At face value, a title with over 30 different games to play might seem like fantastic value for money, like that boxed Compendium of Games that you always got for Christmas as a kid.

But if only half a dozen or so of the games are actually worth playing, then that apparent good value quickly turns into nothing more than a rip-off, a scam even.

And that’s where the irony appears in New Carnival Games on the Wii. As we all know, Carnival games are basically scams – they’re designed to look easy, but be almost impossible to win. They’re designed to entice you to part with your money for, at best, a crappy little toy that probably worth half of what it cost you to play.

Luckily it’s hard, but not impossible to win in 2K Play’s New Carnival Games, but when you do, the feeling is a hollow one. In these 30-odd carnival-styled games, you can win a selection of over 300 ‘virtual’ toys that can’t be exchanged for anything useful. (insert sarcastic “WOOHOO!” here).

You get tickets too, which can be used to play a couple of side-games. One of which is the Amazing Zameer that some of you will remember from a similar machine in the movie ‘Big’. If only it would do the reverse and change me into an eight-year-old, I might actually get some mild enjoyment out of the game. Tickets can also be used to unlock even more cosmetic options for your character, but you’d have to be mindnumbingly bored to actually give a fat rat’s.

What makes it even worse it that many of the games are almost unplayable as the control method, even with the compulsory Wii MotionPlus, is just not sensitive enough. Take the basketball/basket shooting game for example, I found myself firing the ball so hard against the backboard that if it was real life I would have been knocked flat on my arse by the rebound. Yet if I tried to compensate for the superhuman strength in my arm, the ball would usually flop out of my hand only a few centimetres away. I just couldn’t help but think that the whole package would have been better suited to PlayStation Move and its superior sensitivity.

To begin with, up to four players can choose their Mii-like character from male or female, boy or girl and customise their appearance with a quite impressive array of options. I’m still scratching my head as to why you’re not allowed to use your actual Mii in the game, yet can make a character that looks just like one – it’s one of those things that shall forever remain a mystery I guess.

Many would say that the Wii has always been a ‘family console’ and for so long it has had pretty much one thing going for it – motion control. But now that Xbox and PlayStation have come to the party and shown the gaming world just what can be achieved (and no doubt the best is yet to come), then the Wii has lost a significant edge. It’s now very much the cheap option for family gaming, it’ll soon be to gaming what Transonic is to HDTV’s.

So what games it does offer need to be either perfectly executed, or aimed towards the youngest members of the family. New Carnival Games clearly falls into the latter category. The control method is mostly broken, although I guess I would get some sense of satisfaction from winning an ‘imaginary’ goofy looking plush unicorn if I were a six-year-old girl. New Carnival Games is a rainy weekend hire at best.

If someone were to make a gritty adult version, with shades of the Fable II or Gangs of London pub games, based in a dark, dingy carnival with pitties chained to caravans and filthy, scrappy carnies waiting to rob you of your wallet either at knifepoint or by a quick wager – that’d be a game worth playing.