Hasbro Family Game Night 2 (Wii)

HASBRO FAMILY GAME NIGHT 2 is second collection of virtual board games from the legendary toy company. In a hub world (a deluxe loft apartment), owned apparently by Mr. and Mrs. Potato Head, players can pull any of five board games off the shelf to play. The games are Operation (in which players delicately remove "illnesses" from a patient's body), Jenga (in which players pull wooden blocks from a stack without upsetting it), Pictureka (in which players search a chaotic mural for visual clues), Bop-It (in which players press buttons and make movements in specific orders), and Connect 4X4 (in which four players challenge each other to a tic-tac-toe-like game). Each game can be played in its traditional form, or a suped up version with video game extras.

The first thing you'll notice about Hasbro Family Game Night 2 is that its selection of games is not quite as classic as that in the original. There's no Battleship in here, no Boggle or Sorry. The most classic of the bunch is Operation, but that had to be altered greatly in order to translate it into video game-ness. Hasbro Family Game Night 2 is not bad, though -- it just has a very different feel to it. It's much faster paced, much more adrenaline-heavy. And there are some very nice improvements to the hub world, especially those involving Mr. Potato Head. In the last game, he was simply there as an observer. This time you can win new body parts, with which you can decorate and redecorate Mr. -- and Mrs. -- Potato Head as you go along.