Customer Reviews

Cranium Kabookii

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(8)

 

 

Cranium is basically the best board game ever created. I not only speak for myself but for everyone else I know that has played the board game. It's a mixture of Pictionary, Trivial Pursuit, Charades and more.

Last weekend we had a little party and decided to pick up the Wii version of Cranium. The game itself seems solid and was fun to play. The game still requires you to draw, unscramble words and more just like the board game. A cool feature is that the answer to the question is displayed onscreen but is all jumbled up. You need a special set of glasses that are included in the game to decipher what you need to draw. It's a really cool feature.

Drawing onscreen seems user friendly. Some drawings require you to simply draw in one color while some others allow you to use multiple colors. The closer you hold the Wiimote to the TV the thicker the lines will be. Another cool feature.

Only one Wiimote is needed with this game since only one team plays at a time.

We played 2 games so far and it seems like a solid little game. I just have 2 small complaints though.

1) The price. At $50 you can actually buy the Cranium board game which is probably easier to transport to a friends house than a Wii.

2) Loading. Sometimes the loading seems a little long between questions. It's not so much a big deal when playing a group game like this because everyone is talking most of the time. If this were a single player game you would notice to loading times but since it's a group game we really didn't find it too much to worry about

I bought this game for my family since we are avid fans of the Cranium game series. Once we popped it in we were very pleased overall with the quality of gameplay. After playing it a few times I now see what can be considered major flaws in the gameplay itself. You are given a pair of "decoder goggles" so that they can display the answer to the person that needs to be drawing or acting. In truth it is not really hard to see the answer even without the goggles and it never surprises me that inevatably there is someone on one of the teams that tries to cheat. To tell you the truth its hard not to when you must look at the screen to see what the person is drawing and the answer is staring at you from below. This is a small flaw but it is annoying like I said because there is someone always willing to WIN WIN WIN rather than play honestly. The other big problem I am having is when you must act out some of the things on the screen with the wii remote. I think the remote has a hard time distingushing between some of the motions and instead you end up frustrated trying to "hammer" in a nail and it still won't recognize it. Some of the game transitions are slow but they are well worth the wait and I figure it gives you tie to get up off the couch and get ready. Someone reviewed this game upset that you couldn't chose the seperate challenges but you can't do that but rarely in the board game anyway, so I wouldn't expect that to be a surprise to many people.

Overall this is a good game. Not a great game but at least one that should keep your family entertained a couple of nights a month.

Rent this game before purchasing it.

I believe this game detracts from the Cranium brand's value. Several of the "minigames" are sub par, and the interface is distracting at times.

The goggles could be a neat gimmick, but the implementation of the hidden word makes it somewhat easy for players to cheat.

Also, the minigame that instructs you to act out certain actions with your back turned to the TV is nearly impossible. The Wiimote does not communicate with the sensor bar properly with an adult human directly in its way.. I know it's a bluetooth interface, but it still doesn't work.

2 stars for a few hours of fun, but definitely not worth more than 20 bucks.

Well we are big Cranium players from when it came out as a board game. I was unsure how it would translate to a video game console. It works!

Very fun to play with at least 4 people, this game makes a party all by itself. There are several new games on the the console version from the board game. Each is easy to play and do on the Wii.

My only detraction is a couple of games are not as responsive to input as the others, making it difficult to judge if the player is actually controlling it correctly and not if they have the answer right. Once over that hurdle the game is really a blast!

My friends, family, and I love this game. We play with just adults, mix it up with the kids, and the kids play on their own. Everybody gets a kick out of it, and so far, we haven't had repetition with the questions. The one complaint I have is that we seldom land on some of our favorite categories (like Song Pong and the geography one). But in a way, that's good, because it keeps us cheering and livens up the spins.

