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The OMG Nintendo editorial staff (consisting of myself and Sardius, because Kou is all DS) are going to be the main WiiWare review team for GamePro in the future. You can catch the reviews on the GamePro main site... or see them hours ahead of time by just tuning your RSS readers right here.

This is the first of the review wave, covering a simple but elegant game called Defend Your Castle that just begs to be played by drunken frat boys with poor hand-eye coordination. Seriously, this game has it all: death, stickmen, death, explosives, death, epic combat, death, and also more death. Just check behind the cut for the full review.

Defend Your Castle

In singleplayer mode, Defend Your Castle is sedate and somewhat disappointing (even if you play on advanced Heroic difficulty). Stickmen rush to attack your helpless castle. You defend your turf by moving your cursor over an invader, pressing A or B to grab hold of him, and then flinging him to his doom with a flick of the Wii Remote. Do that until the level ends. You get points based on how many guys you killed, and can spend them to repair and upgrade your castle.

Defend Your Castle's difficulty is dynamic, though. It makes things slow at first for a solo player, but the game never really ends until you die, and you can save your progress. What makes Defend Your Castle worth your 500 Wii Points happens if you can get up to three people to play it with you.

Your screen explodes. Enemies surge across the field in a black wave, and elite enemy types appear quickly. The carnage is insane, and amassing points becomes easy. The player who gets the most points becomes the next round's King, and gets to decide how to invest in upgrades (but takes responsibility for using unlocked abilities, too). Defend Your Castle detects Wii Remotes automatically, allowing players to casually enter and exit the game.

This is a game that was made to break the ice at parties and gatherings of gamers, and it does that job amazingly well. For a solo player, it's a little lonely and gets repetitive. Think carefully about how you like to play games, and you'll know whether or not Defend Your Castle is for you.

PROS: Great casual multiplayer that blends co-op and versus strategy; only five bucks; massacre all who dare oppose you.

CONS: Solo gameplay is too slow; sound clips become repetitive; run out of worthwhile upgrades to buy too quickly.

GRAPHICS: 3.5

SOUND: 2.5

CONTROL: 4.5

FUN FACTOR: 3.75

NOTE: All images courtesy XGen Studios.

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