Mushroom Men: The Spore Wars

17 Comments

If there's one type of game that the Wii has more than enough of, it's platform games. Great games like Super Mario Galaxy and Sonic And The Secret Rings aside, the little white box has so many bland, generic platformers available for it that it would take something special to make an impact. Thankfully, Mushroom Men looks like it may fit the bill perfectly.

As far as plots go, Mushroom Men's is one of the most curious we've heard in a while. A large comet passes by from space and narrowly misses the Earth, but in the process rains a mysterious green dust down on the planet. Earth's scientists tell people not to worry, claiming that the dust is harmless and won't have an effect on humans. What they don't realise is that it does have an effect on small plants like mushrooms and cacti: it animates them and makes them gain human-like consciousness. With this newly-developed life, the plant people start grouping themselves into tribes based on their species, and eventually war breaks out between the various tribes. In the game you play as Pax, a small mushroom lad trying to survive while exploring the vast new world that faces him.

Advertisement:

Naturally, given the fact that Pax is a mushroom, the game world is set to an appropriate scale. Grass looms over you like a forest of trees, mouse holes act as underground tunnels and garden sheds are huge, vast environments with ceilings that rise high into the sky. Fortunately, Pax is armed with a sticky hand - one of those slimey, elastic toy hands you can get from toy shops - and can use that as a sort of grappling hook, throwing it and sticking it to certain surfaces. In this way, despite the huge environments, you can make Pax go almost anywhere with a bit of strategic planning.

Big Him Up
What makes Mushroom Men seem so refreshing is its sense of freedom, not just in the obvious free-roaming way that you'd expect from most 3D platform games, but in the way that you can use multiple different methods to progress through each level. Near the start of the game you find yourself in a large shed-like room and have to make your way to an adjoining building. You can either find the secret mouse hole and use that as a tunnel, or make your way upwards to the roof (using any technique you want, be it grappling up to a chair or climbing up shelves then grappling your way to the rafters) where you'll find that one of the pipes up there has a hole in it, which you can enter and visit the next room that way.

Of course, no platform game would be complete without enemies, but in real life not much really endangers mushrooms except for fat campers. Conveniently then, the same green dust that brought life to the plants in the game has also had a negative effect on the various small creatures that inhabit the same environment. Spiders, hornets, rats and all manner of other creatures have become infected with the dust and have developed aggressive tendencies. It seems that the same dust that's good for you is dangerous for them. Incidentally, this leads to some pleasantly grotesque moments, such as Pax gaining health by approaching the corpses of rats who couldn't take the infection and taking the energy-giving goo and spores that are flowing from their burst open bellies. Yum.

Because of these newly-angered creatures, Pax has to defend himself in some way. Thankfully he's got the ability to create weapons based on items he finds lying around. Weapons come in three parts - a handle, a head and something to join them with - and as you collect certain items you're told which ones you can join. One of the weapons we saw when we played the game had a matchstick as the handle and a jack (as in the playground game) as the head, with a rubber band wrapped around to join them. Another combined a DS stylus, a thimble and a piece of bubblegum.

Pax can then use these makeshift weapons to defend himself in typical action-platformer fashion. You swing the Remote to make him swing his weapon, with multiple swings making him perform a combo attack. You can press the Z button to make him bend over and use his mushroom head as a shield, or use the C button to make him roll out of the way. Think Zelda meets, um, mushrooms.

As well as his ability to create weapons and his useful sticky hand, Pax has one more special ability: telekinesis. If your cursor changes to a brain icon when you point at an object, you can press the B button and Pax will move it using his mind. In this way you can move obstacles out of the way and use it to make life a little easier. For example, you can use it to drop a bowling ball off a shelf onto an infected rabbit below so you can avoid having to fight it.

Weapons Of Grass Destruction
Interestingly, the game doesn't have a visible life bar as you might expect from a platforming title: it's actually part of Pax himself. As he takes damage, parts of the mushroom on the top of his head will start to break off, revealing his brain underneath. When his brain is fully exposed, one more hit kills him. As Pax collects health spores from fallen enemies, his head heals and the brain is covered up again.
Mushroom Men's other interesting feature is
its metronome system. Primus bass player Les Claypool (who also did the theme tune to South Park) has created four unique tracks for the game's soundtrack, and during some parts of the game the environment rocks and moves to the beat of the music. Clocks tick, water drips and the ground shakes to the beat, creating a great effect that really makes the music feel like part of the game.

We're really impressed with what we've seen so far, despite the game still being in a reasonably early state. Keep an eye on this one - the Wii might finally have another decent platformer to add to its roster.