Coming from almost out of nowhere, Namco-Bandai quietly announced and released The Munchables for the Nintendo Wii early this year.  Made from an internal team, the best way to describe The Munchables is like a love child between Pac-Man and Katamari Damacy.

Graphically, The Munchables has more going for it, especially as a Wii title. It vaguely resembles other titles such as Dewey's Adventure. The world is bright and colorful, but more importantly, the title makes good use of shaders and mapping techniques to make objects look round and smooth. This avoids trademark rough edges around polygons. It is a good thing as well, as The Munchables is a game where nearly all the character designs resemble some round ball shape.

Musically, this game seems to balance between being god-awful and catchy techno. There is no voice acting except for three cutscenes, and for what it is worth it is done well enough. Each stage features its own music. This can be a plus, except for when the music is grating.

The Munchables lets players use the Nunchuck, Classic, or GameCube controllers. The controllers are really simple. You move with a joystick, press a button to eat, another to attack, and a third to jump. There is also a lock button but it's hardly even worth using and the entire game can be completed without it. The object of the game is simple: Vegetable aliens have invaded your homeworld and you retaliate back by eating them. Using a simple to understand level system, you start off small and eat your way up. Like Katamari, the more you engulf the bigger you get. The level system is almost pointless as the Great Elder, the narrator of the game, determines your starting level at the beginning of each stage. As you gain levels, you grow larger. All enemies have a level as well, and those above yours can be attacked which splits them into smaller versions of themselves with lower levels. If you somehow manage to get hit while not in an eating or attacking animation you simply mash the jump button to recover. You can do this infinitely, as there is no actual health bar or meter. This becomes one of the problems with the game, as I only managed to die once and I am fairly certain that was a glitch.  Once you are hit the game goes into a sort of panic mode quicktime event giving you lots of time to mash the jump button. The rest of the game is even simpler: you mash the eat button constantly to win. You can hold down the eat button and do a turbo charge which propels your character forward with his/her mouth open, but it's not ever required. There are also lots of powerups that mostly all involve eating nearby enemies faster. There is only one type of enemy that can damage you if eaten and they turn out to be more frustrating then challenging.

The Munchables is pretty much a one trick pony. For 24 levels you simply hover around the areas mashing the eat button until you have grown to the highest level allowed in the level. The more you eat, the higher your level ranking is. Also throughout each level are a number of acorns, and eating all the acorns in a level unlocks a new accessory to put on your Munchable. Defeating the boss of a world gives you an accessory, as well. That is pretty much the only replay incentive and its' not much as the clothing is purely aesthetic.  Beating the game unlocks a mirror mode with time limits on the levels, but it's hardly enticing enough to go back through. It is not a bad game, as everything works the way it is supposed to, and there is definitely an addictive quality to mindlessly eating everything you come across like Katamari Damacy. However, it doesn't change the fact that there is little to no variety in the levels besides the looks -- one level takes place underwater and is the only time the mechanics of the game change ever so slightly. Even at its asking price, there are much higher quality alternatives on the system, even from Namco-Bandai themselves.