Spectrobes: Origins (Wii)

This is the latest offering in a successful franchise that has enjoyed a good reign on the Nintendo DS.

Now it steps up to the big-time on the Wii and does so in commendable fashion. Due to Batman and friends dominating this page I will have to cut a long story short. Spectrobes are creatures that you have to find by excavating fossils.

Finding them is great fun. The excavating aspect of the game utilises the mechanics of the Wii perfectly with you having to drill and hammer the fossils to reveal the Spectrobes.

When you have carefully extracted the Spectrobes you nurture them and train them up ready for the battlefield.

This is where the nitty gritty nuts and bolts side of the game takes over in a real-time battle scenario. The action is very fast paced and the battle mechanics are fun and responsive if somewhat repetitive.

The action is very hack and slash but combined with a Final Fantasy style battle involvement from your Spectrobes too.

Great fun all round and as real-time battle games go this is a good one.

Once you have excavated your Spectrobes the fun is only really in the heat of the battle.

Graphics on the game are exactly what you expect from a Disney game - very high quality, Pokemon-esque visual style and some great cartoony characters.

Kids will like it and if I am honest I quite enjoyed it too despite a lack of anything ground-breakingly original. Great storyline and fun for fans of the franchise.

(If we did 3.5 out of 5 I'd give it that. But we don't.)