Welcome to another installment of Wiikly WiiWare Wiiview. The games this week are Dracula: Undead Awakening and Max & The Magic Marker. Ah, a nice mellow week. There isn’t anything too particularly new or innovating this week, but depending on who you ask, we’ve got a couple of decent titles that may be worth your attention…

Dracula: Undead Awakening
Originally an iPhone game, Dracula: Undead Awakening is of a very rare breed in that it is actually a successful port of a handheld game brought to the Wii. Unlike many ports we have seen in previous months, this one is optimized for television and actually looks halfway decent. And surprise, they even threw in Wii-specific controls. Not much else was changed, but it is very nice to see that they at least had the decency to make it into a Wii game instead of giving us a handheld game that just happens to be on the Wii. With some luck, perhaps other developers (i.e. Capcom) will take a hint. It’s doubtful, but hey, I’m an optimist.

While I feel the need to praise Chillingo for making the effort to bring us an accessible game, I’m not entirely impressed with the game itself. Now, it’s not a bad game per se, it is just of a genre in which I take no particular interest: dual-stick shooters. It seems like no matter how much people try to change their games, they’re all pretty much the same. You start off as a guy with a gun and creatures are making their way towards you. Once you kill enough of them, a better weapon shows up. Continue killing and stronger creatures will appear, as will even better weapons. Rack up enough points and you can unlock a helpful perk that will prolong your life just a bit more. This continues on and on until you finally die. The concept is almost always the same, and Dracula is no exception. For people who actually enjoy this type of game, however, this particular one might be somewhat of a gem, but it has a good handful of problems.

Aside from the main character’s top half moving independently of his bottom half, the game has a nice look to it. The music is forgettable, but not entirely irritating. The weapons are fairly generic, but many of the perks are quite useful, such as recharging health and a psychic force that draws power-ups towards you. For the most part, the game controls well. You use the nunchuk to walk/run and switch weapons—which is far too sensitive, often forcing you to scroll through a few times—while the Wii remote itself is used for pointing and shooting. Aiming this way is smooth and accurate, but for whatever reason, you can’t simply press the B button to fire. You have to actually hold it down for a few seconds before anything happens, which almost got me killed at first, but it didn’t take too long to get used to it. Still odd, though.

If you prefer a more traditional control scheme, playing with the Classic Controller (or a GameCube controller) allows you to play as you normally would, using the left stick to control the protagonist and the right one to automatically shoot in the desired direction. One nice thing about Dracula is that it has a few different modes, unlock most other dual-stick shooters I’ve played. Before playing, you get a choice between Survival, Super Survival, Rush, and Wave Attack. Survival is the normal mode in which you face off against and unlimited number of increasingly-difficult enemies. Super Survival is basically the same but with special power-ups thrown into the mix. Rush is also like Survival, but you get to choose one weapon (out of three) with unlimited ammo. Otherwise, it’s exactly the same.

Wave Attack, if you haven’t guessed, is also pretty much the same, but it is more of a challenge. In this mode, you must face waves of enemies that keep getting bigger and stronger as you progress. Killing enemies will produce collectible gold that can be used at the end of a wave to purchase health, weapons, and ammo. Playing this way involves a bit more strategy and I personally feel that it is the best way to play. Obviously, all of the modes don’t differ a whole lot, but it is still nice to have options because not everyone plays the same way.

Unfortunately, aside from what I’ve already mentioned, there’s not much to the game. It’s entertaining for a little while, but it’s not compelling or interesting enough to keep me from getting bored. Playing until I eventually get overwhelmed and killed by my enemies simply doesn’t appeal to me. I don’t know that there is an audience for this sort of game, however, so if this piques your interest at all, Dracula: Undead Awakening will probably keep you entertained. But it may be worth mentioning that while this costs 1000 points on WiiWare, the same game is only 500 points on DSiWare. And it is just under $3 for the iPhone. This may be something you want to take into consideration if you plan on making a purchase.

Score: 6/10

Max & The Magic Marker
Drawing games are nothing new, especially not with the introduction of the Wii and DS. I have noticed, however, that so few seem to get it right. Incredible Ink was a blast (Why is that not on the DS?!) and the drawing portions of Trine were some of my favorite parts, but most games fall short in this category. Even Okami felt like it was missing something. Max & The Magic Marker, on the hand, manages to pull off the concept quite nicely, despite its simplicity—or perhaps because of it.

