Last year, my children were thrilled when we were finally lucky enough to to snag one of the elusive Nintendo Wii systems for our home. At first, my son took it over and primarily used it to play sports games, but as time went on, we purchased, or received as gifts, a variety of different games, some of which are great for our entire family to participate in.

We have enjoyed playing many games made by the Cranium company, including HullaBaloo, Cariboo and Balloon Lagoon and I have been impressed with the quality of those games. They often get you to "think outside of the box" and be creative, while you are still playing a board game. When I first saw that Cranium Kabookii, I was not sure how that creative and fun experience would be translated to a video game, but I have been pleasantly surprised.

Even though only one Wii remote control is used, the instructions indicate that you will need at least four players to make up at least two teams in order to play, although we have successfully played with just three players. Some of the activities require teammates guess something that a player is drawing so that we just created our own rules and have other players guess or have a non-player participate in those activities. Everything is either done on the television screen or acted out so that no paper or pencil is required.

There is no actual board to move around, and Kabookii feels more like a game show with an announcer that gives commentary every once in a while. To begin playing, spin the Carousel to see what activity the first player/team will land on. Points are awarded for correct answers or for completing tasks and as your tally goes up, the pedestal underneath your icon of a Running Man will go higher, bringing him closer to the top of the arena. The goal is to get him high enough so that he can reach the cord hanging from the roof.

There are fifteen different mini games in this Kabookii game so that a variety of different activities will come up each and every time you play. Each of the games falls under one of the four categories found in other Cranium games: Data Head, Star Performer, Creative Cat and Word Worms.

The first time we played this game, we struggled with learning how to complete some of the mini game, as the instructions are not always clear. After playing each game only one or two times, we were able to figure out what was expected of us. The games are:

Globetrotter - Answer a geographical questions (such as "Warsaw is the capitol of what country?") and then spin the on-screen globe and click on the answer (Poland).

Selectaquest - Answer a trivia question correctly to be awarded points.

Polygraph - Simply answer a True or False question.

Memoroll - A pattern of blocks, with six different colors on them, will be shown and the be removed from the screen. The task is to repeat the pattern from memory. The difficult part is that each block contains every every color and if the color that you need is not showing, you have to flick the Wii remote to roll them until the color that you need shows up.

Cameo and Talkback Cameo - By far, these are the most difficult games that we have encountered. You have to imitate a simple activity that is shown on the screen, such as hammering a nail. The problem is that you have to do the exact same motion as shown, and not a smidge off, otherwise it does not register. In the Talkback version, the player has his back to the television and another player tells him what motion he is to make.

Reverb - Five colored circles are on the screen and you are given a mallet with which to hit them. They will play a some notes, and you have to repeat them in the same sequence.

Songpong - By using the decoder glasses, a player first looks at the name of the secret song printed on the bottom of the screen, and then, while still looking through the glasses, must play the song by hitting the notes the machine tells you to in the hopes that your teammate can guess what song it is.

Blankout - First, figure out the answer based on the clues given and then spin and twist the dials on screen to spell out the answer.

Gliffitii - After determining what word needs to be spelled (similar to the camera example above), you must move the brush strokes that make up each letter of the answer to their appropriate space to spell out the word.

Zelpuz - Using the clue given, rearrange the scrambled letters to get the answer.

Cloodle - First, the player whose turn it is must use the plastic 3-D glasses to look at the screen to see what the secret word is and this word looks scrambled to everybody else. Using the Wii remote, he or she draws a picture using on-screen chalk and his or her teammate must guess what it is a picture of.

Ripstrip Cloodle - Cloodle with a twist. As the picture is drawn, it is erased, so that you never really get to see a complete drawing making it much more difficult to guess.

Graffitii - Again, using the 3-D glasses one player checks to see what the secret word is, but here the picture is created with spray paint.

Stickerdoodle - After using the 3-D glasses to see what needs to be guessed, the player uses shaped stickers (square, triangle, circle, rectangle) to create the image and hope that the others can tell what it is supposed to be.

Each of the games can be a challenge, especially with the clock ticking away the seconds in the upper right hand corner. If the correct answer is not given in the allotted time, then no points are awarded.

Additionally, as the game goes on, the challenges get more difficult. For example, the first time you play Reverb in a game, you might have to play four series of notes, the next time, five, the next time, six, and so forth, which increases the difficulty, but also increases the points awarded for correctly completing the task. Cameo, which we rarely complete, is much the same way, beginning with four tasks to imitate and increasing each time.

When a player or team gets 24 points, his or her Running Man pulls the ring hanging from the cord in the ceiling and joins a Conga Line with Data Head, Star Performer, Creative Cat and Word Worms. The instruction booklet keeps this a secret, as if something very interesting or exciting occurs, but it only lasts a few seconds and although cute, was not all that impressive.

Cranium Kabookii is priced the same as just about every Nintendo Wii game that I have bought - fifty dollars. This game is rated "E" for everyone and my nine and ten year old children have just as much fun as the adults do. A game can take an hour or more to complete, so even if younger children want to participate in some of the activities, they may not have the attention span to sit through and entire game.

There is no option to play a shorter version of the game and there is no way just to play specific games to practice. These would have been nice options to have, so that we could practice games like Cameo in the hopes of actually figuring out what the game wants us to do.

Overall, we have been pleased with our Cranium Kabookii for Nintendo Wii as it is a an interactive board game of sorts, is fairly easy to get the hang of and is fun for the whole family.



Recommended: Yes