Reviewed by Brandy Shaul
Continuing in the fun, party-game tradition taken on by Hudson as of late is Help Wanted, a mini-game compilation for the Wii that offers 50 different jobs, each with varying levels of absurdity, that can be played alone or in groups. I had the chance to get some hands-on time with this as of now work-in-progress, to see what Help Wanted will bring to the table.
Help Wanted allows players to choose from one of six characters (ranging from the traditional young boy and girl to elderly grandparents), and enter into the temporary job market, tackling positions such as pizza chef, dentist, and even corporate CEO. My time with the game focused on 9 of the total 50 jobs: grill cook, body builder, dairy farmer, stunt person, tailor, fisher, clown, haunted house monster, and farmer.
Some jobs, like the stunt person and grill cook, utilize only the Wii-mote, while others, like the dairy farmer and fisher require the use of the nunchuck as well. Either way, each game has simple controls, like flinging the Wii-mote downwards in order to throw your net into the water to catch fish, or pressing both A and B to grab hold of a kebab and flip it over so it doesn’t burn on the grill.
Other jobs, like the stunt person and tailor have you holding the Wii-mote sideways, and rotating it horizontally to achieve movement (of the car and the fabric under the sewing machine needle, respectively). While each game has their own set of controls, each setup is quite simplistic and intuitive, allowing you to get straight to the fun of the matter and all of the quirky employment opportunities you will have to undertake.
Jobs like the haunted house worker are especially entertaining, and are reminiscent of other puzzle games, in that (in this particular game) you move your character around a staging area with four doors, each color coded, and can watch from an overhead perspective as unsuspecting patrons enter each room. You can change your costume to go along with each colored room (for instance, your mummy costume is yellow, so you earn bonus points for using it solely in the yellow themed room), and by simply walking onto a secret turntable, you are sent into the room with the guest, and are able to scare the pants off of them for cash.
Various other tasks, like the vegetable farmer and the dairy farmer depend more on timing, with the dairy farmer position asking you to move your nunchuck and Wii-mote up and down while holding them vertically, to simulate holding the utters on a cow when milking them. The vegetable farmer job, meanwhile, has your character moving down a row of carrots, and asks you to fling the Wii-mote upwards to pull a carrot out of the ground. Timing is essential here in that a small green and orange circle will notify you when it is the right time to pull, as pulling too early or too late ruins the attempt, and your chance at the carrot.
Rounding out the demo were the body builder and the clown positions, with the bodybuilder task asking you to make poses that are different from your competitors (each pose is achieved via a different positioning of the Wii-mote / nunchuck combo), and the clown position challenging you to juggle by moving your nunchuck and Wii-mote in time with the balls flying through the air.
No matter which position you decide to tackle, each will have a choice of three difficulty settings (normal, hard, and expert), with the normal difficulty providing more than enough challenge in certain circumstances. Being that the game is (at the time of this writing) unfinished, I was expecting a few issues with the demo, but the amount of time I spent dealing with unresponsive controls was a bit frightening.
Either way, a party game wouldn’t be complete without challenging your friends, so Help Wanted is set to support head-to-head multiplayer on 15 different jobs. And hopefully, by the time the game releases this summer, the control issues will have been ironed out, allowing the potential of the title to really shine through.
Check back with GI after the game’s release to find out in our full review.