Hey, you remember those slide puzzle games your crazy Aunt would get you for Christmas or your birthday?  You know the ones- you just had to slide some tiles around to put together whatever the picture was.

Did you ever think that would make an interesting video game?   Did you ever think it would make an interesting video game on the Wii?

Well, somebody did, and now we have Rooms: The Main Building.  The concept is pretty simple, there are a bunch of slide puzzles, and you have to solve them.  And it’s just about as difficult in the video game as it is in real life- meaning it takes all of 10 minutes (if you’re slow and take a break) to solve any of them.

Oh, sure, Rooms has added a level of difficulty by putting in Mr. X. How do I explain this without seeming like a raving lunatic?   Screw it, the whole premise is bizarre and crazy anyway. You play Mr X. While going out for smokes or whatever, Mr X gets accosted by a talking book- yep, a talking book- and gets sucked into the Rooms world.   Why?  I don’t know.  It might be explained later on, but it probably isn’t.  Anyway, to get out of the world, you will have to solve the slide puzzles.  Mr X finds himself in a mansion.  The rooms- thus the title of the game- have been chopped up into symmetrical squares and you have to move them about to reassemble the room so X can walk out.  Sounds easy enough, right?

Well, jokes on you because it is.

The only real added difficulty is that you can only move a square that the mysterious Mr X is in.  So, you’ll only be able to move the square your boy is in, and you’ll need to figure out how to get him into the next square you need to move (usually just the click of a button) to get him there.    Which really doesn’t add that much to the difficulty.  But every little bit counts.

I think there’s a story, I’m not sure because I clicked through all that dialog stuff after reading the first couple of word balloons.  It was just too painful to read, honestly.    The talking book thing just turned me off the whole experience.  It felt too much like it was just an excuse to have the guy in the puzzle games.  And honestly, I’d rather just have the puzzle games with an object you had to move into a square before you could move the square than a lame story about a guy and his talking book.

There is an Adventure game portion to Rooms.  Long time readers already know my feelings on Adventure Games.  If you’re here for the first time, hit the way-back machine and read my review of Strong Bad’s Cool Game for Attractive People.  Or click here. Or my review of Broken Sword.   Which ever suits you.

Anyway, I flat out refused to participate in the Adventure portion and just stuck with the puzzles.  Well,  unless the game forced me to solve that part before I could move on in the game.  But, in all honesty, it was so weak-sauce that I hesitate to call it Adventure or even point-n-click.   It’s so weak I can’t even think of a joke about it.

Wait, I’ve got one.  It was so weak that I hesitate to call it Point n-click more like Point n-fail. 

In my Un-Humble Opinion© Rooms: The Main Building has no business being on the Wii. It’s a sub-par game that doesn’t use any of the abilities unique to the Wii or even the graphics power of a 7th gen console.  It’s certainly not worth the new game pricing they’ve put on it.  The only way I can see this game being fun or interesting is an App for an Android phone, Blackberry, or iPhone.   There the casual nature of the game, coupled with an ability to pause or restart a level would make it a engrossing casual game you could play while waiting for a meeting or a friend.   And then only at $2.