This week we’ve got 'The Golden Compass' for the Wii, a game that falls into the “shovelware” category on the terrible scale. The game follows the movie that was released around December, but saying that it follows the movie is pretty generous. The game has the characters and some of the general storyline but that’s a really loose similarity. It doesn’t reveal much of the story that the books and movies touch on, leaving anyone who doesn’t know the story at all, like myself, in the dark.

From the get-go you’re tossed into the game without any knowledge of what’s going on. You’re riding a giant armored bear, and you’re in some ice area… No explanation for where you are at, just plopped down on a bear… with a terrible accent. At first, I thought it was just my character and the bear but apparently there is an unseen ferret type thing riding a lot, whose voice is nearly identical to the main characters (whom I can’t even tell is a boy or a girl). Perhaps this was because of the graphics, or maybe it’s because it’s a craptackular game, with little thought thrown in to the actual design.

The next thing that’s pretty noticeable is the terrible graphics. But hey, it’s a Wii game; it’s not supposed to be pretty, right? Well, looking at games like 'No More Heroes' and 'Super Mario Galaxy', they can still look good. This on the other hand, looks like someone puked up pixels and let the game go out. To say that it looked like an afterthought is an understatement. It’s hard to differentiate between the human characters; same with the voice acting. They’re a mesh of brown coat and brown coat, the only few you can really tell is between a giant white bear and the little girl.

The rest of the game is a grainy mess. It looks more like a system-release PS2 game, than anything else. Isn’t the game supposed to be next gen? It looks more like a step back than anything else. Another problem is the lighting; coupled with the graphics it makes some platforming elements nearly impossible. One such area had the bear jumping from icy pillar to pillar, however, you can’t differentiate what the water is from the frozen pillar. I fell too many damn times because of this and it became a headache. Other areas of the game are similar but something like this that’s so early in the game lets you know that the entire game is probably going to be -- for lack of a better term -- terrible.

Yet another problem stemming from the graphics and lighting, is the camera control and depth perception in the game. Many times during the platforming elements you couldn’t tell how far the other platform was; often ending up with your character making a nice little crater below. No squish noises though, that’d probably make the game entertaining… This, on the other hand, can probably cause cancer its so bad.

You move the characters via nun-chucks joystick, A attacks and B blocks. The first level is exceptionally linear, nothing interesting. Pressing Z when prompted has me do an action, like jumping over a river… Why can’t I jump myself? I mean, come on, Nintendo was built off platformers… and you’re telling me I can’t even jump on my own in this damn game? Granted, these are only in scripted parts of the game, but it seems like there are more areas that are scripted than actually playable.

The voice acting is of course, terrible. Whoever they got to play Nicole Kidman’s character doesn’t even sound like her. Why couldn’t they get Kidman to actually play the voice? Oh yeah, because this game sucks. Many of the characters sound similar, it’s hard to even differentiate between a girl and a guy. The terribly fake English accents also made it hard to take this game seriously, I’ve seen better voice acting in a silent movie or an NES game than here, it’s the kind of sounds that make your ears bleed or want to shove unnamable objects into your ears. Luckily, I found the remote and the mute button. Sweet salvation!

After a lackluster first run, and a random checkpoint, I fight my first wolves. I can also swing the wii-mote to attack, apparently… Granted, they’re not giving this much Wii initiative. The only true motion control parts had you aiming your ferret now turned monkey/sloth/thing/wtf so you can catch onto some random faraway ledge, or balancing on some frozen ships masts… I can get these crappy minigames on any system, I don’t need this crap. Come on, even though it’s shovelware, it should have something unique to the system, right? Other than the eye-gougingly terrible visuals, and brain imploding gameplay of course.

The writing and scripting for the game is also suicide inducing. Many times your character will repeat the same retarded catch phrase, or say something so utterly stupid that it actually made me yell. One such comment was referring to some random group of enemies using bear traps to try and stop you and your armored bear friend. You’re riding a goddamn armored bear, and your saying THAT’S NOT FAIR?! People, please think of the villans… Even though they’re emotionless wolves, they’re just hungry, right? They’re just trying to survive an armored BEAR ATTACK, and you’re saying this isn’t fair? Someone make her eat that goddamn ferret, so she chokes on it and dies. The wolves you toss around can’t like that kind of abuse… Someone aught call PETA or something because it looks more like animal abuse than anything else.

To recap, this game sucks. It’s poorly conceived and verging on torture to actually play it. The graphics and voice acting are worse than a special needs kid’s version of Picasso, or the fevered dream of some coke addict. It’d probably be more fun to go and moon the Pope, it’d be a lot more pleasant at least. Don’t play this game. For the love of god, don’t play this game. Or for the love of Satan, if that’s what you’re into… I can’t even think the devil would want someone to play this game, its that evil and bad.