Guinness World Records - The Video Game Hands On Preview

When we first got the word that TT Games and Warner Interactive were teaming up to make a Guinness World Record game, we were quite puzzled by the press release. First off the game concept was kinda odd, some of the key gameplay elements were just bizarre such as eat a jumbo jet or grow the longest fingernails, and then there were vague hints towards top record breakers actually getting listed in the actual book. So we shot an email back to Warner's local team, and they were equally puzzled though they did confirm some sort of Guinness World Record book tie in.

So a month went by, our attention turned to E3 and that came and went. Then we got an email from our friends at Warner saying they had some demos from E3, one of them being this puzzle of a game. Now in all honesty we didn't really have much expectation for the game, but the chance for answers is something you don't pass up, even with low expectations.

Guinness World Records was actually surprisingly fun. Three of us sat around playing it for about 20 or 30 minutes, and as a party game it already had some kind of appeal. The whole game is built around mini games based on real world records set. They've had a bit of the fantastic nature added to them, such as the balancing a car on a person's head record becoming balancing a bus, but they all link back to various real world records.

First up we had an egg and spoon race, getting an egg across a set distance in the least time. We had to hold the Wii Remote in one hand for the egg, balancing it while the Nunchuck was in our other hand shaking it back and forth to make the character run. The faster you shake, the faster you'll run. Our contact from Warner had a go first to explain it, and I quietly scoffed to myself wondering how on earth you could not pull of insane times in an instant. Then it came round to me, and it was actually really difficult! No surprise, I completely failed to beat our Warner contact's time. And all the games revolve around this same idea, they're all so simple and just beg of party trash talk, but when you get hands on with them it's going to take more waving the controllers around to be any good at them. The egg and spoon race, while it was easy enough when everything was going smoothly, the moment we stopped really focusing we'd lose the balance, and then while trying to get that right we'd lose our speed.

So moving along, we started hurling washing machines which was a similar shake to run control, and then we had to hit A to set up our trajectory. An angle meter pops up on screen and we had to hit A again while making a kind of forward throwing motion with the Wii Remote. From there we went on to smashing water melons, which called for a simple downwards smash with the remote as they came along a conveyor belt. The better we did, the faster they came. Sheep shaving called for picking sheep out of a field and using IR pointing to shave them in the quickest time possible.

We had two final games from there. One was the earlier mentioned balancing of the bus on ones head which asked us to hold the remote in both hands trying to keep balance. This was of a slightly different breed from the others as the game would every so often slightly adjust the center of balance and send you waving the remote all over the place. Finally there was the growing of the longest finger nails which was another really good demo of the game's design. There was no forced time limit on this one and it's concept is simple. You have five fingers, and you have to trace along a waving line to grow each ones finger nail. As you trace the screen will move with you, fall behind off the screen and you'll fail for that nail. And that's all very well except for the fact that when you fall of center of the track, the nail grows incredibly slow, and when you're right on target, it grows insanely quickly. Painstaking concentration was what won the battle here.

Just on features beyond the mini games we saw, the record breaking takes a globe trotter angle with game selection as you have your little character walking the globe between different country's records. You will have customizable characters with clothes and faces and such and such but there's no direct Mii support. Apparently it's a complete pain in the ass to get Nintendo to approve Mii supporting games. Go dish the goss! Finally, yes, there is online functions in some shape or form, with records being tracked locally and internationally. These stats are then fed into the underground caves of Guinness World Records HQ and then somehow someone might end up printed in the book for their achievements in the game. We're still not 100% clear on that one!

Guinness World Records is looking to be an interesting party game if nothing else. It doesn't revolve around absolute button mashing or waving the remote as fast as possible without thinking, but rather it works around a number of really simple easy to learn concepts that are very hard to master. As a single player game we couldn't see it holding up to well, but have a couple of drunken buddies on either side of you screaming out trash and you'd be in for some fun.

Tags: game guinness interactive records Tales travlers TT video Warner World

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MrWii 07/08/2008

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