Published: Wednesday, 3rd September, 2008 12:30
Opoona
By Narin Bahar
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I have a terrible terrible sense of direction. I have been known to get lost in people's houses. That's ordinary sized houses. There is just a small part of my mind which is incapable of comprehending (and retaining) where things are in relation to each other. Navigation is my Kryptonite if you will. It makes getting places rather frustrating at the best of times.
With a game like Opoona it makes 30 hours of fun cartoony gaming nearer 40 hours of alternating glee and gutwrenching annoyance and irritation.
So another week, another wackily titled Wii game on the market. In this one, the titular warrior Opoona crashlands on Planet Landroll when his spaceship is involved in an accident while on an interplanetary family holiday.
On his new planet he must find a job, search for his missing family members (including his brother, Copoona - proof the family's parents were lacking somewhat in the imagination stakes) all of whom were jettisoned in separate escape pods, and defend himself and those he cares about from the sinister Cosmo Guards.
The Wii is not filled with much in the way of turn based RPGs, so Opoona is a welcome addition to the market. It utilises the Wiiware very well, meaning you can put the nunchuck to great use to navigate your way around this strange new world. The nunchuk itself does make it a little difficult to navigate to start with - you've never played a game this way before - but don't worry it's soon picked up and the battle system actually works really well once you get the hang of it. Which is just as well as you can be set upon by baddies at pretty much any time.
However when you're not battling enemies you'll be busy building relationships with other characters to further quests and open new opportunities for employment. There are lots of different things to do making the grind less irritating than it might otherwise have been - as well as bizarrely entertaining - if you'd rather do something other than the usual quests to find, deliver and mine things you can get a job flogging fast food or become a fortune teller, the choice is yours.
The style of the game fits perfectly with the Wii - it's all brightly coloured cute cartoony joy with great music and environments. However, the translation from the original Japanese seems a bit slapdash - with some very irritating spelling errors in the written dialogue. Meanwhile the city is difficult to navigate and in places repetitive. However, overall here there's much for people who love these kind of games to enjoy.
Four stars out of five.
Opoona is out now.
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