I’ve only been to a real fair once (I live in a big city, and so amusement parks are more my thing…), but it was a lot of fun. The rides (although they looked a little flimsy…), the food, and the games. And with the Nintendo’s Wii motion control being able to emulate real-life actions, it doesn’t come as much surprise that a Wii title recreating the many carnival games would be released within about a year of the system’s launch. And aside from the embarrassingly dumb title, there are a lot of problems with this game.

First thing that you’ll notice immediately upon powering is the horrendous visuals. Yes, a Wii game will not look as nice as a PS3 game or an XBox 360 game. Still, that is no excuse for the terrible graphics that are present in Carnival Games. They visuals are blocky, simple, and poorly animated. Honestly, it would look bad on the GameCube — so I have no idea why this was let slide for a title released for the Wii about a year after the system’s launch.

Once you delve a little deeper (i.e. decide to actually start playing), you’ll stumble upon even more flaws with this title. To begin with, the minigames are insultingly easy. They usually just involve shaking around the Wii Remote a bit; you honestly don’t have to even know what you’re doing to “win” a minigame. Additionally, the Wii Remote incorporation in this game is horrendous; it’s quite possibly the worst for any game I’ve played so far on the Wii. For example, when playing the plate breaking game, the cursor moves around automatically on its own, and you’ve just got jiggle the remote around when you want to throw the ball.

My comment about winning a minigame brings up another issue with this title: there’s no real goal in mind for any of the minigames. Yes, it’s a minigame collection, and normally, such a gameplay mechanic would be fine. But as discussed above, these just aren’t really fun minigames. This title is really just an example of how yes, the Wii Remote can be used to mimic real life actions. But unfortunately, this title just doesn’t chronicle how exactly that’s at all fun.

The music is nearly as bad as the game’s graphics. It’s dull and unforgettable, as well as all-too predictable. What the hell — it’s carnival music. There are lots of little bells and whistles, but that’s really it. It’s seldom that I say something like this, but I do believe that the music may actually detract overall from the quality of Carnival Games. Why? Well, just because I personally spend so much time realizing how bad the sound was in this title that I didn’t really pay much attention to the game itself (not that that’s a bad thing with a title this bad, mind you).

To make things even worse, there’s very little reason to play this game again, if you can even work your way through playing all the minigames in the first place. There aren’t any significant unlockables, and there’s no benefit (unless you like being bored out of your mind) to slog through this collection of “games” more than once. Even taking into account the fact that this title costs 10 bucks less than most of the Wii games on the market right now, it’s still just not at all worth your money.

There is a multiplayer offering here, but it’s sloppily and carelessly done. It pretty much just involves going through some of the games that you’ve already played in single player mode — but this time, with a friend. I’ve said this before, and I’ll say it again: Some games just work for multiplayer. But unfortunately, for that to be the case, said game has to be fun by itself. And Carnival Games just doesn’t manage to achieve that lofty goal. Many games have you trading off a single controller, and there’s no real simultaneous competition — it all involves taking turns.

In case you haven’t quite gotten the point, let me recapitulate this review for you in four words: Don’t buy Carnival Games. I stand firmly by my assertion that you will most likely have absolutely no fun with this title and severely regret your purchase. There may be a caveat to this ultimatum, however: if you’re buying for young children, they may manage to have fun with this, just because of the title’s simplicity. Still, though, if that’s what you’re looking for, just let them play around with Wii Sports. It’s pathetic, I know, but the pack-in title Wii Sports is infinitely better than this piece of crap that you’d have to spend 40 bucks on.