Review:
Stop Stress: A Day of Fury Review (WiiWare)

Although on paper, Stop Stress may sound like a brilliant idea. Your average Joe, wreaking his terrible revenge on the seemingly mundane objects that have been the cause of so much stress. However, you will have learnt by now that things are rarely what they say on the tin, and this game is no exception. In practice it is a poorly crafted attempt at recreating the supposedly thrilling experience of…..swatting flies. Really, am I paying money for this?

The game itself consists of several tedious levels in which our ‘hero’ wanders his daily environment causing havoc, in an attempt to alleviate himself of the stresses of modern life. The player achieves this smash ‘em up gameplay by vigorously shaking their wii remote at incoming enemy; these are a tedious array of unintimidating villains, including insects, security guards and bizarrely, what seem to be little men from traffic lights. To crush your adversaries a selection of run of the mill weapons are assigned at various stages throughout the game (baseball bat axe etc.) but to start with you are simply allocated a slipper with which to complete your first enthralling task of finding alarm clocks. Although the level is a bit of a bore this could be understandable, were it not for the almost total lack of any improvement, after all how many first level tutorials are the engrossing height of excitement?

The second level finds your avatar trapped in nightmare traffic jam, at last, you think, something I can relate to. Well maybe not. But at least this level shows a bit of promise, and is where the game begins to get slightly fun, if only it wasn’t the peak of the games entertainment. Also this level introduces the first, and only range attack, consisting of an apparently bottomless bag of rubble, best suited for launching at the constant stream of security personal who seem slightly fed up with your characters hulk-like antics.

Once you have broken out of the worlds worst traffic jam your next stress filled location awaits; the office. Strangely the only co workers you encounter are more of the same endless security guards, who seem present in every aspect of your life, and rather than an annoying query or task from your least favourite colleague the workplace’s source of annoyance comes from one of the easily stressed out’s arch nemesis’s. phones! Although virtually smashing up that annoying little beeper may not have the same satisfaction that would come with actually chucking your blackberry into a brick wall, it is certainly one of the games few high points. From here on however the game takes a dramatic dive from an already mediocre standard, to a new level of pointlessness, poor graphics and frankly boredom. This monotony is chiefly due to the games linear playing pattern which requires players to move to specific locations, gives no free play element, and enforces needless backtracking which in turn leads to further lackluster scraps against the now tiresome range of enemies.