Oct 15 2008
Defendin’ de Penguin
Defendin’ De Penguin came out for the Wii just a little over a month ago. It has been sitting on the top of my game Q since then and for once I actually got a new release I wanted to try pretty fast.
This game impressed me from the start because when you enter story mode it asks if you want to do the tutorial or not. Personally I did do the tutorial, but I love when they give the option because sometimes I find the tutorials long and boring and wish I could skip them. Unfortunately, most games like that you cannot skip the tutorial. The tutorial is taught by a penguin that looks like it is of the Macaroni species (yes, I am a self proclaimed penguin expert considering I have done a research paper on them and it is the main topic on my Antarctic Blog ). In the tutorial you learn how to do the basic things in the game including building towers to defend your town from invasion (i.e. the objective of the game!). Another nice thing about the tutorial is if you fail you can have him repeat the instructions for the task or skip the instructions and just try again. It really makes it a tutorial mode to fit all styles of preference of how to start a game from those who want to entirely skip it to those who only need the instructions once to those who sometimes need to the instructions more than once.
The basics of this game play a lot like a real time strategy game that you typically see as a computer game and not a console game. This is something I really like about this game because I only have a Mac and you cannot get most of these types of games to work on a Mac without modifications. The main objective of the game is pretty straight forward being you play as Little Blue, who looks like an Adelie Penguin, to help defeat enemies and protect the penguin village’s fish supply. Another thing I like about this game is it is not too hard to learn to play and is a somewhat non-violent, as you are mostly just using snowballs. Thus I think this can be a fun game for all ages, although to some extent I think you probably have to like penguins or the game may seem too cutesy to you.
Overall I really am impressed by this game and it is one of the best games I have played on the Wii so far. The graphics are pretty decent. The quality is not exactly the best, but it is at least pretty detailed. The sound at points gets annoyingly repetitive, as there does not seem to be much depth to the background music, but I will give it credit for being pretty unique sounding. My only real issue with this game is that they portray polar bears and penguins in the same maps. Not that the enemies are realistic either, as there are not any boars or crabs in Antarctica, but it really is a pet peeve of mine to see polar bears wrongly displayed together because it continues to give people the misconception that they coexist. At least the enemies I think most people are informed enough to know they do not live near Antarctic penguins.
