Guinness World of Records: The Videogame

Guinness World of Records: The Videogame

It seems like such a natural match that it’s incredible quite how long it’s taken for videogames and the world’s foremost collector of records to come together. Sad too, perhaps, that many will dismiss this as little more than another child-orientated minigame collection for the Wii when, in fact, it’s a far more interesting proposition.

Guinness World of Records presents players with 36 minigame tasks, all based to one extent or another on real life records. So, through the course of the game, you’ll get to see how quickly you can shear a flock of sheep, how high you can jump on a BMX bike, how long it takes you to eat a plate of cockroaches and how far you can fling a cow pat. The games are silly but all are presented brilliantly, making full and intelligent use of the Wii controls and revealing hidden depths the more you play.

These depths are important because, not only are you competing against your friends and family but also everyone else who owns the game worldwide. During every minigame your current score displays in the top left hand corner of the screen. Below that sits the top score that’s been recorded on your Wii. If you manage to beat that score during play, the game displays the best score recorded by players in your county. Manage to beat the county champion’s score and you’re now aiming for the prize of national champion. Finally, if you manage to become the best in your country, the game displays the actual world record holding score, which, if beaten, wins you the title of best in the world. At throwing cow pats.

The system constantly updates the global leaderboards so you’re always going for the current leading score and the structure ensures that the challenge is continuously relevant, whether your trying to beat your weird uncle’s best effort or that of some dexterous wunderkind in New York.

Unfortunately, the game only allows you to enter up to eight characters for your name so, while it's possible to be king of the world, nobody’s going to know your first name AND your surname. Nevertheless, the constant challenge to beat your rivals on a local and a global scale, and the witty, intelligent and well-executed minigames make this one of the best Wii titles this year, suitable for solitary players and families alike.

4 out of