This little holiday bundle actually has multiple games in it, so lets start with Deck The Halls. In this game, you have to match three of the holiday emblems in order to get points. That's really all there is to it. A problem with this game however lies with the screen. For a grid based game that requires exact positions, you would expect it to take up more of the screen. It doesn't however, and you have to get up and get closer to your TV in order to make the movements. Or I had to at least.
Next is Santa's Sleigh. In this game, you have to help Santa get the presents to give to the kids, and help him deliver them. Its a two phase game you see. In the first phase, you have to move the pointer around the screen to pick up the falling presents (is that how Santa gets them?). Next, you have to use the pointer to launch the presents down the chimneys of each house. How launching them straight down every chimney makes the presents end up under the tree is beyond me, but I digress. In the multiplayer, presents in different colors actually have purpose, as only the player corresponding to that present can collect it, and most chimneys require those different colored presents, meaning all players have to work together in order to make sure that all houses have ask the presents they need.
Next up is Reindeer Games. In this game, you play as a reindeer attempting to prove that you have what it takes to fly Santa's sleigh. The only way to to this? Launch yourself as high as you can by bouncing off of presents. As is the logical thing to do. Maybe the leftovers presents from this game are the ones falling from the sky in Santa's Sleigh. Anyways all you have to do is move around and bounce on the presents to get higher. Some presents have perks like launching you up higher and things of the sort, so try to get those whenever you can. In short, it's Doodle Jump if you were a reindeer instead of a little green something and the aliens and monsters went back to attacking Ravenholm.
So Candy Cane Lanes. In this game you play as Santa as he plays a nice game of bowling with his elves. And by that I mean he uses them as the pins. Jeez what a freaking jerk. Of course the game tries to justify this by saying the ball only tickles them. Okay fine, I can buy the ball only tickling them. But you know what still hurts? Falling down a pit. But besides the strange premise, it's actually a pretty solid bowling game. That being said, it plays almost exactly like Wii Sports Bowling, so the only thing here is the winter motif. That and the elves as pins, but enough about that.
In Present Catch, you control an elf trying to bounce all of Santa's presents to his Ghostbusters-esque bag so he can load them up in his sled. Wait, if he loads the presents here, then why does he need to collect the ones falling from the sky? Anyways you move left and right to be under the presents to bounce them over. Sometimes obstacles will show up from the side and you have to avoid bouncing them. And sometimes multiple presents will show up and you have to bounce both of them. AND sometimes Santa will leave to load up the sleigh and you have to keep juggling the presents on screen until he comes back. Its quite the fun game actually, and one of the better ones in this collection.
In Hot Chocolate, the elves are stupid busy and stupid cold, so its up to you to solve one of their two problems by making hot chocolate. The elves will have specific requests, so you have to remember what each one wants and get the correct ingredients in each. Once the ingredients are in, you'll have to mix them up to get the hot chocolate. This game is just a very simple version of Cooking Mama, so there's not much to see here.
Now that's it for all the games, but We Wish You A Merry Christmas offers more than just it's minigames. First off there's the Christmas Carols. Everyone loves Christmas songs. At least you do for the first seven times you hear them. We Wish You A Merry Christmas offers you a jukebox to listen to a large number of Christmas songs to listen to, all with their respective lyrics on screen to sing along to. That said however the people singing are...a little less than great. I'm not saying I could do better, but the singers could've done a better job. But its good for the sheer number of songs that you can choose from. But you won't want this game running with this jukebox when your opening presents on Christmas Day. You'll see why later.
As another addition to your digital Christmas, you can decorate your own Christmas tree! Just grab those ornaments and put them on the tree. And unlike real life, you don't have to worry about dropping them and having to clean up the mess! However, also unlike real life, you only have so many to choose from, so your creative freedom is actually quite limited. The changes are purely cosmetic, but it does bring a little bit of charm to your little room.
There's also a little eye-spy game, where you have to try to find all of the things that the game asks you to find. They're charming little Christmas themed finding games that serve no purpose other than to kill time. Some can actually get sort of hard, but overall, this addition is a bit weak, and there's not much I can say about it. I just mentioned it so that people know it's there.
You can also send letters to Santa. I bet we all remember spending hours thinking of everything our little hearts desired and writing it down for Santa as kids, sending all of our Christmas wishes to the North Pole to see them come true on the 25th. Sorry, got caught up in the old days. Anyways, here you can write down said Christmas wishes and send them to the big man himself. Through and through, this part is clearly for kids, so parents or older players probably won't find anything here interesting. But for the little ones, its charming beyond belief, so look forward to that.
In order to say that I mentioned it. There's this little fire place in the room. Simply put, its just there to give a little atmosphere to the room. You can put logs in it to make the fire a tad bit bigger, and you can change the color to give more personality to the room. That's all there is to it, but it does what one would expect. It's better that the Wii Store fireplace you got to give it that.
But the big appeal outside of the minigames is the Advent Calender. For those who don't know, an Advent Calender is a calender that has 25 different slots in it, one for each day in December leading up to Christmas. For each day you open up the slot to receive whats inside. Unlike in real life, where you would get a piece of chocolate or something of the sort, here you get things like ornaments for the tree or different carols to play in the jukebox. Its meant to serve as a reason to play this game every day in December, but if you miss a day, you can open whatever day you missed the next time you play the game, so there's no need to worry.
When it's all said and done, it'll be the 25th before you know it, and there'll be a special visitor waiting for you when you boot up the game. Yes on Christmas Day Santa Claus himself will show up in your house to say "Merry Christmas" and "Ho Ho Ho" and...not much else actually. This is actually why you don't want to use the jukebox on Christmas Day. On top of the singers being very meh, Santa will not hesitate to speak over the song that's playing. For some of the faster songs you probably won't notice, but when the slowness of Hark the Herald Angels Sing is interrupted by a very loud "Merry Christmas!", you can't help but notice why Santa being there for a prolonged period of time can be less than good. Santa's appearance is charming, but not much else.
In fact, charming is the prefect word to describe We Wish You A Merry Christmas. It's a bunch of little minigames with some non-game activities that are meant to appeal to children, and get people in the holiday spirit in the month of December. That said after Christmas is over this game will be collecting dust until next December, but for what it offers for what period of time it needs, it's a great holiday game, and a few weak additions can't hold back the extreme charm that this game has. For a little holiday charm, this game is worth picking up, even if you will only be playing it for a month each year. However, the game has gotten sort of pricey due to it's age, so if the holiday charm doesn't mean that much to you, you'll want to pass up We Wish You A Merry Christmas, as you'll be spending about $50-60 for a new copy.
The Silent Protagonist would like to wish everybody a merry Christmas and hopes that everybody has a great rest of the holidays. Onward to 2014!
Now if you'll excuse him, he's going to go play Fire Emblem Awakening for the next two weeks.
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