Help Wanted
Score: 70% ESRB: Everyone 10+ Publisher: Hudson Soft Developer: Hudson Soft Media: CD/1 Players: 1 - 2 Genre: Family/ Action/ Arcade
Graphics & Sound: Calling this game Help Wanted avoids any connotation of "work" or "chores," which everyone knows empirically is NOT fun. Even though Help Wanted is a game about work, it makes working look mighty fun. The character design is somewhere between a Mii and a zany anime-styled character. There is heavy anime in the storytelling, done mostly through cut scene animation sequences that have hilariously over-the-top dialogue and visuals. The actual mini-game sequences are executed very well, with more than you'd expect in terms of the detailed touches. Mini-games often are stripped down versions of more interesting or captivating games elsewhere, but Help Wanted retains a lot of the visual appeal you'd expect in a deeper title. Most important, it doesn't dumb-down the games just because they're short. The visual effects, sound, and music are handled well throughout. No spoken dialogue is included, but funny sound effects are just as good in this setting. The overall style is reminiscent of offbeat classics like Mr. Mosquito, although not quite that offbeat.
Gameplay: The premise of Help Wanted isn't what you might expect. We learn at the beginning that a giant meteor is hurtling toward Earth and can only be stopped by cheap items purchased from a televised home-shopping service. Not only does televised home shopping grant you items calculated to turn away meteors (like spooky tribal masks), it will also provide work uniforms and special items to assist you on the job. If you're going to work, you might as well look sharp. Players embarking on the solo experience choose to play a boy or girl in the large family that is working together to save humanity. The leader of the family is the grandfather, who appears to have all the answers but also to be a bit crazy. Hurtling meteors are his specialty, and he coaches the kids through the process of saving the world, one menial job at a time. Menial though the jobs may be, they can be fun. Day by day, you check in through a PC in your room with the Employment Office to find out what jobs are available. Success with the first set of jobs open to you will earn you enough money to buy a new uniform on your day off, through the tellie. This uniform means you'll be able to select and play a new job. The days go by, the weeks go by, but once the timer counts down you'll need plenty of cash at hand to purchase something that can keep that meteor away or weaken it before it smashes into the planet. This process of replaying old jobs to increase your skill level and earn new money becomes tedious, since the replay value of a single mini-game is quite low. Rather than make opening new jobs easy and quick, you have to grind away for at least a week in order to open a new job. This has an impact on other modes like Job Battle (Multiplayer) and Career Fair (Practice), since you can only access games opened up through the Employment Office. Multiplayer games can be fun, but you can only battle one other player. The choice in your setup of these tournaments is to compete for money or points, and you can hone your skills in the Career Fair Mode.
Difficulty: The mix of jobs provides good variety for players that find certain controls difficult. A plus for Help Wanted is not requiring all jobs be mastered or even played in order to move ahead. If you find a few that suit you well, you can grind away indefinitely on them, earning big points and money to move ahead in the game. A meter for each game will rise according to how much you've succeeded, opening up new rankings and the chance to earn more money. Goals for earning seem unrealistic at first, but you'll get better at games and find more money rolling in along the way. The time it takes won't be worth it for some players looking for a quick fix of fun mini-games. Help Wanted certainly appears to be that kind of game, but the reality is that it tries to create more build-up rather than give up the goods too quickly. Similar to a title like Order Up that required some time to unlock, you won't find yourself saving the world or opening up all the games here in one sitting. Depending on your tolerance for playing the same game over and over, you may find the experience entertaining, but Help Wanted feels stuck in neutral too often. The alternative is to play games you either don't like or that don't have controls that feel good in your hand. Which brings us to...
Game Mechanics: There aren't many Wii games we've played since launch with controls this soft and unpredictable. The mixing of games that require the Nunchuk alongside games that don't is a bad idea. Pick one control scheme and roll with it, people! Having a Nunchuk hanging around because you might need it is lame. The motion controls make jobs like Farmer almost completely unplayable, as you can throw your shoulder out of socket sooner than you can pluck a veggie out of the ground. Button-pressing games like Fisher are okay, as long as you master the timing, but anything that requires motion control here is instantly a thumbs-down. We even tried changing the batteries in our unit, in the hope that maybe we were lacking juice, but to no avail... The best games are those that require some action on the analog stick, and maybe a button press or two. Courier is a perfect example, where you run through a sort of obstacle course to deliver packages and can slide your way through the tight spots if needed. Mostly, you'll feel like you got lucky when you actually can direct action on the screen using the motion controls, as they are implemented here. It may have been an attempt to make the games feel more loose and fun, but there's nothing fun about sucking at your job... even virtually! Help Wanted should have stayed in the cooker for a while until the control issues were worked out, especially since the underlying concept is sound. The multiplayer would have rocked with online gameplay, even if it were just based on scores and leaderboards, but local against a friend is decent fun. The slow pace hurts what otherwise is a well thought-out sequence of action/upgrade gameplay, and the controls are just completely frustrating in many places. We'd love to see a collection this large (50 games) where the fun is maxed and the multiplayer balanced enough to make for fun party action. The mood in Help Wanted is festive, considering all the hard work, but once you've played through a few weekly cycles, the blush falls from the rose. If I wanted to do real work, I'd just hang out at my 9-to-5...
-Fridtjof, GameVortex Communications AKA Matt Paddock
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