Looking at the box for "Brave: A Warrior's Tale" you might be fooled into thinking your getting a brand new platformer IP. But you would be wrong, this is a slightly expanded port of a 4 year old PS2 game. Time has not done much for the title, as the developers used very little of it to add to, or improve nearly anything in the game.

Being an old PS2 game on the Wii, you would come to expect next to nothing extra and This title is no different. The character models are both weird looking and low poly. Featuring enormous hands and feet with tiny bodies. The game also has a weird tendency to flip flop on its graphical presentation. Certain areas of the game just simply seem more finished then others. It features some nasty texture scrolling that hasn't been present since the Dreamcast, it also features objects that literally change as you approach them. As if the game changed its mind during gameplay that certain objects are supposed to be something else. Another huge problem for the game is the shadow effects. They come and go throughout the adventure. This is a crucial element to have in the genre as jumping across platforms is almost dependent on calculating where you are going to land. The camera is naturally not the most helpful, and the angles can really work against the depth perception of the player.

Musically the game has its own shares of problems. Enemy themes are so short that they literally replay over and over. This isn't a smooth repeating like in Zelda titles but rather like someone repeating a 15 second track on a CD. Most of the game is devoid of nearly any music at all, only playing during choice moments. Which is sad, since some of the music is actually pretty decent. Other problems include sound effects dropping out or not happening all together. The voice cast is set amongst cartoon voice actor regulars. They do their job pretty well, even if the script isn't the best. One of the biggest flaws in the game sound wise occurs near the end. The added content includes playing as the titular characters offspring. You get to choose male or female at the start of the game. This is all well and good, but when your playing the last level your characters voice resorts back to that of Brave. Even during cutscenes and even if your a girl. The main villain's voice is also completely different in the new portion of the game, but when you go into battle it reverts back to the older voice grunts. How this got through QA is beyond me as it only took one play through to notice all of it right away.

As noted earlier, the game begins with you picking a boy or girl and then going through a very short tutorial on game mechanics as you make your way from the edge of a cliff back to your village where the, now chief, Brave tells you his story about his ascent to becoming a warrior. Once the flashback kicks in, it literally loads up the PS2 game, which gives you another tutorial on how to play, only in a much cooler set up. The game plays out promisingly enough, teaching you the basic skills that most platformers are accustomed to. You might begin to notice here, that certain actions in the game world almost seemed custom made for the Wii remote, only they don't use it. hitting stones to create a fire, fishing, ice climbing with axes, aiming with your bow and arrow, none of these actions use the remote or IR at all. They literally just remap buttons from the PS2 title. It is nice to see that a developer doesn't go overboard with waggle, but when the title is 4 years old and the Wii system is almost 3, you begin to wonder why they even bothered to port it in the first place. Combat is as basic and boring as the rest of the game. Amounting to little more then running and swinging your tomahawk around until enemies are dead. This doesn't stop enemies from glitching through your attack and knocking you down though. The story starts out promising, with the revival of the Wendigo demon destroying your village, killing your grandfather, and turning your girlfriend into a zombie. As neat as this sounds, the real Wendigo myth is still much cooler then a basic floating bust of a demon that looks exactly like the Mandalorian symbol on Boba Fett's armor. This sets you out on a quest to find the Spirit Dancer. The hero of legend that imprisoned Wendigo in the Spirit World many years ago. The game is less like platformer gods like Mario and Banjo-Kazooie, and closer to Rayman 2. While there is no world map, levels basically consist of you going from point A to B, or finding 3-4 objects of whatever item you need to collect in the given area. To give some credit, the game does try to inject some variety into the mix. You will gradually get new weapons, as well as learn new spells which unfortunately can only be activated at certain plinths. There is also canoe sections which are a little hard to control and only allow you to bump into something four times before sinking. There are flying sections on the back of a giant eagle, which are probably some of the better highlights in the game. There are also a couple sections where you morph into a grizzly bear. Variety in a platformer is always appreciated and almost necessary for success. Unfortunately, they can be hit or miss here.

The game doesn't really seem to interested in being accurate to Native American culture. The look, weapons, objects, and items are all a hodgepodge of different tribes spread across the entire North American continent. The game also makes the cardinal sin of showing Macaroni Penguins in the Arctic circle and if you don't know why that's bad, then you are geographically and anthropologically retarded. One of the most bizarre points in the game comes in during what appears to be the final boss fight against the Wendigo. After getting him to half his life, the game suddenly stops and reverts back to the village with you in control of the offspring of Brave. This transition is completely random, and doesn't even include a cut scene as to why it happened. When you talk to Brave he tells you to go find some totem poles to finish his story in a little text box. After doing this, the Wendigo suddenly appears and its up to you to go through a needlessly long and boring level in the Spirit World and start the fight with Wendigo all over again, which is played out exactly the same way. After you beat Wendigo, the game has a quick cut scene of Brave being proud of you and then resumes with you in the village. There is no ending, no credits rolling, nothing to even signify that you are done with the game. Worst of all you never get to see the end of Brave's story. One could assume that he defeated the Wendigo, and restored his village but its never explained. It is really some of the weirdest and laziest presentation values I Have ever witnessed in a game title. In a strange way its a good example of the title as a whole, its a interesting concept, with a good moment here and there, but ultimately crushed under a unholy union of bad pacing and annoying glitches. It is also completely inexcusable considering the fact that this title was finished 4 years ago.