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• Reviewed on: Nintendo Wii
• Also available for: Nintendo DS
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• The Good: Original property. Fun multiplayer mode. Plenty of things to collect and unlock. Some enjoyable mini-games.
• The Bad: Awkward incorporation of the D-pad. Primitive graphics. Super-annoying music.
• The Verdict: Works well with others but careless about personal appearance: B+
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Anomalies like Manhunt 2 and Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles aside, the Nintendo Wii has firmly established itself as the console of choice for casual gamers and kids — and the party games just keep on coming. The latest, EA Playground, is a new intellectual property developed by EA Canada that's set in an elementary schoolyard during recess.

Clearly geared toward kids, the game revisits playground classics such as tether ball, paper airplane flying and wall ball as bite-sized challenges that are designed to be played in quick bursts with minimal frustration. Players can take their pre-teen character on a stroll around the free-roaming playground environment and speak with other children to challenge them to their game of choice.

EA Playground boasts seven mini-games in total — which, when you think about it, isn't really that much to boast about when compared to the likes of Mario Party or even Viva Pinata Party Animals. To be fair, however, each game has three variations based on difficulty that get unlocked when you conquer the previous one. Once you've beaten the main challenge, the children will have additional "dares" for you to try too, such as completing a slot car lap in less than 15 seconds or dodging five balls in a row on the dodgeball court. There are also a handful of extra playground challenges that can be completed alone, including dribbling a basketball and catching butterflies.

The games are each fun in their own way, but there are a few standouts. Wall ball, the playground equivalent of handball, evokes memories of the simplistic yet excellent tennis game from the Wii Sports collection. The fast-paced slot car courses, with four lanes, power-ups, nitro boosts and plenty of bumping and grinding, was another challenge I found myself coming back to.

Besides bragging rights, if you win mini-games and dare challenges you'll be rewarded in the two currencies of the playground: stickers and marbles. You can trade marbles with a special schoolmate called the Sticker King for special stickers that bestow new skills and moves that'll help you in the mini-games.

Once everything's unlocked — and with 48 stickers to collect, 4 areas to explore and 65 dares to complete, it'll take a while — multiplayer mode is what you'll keep coming back to. Up to four friends can challenge each other in one-off matches or tournaments, tweaking settings like location, difficulty level, power-ups and other game-specific features. There's also a Quick Play single-player feature that lets you go straight into a game without navigating the playground.

Since EA Playground is designed with children in mind, it's worth noting that the game isn't tied to any TV or movie license like so many kids games are, and aside from a small plug for Boogie (another EA title) in the main menu, it's also free of corporate sponsorship and in-game ads.

However, that's not enough to earn the game an A+. The jagged graphics leave a lot to be desired, and the primitive music is especially annoying. There's one particularly plodding and repetitive theme that's like torture to the ears. This isn't hyperbole — I actually did come close to screaming after being exposed to it for an extended length of time. In fact, it made me do something I've never done before in a video game: mute the music.

The stunning Super Mario Galaxy has shown us what games are capable of looking and sounding like on the Wii, so there's no excuse for EA Playground to come out looking like it belongs back on the Nintendo 64. There's also no reason why young gamers should be short-changed when it comes to production values.

I also took issue with the awkward incorporation of the Wii remote's directional pad to for moving characters around. The D-pad is fine if the Wii remote is being held sideways like a traditional controller, but most of the mini-games in EA Playground also require the player to point at things or wave the remote like a wand, meaning the D-pad has to be operated with the thumb.

(The best example is Dodgeball, where you move your character with the D-pad but swat the remote to dodge or throw). It's not an ideal setup, and it's puzzling why the Nunchuk attachment wasn't simply incorporated as the way to move the player while the Wii remote in the other hand is used to swat, point or tilt.

EA Playground still gets a passing grade though, in spite of its faults. It's refreshing to see a game that's free of violence, cynicism and corporate interests, and that isn't trying to hock a new mascot (or milk an old one). The game really is just that: a playground where kids can play.