By Jason Nimer

So… what do you want first? The good news? Or the bad? I'm feeling positive, so let's start with the good. There is no denying that Wii owners have a ton of games to choose from, with what seems like dozens more appearing on store shelves each and every week. The bad news is that the vast majority of those games aren't even worth the discs they are printed on or the clamshell cases they live in until some hapless gamer or clueless parent picks it up and says, "Hmmm… this looks fun." The disappointment a child feels when they realize their new game is a dud is a feeling I never allowed myself to forget, even two decades later. The Haunted House game on the Atari 2600 was my first crushing defeat, and chances are you remember yours every bit as vividly. So it pains me to say that Twin Strike: Operation Thunder on the Wii will almost assuredly be first disappointment for some reviewer twenty years down the line, long after I've gotten out of the game and relegated myself to less fun pursuits such as marriage or family.

On the surface, Twin Strike certainly seems promising. The Wii's remote/nunchuk controller combo has breathed some amazing life into otherwise "blah" shooters like Resident Evil: Umbrella Chronicles or Medal of Honor: Frontlines, and I might be overlooking a game or two, but the helicopter action game is all but undiscovered territory for the system's control scheme. And though the system is starved for a game like this done right, Twin Strike misfires on nearly every level.

The first thing that will set off a discerning gamer's radar is Twin Strike's abysmal presentation. The menus are ugly, the game is worse and there hasn't been this much fog on my television set since GTA III, Turok 2: Seeds of Evil or Silent Hill (or, if you prefer, that movie 'The Fog.') Add to that still, static pseudo-anime character portraits (not animated scenes – pictures… motionless pictures) used to tell the boring story and some of the worst voice acting in recent history. You shouldn't expect too much spoken dialogue, though; you'll be reading a lot of the story. And get what? The written text would give an English teacher a stroke. Typos, syntax errors, etc. are way too frequent. Everything about the game looks and sounds so primitive that I spent half the time wondering when Peppy Hare was going to tell me to do a barrel role (Starfox reference… couldn't help myself).

If you could look beyond the fact that Twin Strike is an exceptionally ugly game, by both today's standards and those of, I don't know, ten years ago, you still won't find much to enjoy; playing the game is as much a chore as looking at and listening to it. The game's control scheme makes almost no sense and the missions and objectives you'll be asked to complete are either: a) confusing, b) unreasonably easy, c) insanely difficult or d) some combination of all three.

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