Rating:  Price: $29.99 |
The Good: We haven't really been tasked to play a game on a shoebox before, so at least it tries something new.
The Bad: They should've just called this "Let's Bang Stuff...Very Very Loudly Bang Stuff." We've never been given so many strange looks playing a video game, and that's with games like Wii Fit on the market.
The first (and probably the biggest) issue with the game is that the cover shows hands happily playing on what seems to be a box made specifically for the game, but said box is not included. You'll have to spend some time trying to find an adequate surface to play on. (We chose a shoebox.)
The second problem is the "tap" part of the game's name—it doesn't work. Sometimes? Yes. Enough to keep us from throwing our Wii remote into our TV screen on purpose? No. You're supposed to lay the controller down on a bendable surface and hope that it picks up the vibrations you make when tapping, but even navigating the menu screens will turn you into Christian Bale on a bad day.
The last problem before we turned off the console, laid our head against a pillow and cried ourselves softly to sleep was that there are only five minigames and they are all lame. One of the games has you drumming on your shoebox in rhythm with a very crappy song playing on the screen, a la Guitar Hero. Another is a race through an obstacle course. There's also a Jenga-like minigame that tasks you with removing blocks from a tower and then passing the controller over to the next player so they can do the same until someone messes up. There's a 2D space shooter that would probably serve better as a 99-cent iPhone game. And then, there's what we can only describe as a glorified screensaver. Tap on your shoebox and fireworks and water ripples appear on your television. That's the game. Hey grandma, do we have the game for you!
Buy, Rent, or Disembowel: We're convinced this is listed on the U.S. list of torture techniques, so, no, let's not tap.