The story has a rather fun premise that sounds very much like an episode of ChalkZone: a young boy named Max receives a magic marker in the mail one day. With this marker, he draws a monster named Mustacho who immediately comes to life and escapes into a nearby drawing. In order to catch the beast, Max then draws himself and enters the world of his drawings. And this is where we come in. With magic marker in hand (controlled by the Wii remote), we must draw platforms, bridges, stairs, and more as we navigate safely through the drawings. Perhaps not the most original plot device, but it is ingenious nonetheless.

At its heart, Max & The Magic Marker is a platformer. For the majority of the game, you will spend your time collecting orbs and traversing through various obstacles until you reach the end of each level and move on to the next. It really isn’t anything we haven’t seen a thousand times before, but the physics system and drawing mechanics add this whole new level of imagination that makes the game so fantastically enjoyable. I love the freedom of being able to work through an area in any number of ways. Sure, I could just draw some stairs, but why not make a teeter-totter instead and launch myself up? That’s what I love about a game like this: it’s usually very simple, but with enough imagination, it can be as complicated as you want it to be. It’s the same sort of feeling that made Scribblenauts so great, although perhaps to a different magnitude.

The physics in the game aren’t perfect, but they get the job done. If you try to make your drawings too narrow and tall, they will sway as you make your way up. Objects falling from higher build up more velocity and therefore land with a greater force. Solid objects, of course, are also heavier. So, if you want to make a circle heavier, simply fill it in. The biggest challenge with the drawings is that you have a limited amount of ink. You can collect orbs to fill up your ink well and erasing a drawing will replenish the stock, but there will likely be plenty of times when you find yourself running out at a crucial point in your drawing. Depending on the situation, this could prove fatal for poor Max. And to make matters worse, that jerk Mustacho shows up with a vacuum at each checkpoint and sucks up all of your ink.

As long as you don’t mind putting your brain to work, this should be but a minor setback. To help make things a bit easier for you, you can freeze the world at any time by simultaneously pressing A and B. Upon doing so, everything stops in its place and you are free to draw at your leisure. Just keep in mind that physics and gravity don’t go to work until you unfreeze, so be ready to freeze again if necessary. In addition to being immensely helpful, freezing also completely changes the appearance of the game. While controlling Max, everything is bright and colorful and the world looks just like a cartoon. But when you freeze, everything turns into a child’s drawing—Max’s to be precise. Details are suddenly lost, coloring goes outside the lines, and even Max himself becomes nothing more than a glorified stick figure. It adds a great level of charm to the game and it is quite impressive to think that every level has two distinct designs.

Although it can get a bit repetitive at times when you are stuck in a certain area, the music is very fresh and mostly upbeat. As you progress through each level, it gradually changes its tone into something else, which is really quite nice. And just like the visuals, the music also changes while in the frozen-state drawing mode. Color me impressed. About the only problem I have with this game is that it is so short. There are only three worlds, each with five levels, which probably only provides about an hour of gameplay if you’re taking it easy. With a game like this, there needs to be a lot more content because it’s very easy to get caught up and zip through a couple of levels in only a few minutes. There are unlockable modes—such as the free-draw Playground mode—but it would still be nice if there could be more.

Though it may be shorter than I would like, Max & The Magic Marker is a fantastic game. There were a few rare moments of unfair lack of cooperation on the game’s part, but I’d say this this is probably the best platformer to grace the WiiWare service since Lost Winds. It is a real shame that this isn’t available as DSiWare because it would be a perfect handheld game, but there is always hope, I suppose. The folks at Press Play would make me very happy by announcing such a release. Then once they’ve done that, they should team up 5th Cell because combining elements of Max & The Magic Marker and Scribblenauts is my new idea of the perfect platform game. But now I’m getting ahead of myself, eh? To see what all of the fuss is about without having to blindly spend 1000 points, be sure to check out the Max & The Magic Marker demo.

Score: 9/10

Dracula: Undead Awakening was developed and published by Chillingo Ltd.

Max & The Magic Marker was developed and published by Press Play.

All titles were released for WiiWare in North America on 3/8/2010.