Quick fire round of mini reviews. These are titles I've been playing through very slowly the past couple of months. Sorry if some of these seem terribly behind the times.
Boom Blox: Bash Party - 9/10
A brilliant example of accessible but deep, carefully considered gameplay. It's simple to play and simple to understand, hence why I actually managed to convince some people to play multiplayer, which is a rare occurrence - they had great fun with it. However, earning those high scores once the difficulty curve gets going requires a lot of thought. Furthermore, the excellent variety of level types prevents you from becoming bored with it, an important trait considering the enormous quantity of levels. And in terms of making a unique, compelling use of the Wii Remote, I'd say this is the second best on the system, closely behind only Zack & Wiki.
Picross 3D - 9/10
Addictive for reasons I'm not entirely sure of. It really is a 'just one more' puzzle game, and I have to tear myself away because of my work situation.
de Blob 2 (Wii) - 8/10
Totally worth it for the music. Seriously, the funky jazz soundtrack is one of the best I've heard in recent years. Even if you have no plans to purchase the game (which I regard as a good improvement over its predecessor with more platforming, but still suffers from repetition), I recommend searching for a de Blob 2 sound dump on the internet and shoving it onto your mp3 player.
Mini Ninjas (Wii) - 8/10
While it may lean slightly towards a younger audience, I enjoyed Mini Ninjas for the unexpected level of freedom for exploration and the cohesive, if sometimes childish, presentation; somewhat similar to de Blob 2 in that way, I suppose. Anyway, there are many things to commend, including stealth sections that are surprising effective and some cool magic powers. Combat is a bit too simple due to how hapless most of the enemies are, although the bosses redeem this to a certain extent. It's also a shame that you aren't really given much incentive to switch between the six playable ninjas - I swapped amongst them regularly for the sake of it, but there's no impetus to do so. Overall though, it's a fun little adventure, worth at least a rental for those sceptical about value for money on a purely single-player game.
Rayman 3D - 7-ish/10
My first time with Rayman 2: The Great Escape. Naturally, the design is starting to show its age. That said, I like the seamless transitions from ordinary platforming to fast set-pieces like riding a missile or jet-skiing. Some might be against the "collectathon" nature of the progression, but that isn't a problem if you are thorough, and in fact, I appreciated the presence of little nooks and crannies to find. The pacing is strong, as is the audio, although there are annoying bugs related to the music in the 3DS port. Speaking of which, the 3D effect works fine during gameplay -- less so in cut-scenes, with the character renders clearly splitting into two despite being in the sweet spot. I have a couple of significant gripes: the camera is hard to work with, and the flying controls have no option to turn off inverted control. In one level, the player has to navigate a rocket barrel through tight passages, and I died a dozen times because the inversion screwed me over, which was immensely frustrating. The finale was fairly weak as well. Still, I don't regret playing this, especially for the discount I bought it for.