Eating your veggies becomes fun in Wii 'Munchables' game

— -- If you have fond memories of playing Pac-Man in your youth, your kids now have an opportunity to discover the fun of controlling a large-mouthed character who likes to eat. With Namco Bandai's The Munchables for the Nintendo Wii, kids come to the rescue of a world being attacked by alien veggies and fruits.

So what do you do when faced with a full-scale veggie invasion? You find your most voracious eater and set him or her loose on the invading crop. You play as either Chomper (a boy Munchable) or Munchy (a girl Munchable) and open your large mandibles to devour the interlopers.

All this eating is done in the context of a story about the peaceful but voracious Munchables society whose food is provided to them in great abundance by a set of Legendary Orbs. Space pirates shaped like fruits and vegetables and led by Don Onion have attacked the Munchables' world and stolen their Orbs. These bad guys are now arriving in hordes to put down their vegetarian roots. Luckily, they taste good to your Munchable character who has been recruited by the Great Elder to save the Munchables' world.

The Munchables' world is made up of eight distinct islands. You must munch your way through alien invaders in three levels on each of these islands, with the last level always containing a very large fruit or vegetable "boss" pirate who is harder to defeat than the other pirates found around the islands.

While the game's mechanic of eating up your enemies is pretty straightforward — approach and press the "A" button to eat him — there is more to the game play than that. By eating lots of fruit and vegetable pirates, your character increases its level designation and also gains size. Each of the pirates has a level designation as well, and your Munchable can only eat enemies that are the same or lower in level. So, when you encounter a giant broccoli pirate who is a higher level than you, if you try to eat it, it will munch you instead. Rather than being devoured, you have two good choices: you can choose to leave and come back after you have eaten more veggies and gained levels; or you can push the "B" button to activate a dash attack that turns you into a whirling ball. When you hit a stronger opponent with this attack, it will break apart into smaller replicas of itself with lower levels each. If you are lucky, they may be lower than you, so you can eat them before they reform into the larger foe. Plus, if your child is new to gaming and could use some help when taking on the boss fights, a second player can use a controller to point and shoot at the strong pirates to break them into smaller, munchable pieces for the main player.