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It's My Birthday Nintendo Wii

Format:
Nintendo Wii

Genre:
Minigames

Style:
Thirdperson

Buy/Support:
Support Josie, click to buy via us...

It's My Birthday offers a solution for busy parents with their all inclusive 'party in a box'. If you have kids you'll know that birthday parties can be hard work, the planning and the partying; how many kids to invite? Where to have it - home or an outside venue? What to eat and most importantly how you are going to keep them all occupied and out of trouble for a couple of hours?!

The game comes in two halves: a party pack including invitations, banners, colouring sheets and a crown for the birthday boy or girl. The other half contains the real reason you'll be buying this - the interactive party games!

It cleverly enables you to set up your Wii party before all the kids descend on you. You enter the name and age of the birthday child and names of the other children who'll be playing. You can customise your children too with hair colour and clothing. It's great to be able to do all this set up before hand, as there is nothing worse that lots of children getting bored while the grown up spends ages setting up the game.

You can also choose a theme for your party - there are about 10 to choose from, everything from pirates to princesses, army men to stuffed animals. If my daughter is anything to go by, most children will probably want a say in this part of the planning, probably choosing the pinkest theme going!

Once everything is set up you can get your party started. The game starts with an empty party room and you are taken through about 15 games. Each game wins another item for the party room - so that by the end it is choc full of balloons presents streamers and even a banner with your child's name on. I though this was a really nice touch, especially for younger kids who will be really ticked to see their name up on the screen.

The games vary in difficulty - in my opinion, so it's worth having a go yourself before hand, so you can save having upset kids who can't quite manage to pop the balloon or hit the Piņata properly. At the end you all get to sing happy birthday - karaoke style! The whole thing takes about 25 minutes, probably a bit longer with a room full of small children with their varying needs.

Having done a few largish kids parties now I know that timing is essential - too long doing anything and they do tend to start getting bored. This game manages to keep up the momentum with lots of nice quick games, but there are a lot of them and even I was flagging a bit by game number fourteen! I think younger children (under 5's) especially will find this a bit long.

Don't panic though, there is no need to write off the game completely as there is a free play option where you can pick your favourite (or perhaps easier) party games to play. Again a bit of homework done by mum or dad before the party starts could help tweak the best games for your little party-goers.

My kids are still quite little so we are only just getting to the stage when we need something more sophisticated than pass the parcel and musical bump. This year my daughter was six and we had a few of her friends over to our house for her party. After musical bumps (statues, chairs) we kind of ran out of things to do so this would have been ideal to keep them amused for the rest of the afternoon.

Partying at home is definitely where this game is going to work best. It's worth pointing out that the games only cater for 4 players at a time, but the more wii-motes you have (you can have up to four) the less waiting around time there is between goes.

I think this is a great little game which will keep a range of different ages happy for a few birthday's to come. And if it only comes out once or twice a year then they are unlikely to get too bored of the games. I will certainly be giving it a whirl (invitations, banners and all) when my son turns 5 next year - I think it will be right up his street!

Written by Josie Campbell

You can support Josie by buying It's My Birthday



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Josie Campbell writes the Domestic Gamer column.

"As quite a domesticated mum of three I love the thought that Xbox 360, PS3, Wii, DS lite and PSP games can have a practical role around the home and enriching everyday life but also fun to chill out and unwind with too. Here are my Domestic Gamer review, join me to read about all sorts of games, from cooking, health, and family ones too."

Here are the games I've been playing recently:

• Just Dance 3
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