When their city is attacked by a giant robotic mouse, four cats have no choice but to do what they do best- save the world! These four felines may look like ordinary animals, but whenever there is trouble, they are Ninja Captains! These are not my words. They are in fact the first few lines you will read upon opening the instruction booklet for this latest party game on the Wii. If you're not a gamer who takes the time to have a leaf through the manual before delving into your most recent purchase, even just for a quick whiff of that 'New Game Smell', fear not. The entire story is already present on the back of the relatively text-heavy Ninja Captains box.

If you pick the game up from the shelf in your local game store wondering what a Ninja Captain could possibly be, you're unlikely to set the game down again with your curiosity satisfied. You may in fact take a second look at the front of the box and ponder the description given of the cats. They look very unlike ordinary animals! It is at this early stage that you already begin to realise that Ninja Captains is going to consist of a range of minigames tied together by an outrageously incoherent story. The question is - is it any good?

Ninja Captains begins with the ability to create a profile. All that is required is to enter your name, a task made more complex by the need to input each letter as you would when writing a text message with your mobile phone. It is not difficult, but there seems to be no reason why a simple QWERTY keyboard layout, or similar alternative, would not have been a more user-friendly approach. After creating your game file, you can then enter Story Mode, Party Mode or Options. The Options menu is limited to adjusting the volume of the music and sound effects in the game or viewing the credits. Selecting Party Mode at this stage will inform you that you first need to "unlock the game in Story Mode". With nowhere else left to go, other than to return to the user profile screen, the Story Mode is where it all kicks off!/p>

There are four different cats to choose from named Warrior, Gadget, Fat and Clumsy. The Ninja Captains vary in appearance but not in functionality as they all control and perform the same. Disappointingly, there is no way of customising your character and you will have to make do with what is available! The Story Mode can be played individually or with up to three other friends, so it is a relief to know that you don't need to play through the game on your own before you can participate in any multiplayer mayhem with your mates!

After selecting your feline friend, the game treats you to a short introduction with the Ninja Captains watching a large robotic mouse tearing down their city on TV. The cats grab their swords, hop into a taxi to the nearest airport and board a plane. As they enter the plane, they are halted and instructions are then given for the first game that you are about to encounter- Airplane Absurdity. And it is absurd! Apparently, there is a storm which is making the passengers on the plane sick and it is up to you to run up to each of the sick passengers and help them by handing them a sick back. The Wii Remote and Nunchuk are displayed with the appropriate actions required to undertake the task ahead. The analogue stick or D-Pad moves your character around but to give passengers a sick bag you shake the Wii Remote up and down to "Heal" them. How shaking a sick bag in someone's face is going to make anyone feel better is beyond me, but with 500 points needed to progress to the next game, it's time to waggle!

As you enter the game, you see four rows of seats consisting of four passengers in each row with Warrior, Gadget, Fat and Clumsy assigned to different rows. Everyone on the plane has a thermometer above their head that indicates how close they are to throwing up. As the temperature of a passenger rises, it is up to you to walk over to them and shake the Wii Remote in order to hand them their sick bag and steadily bring their temperature down within the a time limit. It seems completely illogical, but each time you bring down a person's temperature you are awarded points for your trouble. If the task at hand wasn't embarrassing enough, the fact that the temperature of each passenger increases at random, making it impossible to travel to each of them in time in order to heal them successfully, makes for an extremely frustrating first game.

After completion of Airplane Absurdity, the story advances with another cut scene which sees the Ninja Captains kicked off the plane to a new location. The entirety of Story Mode revolves around this basic formula of watching a short cartoon, featuring the same infuriating piece of music every time, followed by playing a mini-game. You'll travel through London, New York, Paris and more performing a wide range of actions in outrageous activities to achieve the score necessary to advance. If you fail to pass a game on five occasions, a Baby Mode will be offered which lowers the score required to 250 points. When a particular game has been cleared, it is added to the Party Mode where it can be played any time in order to improve your score. The main problem here is that scores are never recorded. A Bronze Shuriken is awarded for achieving at least 500 points in a game, a Silver Shuriken is awarded for surpassing 700 points and a Gold Shuriken is given to those who make it past the 800 point mark. In Party Mode, each game is marked with an appropriate medal but you never know exactly how many points you achieved. Unfortunately, this means that achieving a Gold Shuriken on each of the 20 games will mean that there is no other reason to return to any of the activities other than for fun.

If the game was fun, this would be less of a problem, but the lack of quality and depth throughout Ninja Captains is damning. Whilst some of the games almost trigger a sense of enjoyment, such as Rail Road Ride which sees you tilt and jump to avoid obstacles as you travel along a railway line on a mine cart, and Running of the Bulls where you must stay far enough ahead of a rampaging bull as you jump over televisions (yes, televisions) and slide under brick walls, no single game on the disc truly excels. The entire package is devoid of fun and most activities either offer no enjoyment or the control scheme implemented makes little sense. Generally, it is a combination of the two.

In Blundering Barbers, for instance, the Ninja Captains find themselves somewhere where "cutting tribespeople's hair is the only way to get out alive". As ridiculous as that sounds, what is more preposterous is that a random line of stars appears on screen and you have ten seconds to draw your way along it, from start to finish, with the help of the Wii Remote pointer and the A-Button. The input required bears no resemblance to the task being undertaken and what adds to the list of inconsistencies is the fact that no hair actually gets cut!

Despite the often strange use of Wii controls, they do, for the most part, respond quite well. However, you never feel like the Wii Remote and Nunchuk are being utilised to their full potential, or in fact anywhere near it. As most games only last a minute, it doesn't take long before you've moved from one game to the next and indeed one control scheme to the next.

With only 20 games included in Ninja Captains, each of such minimal length, you don't need to be particularly good at mathematics to understand that Story Mode is over extremely abruptly. The fact is, unfortunately, that you'll probably have already put more time into the game than it ultimately deserves.

Mentioned earlier, however, is the inclusion of Party Mode. In this section of the game, up to four players can compete in any game of their choice, providing it has been unlocked via Story Mode. Although there is no way to save high scores, it is also impossible to record who achieved Gold, Silver or Bronze Shurikens for any particular level as every game is played under one user profile.

Players are also unable to select a variety of games to play in consecutively to see who reigns supreme after a certain number of events. Games can only be played individually offline and in the same form they appear in Story Mode. There is no online mode, but even that would have been unlikely to save it. The complete lack of options cripples Ninja Captains to the point where you'll probably have finished with the game in one play session.

Ninja Captains is another weak mini-game collection to throw on the ever-increasing pile on Wii. Although the developers attempted to inject humour into proceedings with the story and cut scenes, the game fails to deliver on any level. The in-game graphics fail to inspire and the handful of barely tolerable activities are vastly outweighed by the mundane. Most of the game, at the very least, functions just about adequately apart from an occasion, which was repeated, where an on-screen meter inexplicably disappeared when balancing plates by tilting the Wii Remote. However, Ninja Captains is not a game that will hold your interest for long, young or old, and can't really be recommended for purchase or rental. Overall, it is tremendously disappointing.

Final scores lie below...