Game Party (Wii)

Players choose which game they want to play, select from over 100 avatars to represent themselves, and go to it. The motion sensitive and infrared controls for each game are simple and intuitive -- for example, players make a throwing motion for darts and a bowling motion for alley ball. At the end of each game tickets are awarded that will eventually unlock more avatars and minor variations for some of the games.

But at least the minigames are more or less well designed. The surprisingly challenging trivia game is good fun for older quiz game fans. Our testers also enjoyed shuffleboard, which, despite its sometimes buggy controls, proved an engaging game of strategy. But the deepest of the minigames is darts, which offers half a dozen classic, point-based challenges that fans of the real world game will recognize, including 701 and cricket. It also makes the most nuanced use of the Wii remote, accurately detecting and translating slight shifts in wrists and fingers with each toss. If no one in your family is an avid fan of any of Game Party's classic games, you may not get more than an hour or two of play out of it. Still, that's not a terrible deal for a game that costs just $20.