Cranium Kabookii is, in my experience, about as much fun as the board game from the same folks. The greatest weakness seems to me to be that the balance of questions can be odd (you may get a very easy question followed by one that seems totally obscure) If there is some sort of algorithm operating to give harder questions to folks who get a bunch right in a row (or easy questions to folks who keep missing them) I don't know what it is. Games usually remain competitive though, because of the also seemingly random assignment of points to various questions/activities. Sometimes solving something will get you five points, other times, two. We haven't figured out how the game decides point values.

These gripes aside, the game itself plays very well. I have played the game with people from age 11-65 and there were only minimal difficulties adjusting to the controls. Even the "Star Performer" activities, which have been much maligned in other reviews, have been fairly straightforward. I can't help but feel that the people who have trouble with these gesturing activities may simply not be following the game's instructions properly-- every time I've played, things have gone just fine.

It's almost a prerequisite that Cranium Kabooki be played with a group. I'd say four people is the bare minimum, but the more the better. The load-times are usually just quick enough to avoid being momentum killers, and all-in-all everyone with whom I've played the game has had a good time. We usually only play the game once or twice though; I think it works best as one of a number of games on a game night-- it could get old if it were the sole attraction.

Definitely worth keeping in one's Wii party games library, I think. It's a solid 3 out of 5.

A Cranium game for Wii has so much potential, but this is probably one of the most disappointing game/entertainment purchases I have ever made.

One of the most frustrating aspects of this game is the lack of ability to choose which mini game you would like to play and play them again if you would like. To play the game, you are forced to spin a wheel that randomly selects a mini game, and that's the mini game that you must play. There is no opportunity to go back and *just* play an art or trivia game for a little while, for example. Imagine what it would be like to Play Wii Sports without the ability to control which sport you play when and being forced to play all of them, even if you don't like the boxing or golfing mini games - that's a little bit what it feels like.

In addition to not having the flexibility to choose and replay mini games, the loading time between each game is borderline unbearable. I haven't timed it, but I would guess almost a minute between each game which feels VERY long, and I usually don't get impatient about that kind of thing.

Also - here are some mini games that involve reading text on the screen with a pair of special glasses that are provided. While the glasses are kind of fun (provided that you don't lose them), the font that the game uses is illegible and ambiguous! I could not read the text on the screen roughly 50% of the time, which definitely ruins the experience.

Lastly - the whole game uses about two audio tracks. The music and sound is so annoying, I had to put my TV on mute.

I really wish I had more positive things to say about this game - it has some cool ideas but unless Cranium decides to release a new version of this game (which almost ever happens) with load time fixes and the ability to select mini games, I strongly urge you to not waste your money on this fun-sounding but lousy, boring and frustrating game.

The only reason why I am not giving this game 1 star is because the good ideas are there - they're just terribly done.

Visually pretty and clever audio provides game-show style entertainment for the "contestants". The puzzles are a series of mini-games that are often require one team member to communicate the answer to another team member through pictures, symbols or word substitution in a manner similar to Charades, Pictionary and several other popular traditional games.

However several of the mini-games are poorly executed with clumsy controls that fail to exploit the power of the Wii. The grafitti game in particular is cumbersome to control and with a timer, this makes for frustrated and unhappy children.

Save your pennies and buy a better game like Smarty Pants, or perhaps the original board games from which Kabooki borrows so much.

I was hesitant to buy this due to some negative reviews, but am glad that I went with my gut and bought it anyways. Yes, it does have some kinks such as the fact that you can kind of see the puzzles that are supposed to only be seen with the special glasses, but that is easily fixed by not allowing the person who is guessing to look at the game. We have played this with several adult couples and everyone has enjoyed it. I wouldn't say that it is better than or will replace the board game Cranium, but it is definitely a nice chance of pace and offers a new variety of entertainment. Many Wii games seem to be aimed at children, but this is a game that adults should find enjoyable. I recommend this game as a great party game for anyone who enjoys zany trivia games.

This game follows the board games exactly. Very fun for a family with younger kids (5-tween). Good game for the price. I'm glad I bought it.