One Piece Unlimited Adventure is a 3-D platformer based on the popular anime series. It places you in the role of the treasure hunter Luffy, starting him out on the beach of a deserted island with a mountainside in front of him.

Controlling Luffy is simple. The analog stick on the nunchuck attachment is used to move, while B on the Wii remote is used to jump and A is for punching. This mapping seemed kind of strange to me, since I'm used to jumping with A and attacking with B, but I quickly got used to it. As you move Luffy around you'll encounter treasure chests that can be broken open with a punch to reveal treasure and items. The items that you are carrying are displayed in the bottom-right corner of the screen. You can carry up to four items at once, and each item slot corresponds to a direction on the remote's D-Pad. Clicking the appropriate direction on the D-Pad puts that item in Luffy's hands, whether it's a weapon or a piece of treasure.

One of the first items you'll acquire is the pickaxe, which increases your attack power and is used by swinging the Wii remote downwards like you would an axe. This didn't occur to me at first, but I quickly had a "eureka" moment and was soon swinging my remote all over the place. As you climb up the mountainside you discover your next item, a "Power Gem" hidden in a treasure chest. You're given a hint that this gem could be powerful if used in the right place, which you soon discover is a mysterious cloud by a large rock outcropping at the top of the cliff. Equipping the gem and walking into the cloud causes the cliff face to split into two huge boulders, which then roll down the hill in spectacular fashion and lodge themselves in the sandy seabed of the lagoon below. This reveals a stone stairway, and triggers a cutscene in which Luffy uses his elastic arms to propel himself to the top of the tunnel. You then start the next area, a wide grassy field with a massive stone archway in the cliff wall at the other end. This area is littered with treasure chests, and you encounter your first enemies here as well.

One Piece's graphical style reminds me a lot of One Piece Grand Battle! on GameCube, only the environments and character models are much larger and sharper. Everything has been stepped up several notches and runs very smoothly. While it seems like a simple platformer, it should please fans of the series and put the Wii remote to good use.

NOTE: You can also read Daniel Bloodworth's impressions right here.