Broken innovation in Go! Go! Minon

I usually enjoy quirky concept games with cheerful characters like Katamari Damacy and Gitaroo Man. Go! Go! Minon is an entirely different story. I loathed it and I had to dig hard to find something redeeming about it. Let’s get the good out of the way first. The gingerbread-like superhero that makes dominoes appear out of thin air is amusing and the movie sequences in between the levels are pretty funny. In the second stage Minon shrinks to tap a golf ball into the hole so a golfer doesn’t explode in a fit of rage. The wacky scenarios are a plus, but there is no way a few witty movies can save this game.

Research at Play-Asia

The problem with Go! Go! Minon is you do so little in the game. Minon automatically runs on preset paths of buildings and patches of grass. It’s up to the player to fill in gaps by using the Wii remote to place rows of dominoes. You can drop a straight row of dominoes by pointing and pressing the B button. Once the dominoes are set Minon continues running and if you want to make him move faster you shake the controller. The goal is to get minion to make Minon run to an object, like a balloon on the first stage and the golf ball on the second. The trick is you can’t run freely. You’re restricted to the set paths and where you place dominoes. You can’t even create a path of dominoes directly to the object. Ants, streets and everything else in the level will block a direct path to the goal. Just to make things more complicated Minon can’t turn around at your will. You have to run around in a large circle and find another path pointing in the right direction.

The final layer of frustration is each level has checkpoints that whisk Minon off to a new part of the large, incomplete maze. In the second stage friendly moles dig an underground path to bring Minon to a new section. When you’re standing on top of a mole’s head you can activate it by shaking the remote vertically. However, you don’t know where the mole is going to bring you once you get on for a ride. It might you further away from the goal and you’re forced to run through the same part of the maze again, this time avoiding the mole. This is unnecessary punishment because there you don’t know whether the mole will help you or hurt you until you use it.

Go! Go! Minon has a multiplayer mode too where two people can run on a maze against each other. The goal is to get more points than the other player by making Minon swiftly run across the level. It’s sort of like a racing mini game, except you don’t steer and you have to shake the remote to make Minon run faster. While running you can pick up power ups like dark, which darkens the other player’s half of the screen and speed up to give Minon an instant speed burst. Like the main game, the multiplayer mode isn’t that much fun either. After playing it out for three rounds you’ll get sick of it and want to pop something else in.

Go! Go! Minon costs the same price as any other Wii game and there is barely any substance to it. You’re shaking the remote and placing dominoes, that’s it. Rumor has it that Mastiff is going to bring this out to the states under the name Mr. D goes to town and you’re going to want to skip it, even if it’s a $10 purchase. Unless the US release is given a major overhaul, Go! Go! Minon is not worth your money. It is a slapdash effort at making something novel that turned into watching the screen and shaking the remote.