Dr. Mario & Germ Buster

So he's played tennis, golf, baseball, basketball, has refereed (is that a sport?) and much more. He's been found in outer space, underwater, the jungle, the stars, castles, deserts and even Beijing. So to see him settle at a doctor's surgery is, initially, a little underwhelming. Strip away the characters, the well-known theme music, the Mii compatibility and the obligatory pointing-mode, however, and you still have a very solid puzzler. For all the doubters out there – think Tetris with a little more strategy. The basic premise is that you've got a bunch of viruses (coloured red, blue or yellow) sitting in an ambiguous receptacle and they need to be exterminated. You take them out with capsules also differentiated by their colours - a combination of red, blue or yellow. Making four same-coloured blocks touch will cause them to disappear, and if you've got a virus in that chain somewhere, it'll also disappear. Once all the nasties are gone, you've completed a level.

Of course, you can tweak your settings to control the speed at which the capsules fall, the number of viruses that appear in the aforementioned receptacle and even the music. Slap on some cheery, colourful menus and you've got a decent package. There's a multiplayer component to the game, however, and this is where you might find a bit more entertainment. Sit in front of your TV with a friend and you can go head-to-head, trying to clear the viruses before one another. There's also a mode called “Flash” that rewards the targeting of specific flashing viruses. Arika, the developers, decided to add Wi-Fi support, allowing players to compete against anyone globally and friends alike. The much loved Friend Code system makes a return (yippee!) and they've even plonked up some online leaderboards. Playing online works as well as it could do, although without the necessary banter from the person sitting next to you, it can feel a little sparse. Pre-set communication allows you to sort out your game before a match and 'chat' about it afterwards, but it really reminds you how much you want to actually say words to your friend.

 

A pretty nifty feature of the Dr. Mario on Wii is the ability to send a demo of the game to a friend. They will then be able to play a match with you and decide for themselves whether or not to take the plunge. Of course, this means more friend code entering, but if your buddy chooses to buy the full game, their information remains the same – a nice touch within an otherwise clumsy system. The demo version is completely limited to playing with a friend, however – there is no option to play anything in single player mode nor is there an option to play online with a random opponent. We can understand the limitation, as frankly there'd not be much else to keep unrevealed if the single player option was available, but it makes you wonder how many people will decide against buying it because none of their friends have the full game.

Arika just keep giving, however, and have included a brand new mode in the game called “Germ Buster”, a Wiimote driven version of the classic formula that gives you complete rule over the positioning of the falling capsules. You latch onto one with your pointer and manoeuvre it around the viruses to create chains in the same way as the classic version. This mode feels a little tacked on, and although it does a good job of freshening up the Dr. Mario experience, not much would be lost if it were not included. Well, maybe 6 or 7 blocks less of your dwindling download space, but that's all.