Guiness World Records: The Videogame

Moving with the times, Guiness has been getting a lot more involved in video games recently. They have released a special Guiness World Records book for games, and now there’s this Guiness tie-in game for the Nintendo Wii.

GWR uses that tried and tested Wii formula of lots of mini-games making heavy use of the Wii remote. Most of the time that means we get a lot of tired ideas shoe-horned in to fit a particular theme, but for once the mini-games actually work.

The first reason is because mini-games in a Guiness World Record’s game actually make sense, but also because they’re so well executed. Unsurprisingly for a game like this there’s a heavy reliance on high scores.

The game maintains a global leaderboard of the best scores from players everywhere, but the big difference is that the goals never feel unobtainable.

Rather than showing the very highest score in the world, something that is usually completely out of reach for most normal players who don’t spend every waking minute glued to their TVs, the scores shown while you’re playing are only the next highest. It’s a more realistic goal and means that the competitive element is always challenging enough to keep you playing without becoming frustrating.

There are 36 mini-games in total and they’re based on real-life records. Can you grow longer fingernails  than the real record, or jump higher on a BMX than a world champion? It’s obviously quite silly, but that’s perfect for this kind of party game and they have a surprising amount of depth despite the light-hearted tone.

There are a couple of minor flaws. Not being able to use our Mii avatars is a very odd decision considering it’s such a huge part of the Wii community, but a more puzzling oversight is the inability of the game to automatically update the high scores. You have to do this manually, often leading to your just-attained score being smashed by a previously unknown record.

Verdict: 80%

Not only are the mini-games on offer here more enjoyable than most other Wii party games, but the clever competitive element will keep you playing much longer.