of a MotionPlus-enabled Remote, and 'smash' him into various blocks, obstacles and weird little critters. To progress to the next stage, you've got to collect a set amount of concealed medals as you progress.
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A Wonderful World There are eight worlds to work through, each comprising three stages and a boss battle, along with a selection of mini-games and some unlockable extra-hard challenge stages. Each world adds a new gameplay mechanic to the mix to keep things interesting. For example, in one stage Zip is covered in metal making him heavier and susceptible to magnetic surfaces, while in another he's shrunk down to make things harder.
In short, we really enjoyed what we saw. The motion controls work really well - it's immensely satisfying blitzing your way around the screen smashing stuff to bits and the whole thing harnesses that same sense of freewheeling, good-natured creativity that made the likes of de Blob and Boom Blox such good fun. It's the sort of game that perfectly bridges the gap between casual and hardcore. Your little sister will have a blast just pinging Zip around with the Remote, but there's a really challenging game on offer here for seasoned gamers too. Collecting all the medals and S-ranking every stage looks like it'll take some doing. A two-player co-operative mode (in which Zip's sister, Pip, joins the fray) further sweetens the deal.
Less Is More? We do have one concern though. Is it all a little slight? We played through the first world in about 20 minutes. Later levels presumably get much more difficult, but we need to see evidence of a little more meat on the bones before we're totally won over. Indeed, FlingSmash strikes us as the perfect WiiWare game: bite-sized, bonkers and brilliant fun. Will it stand up as a full retail release though? We're not sure.
Still, there's no denying FlingSmash's charming gameplay and innovative design. It's the kind of title that only Nintendo are bold enough to put out these days. It's totally original, very eccentric and extremely playable, regardless of what you want from a videogame. For these very reasons, FlingSmash has come out of nowhere and snuck onto our 'ones to watch' list.
