The first few levels introduce the basic design concepts you’ll need to succeed. Puzzles get far trickier and more complex further along in the game. Along the way you must pick up all the red coins in a given level, while nabbing gold coins unlocks additional goodies. In most cases, there’s no single pre-determined track design that’s correct to use. Rather, you’ll piece together the solution by heavily experimenting through trial and error. It can be frustrating in later levels to have to continually go back and tweak very minor sections of track to achieve the desired effect, but it’s very rewarding when you find the right combination to succeed. Overall, this new way to play is really a lot of fun and complements the freestyle elements excellently.

Using the Wii Remote to draw freehand track works fairly well, though it’s not quite as fluid a feeling as drawing with the PC mouse or DS stylus. Fortunately, there are line drawing tools that let you lay out track and then adjust its curve by grabbing and manipulating certain points along the line. This is very important in the story mode, which requires smooth transitions and accuracy to get Bosh where he needs to go. Selecting tools is a little unusual – you click the menu button and then move the remote side to side to make your selection – but it’s easy to get used to. The Nunchuk attachment is used to move the view around the course. Stamp tools, colors, erasers, and other line additions make for some fun designing. The fast-forwarding, rewinding, and pause-play features are extremely helpful in seeing how your changes impact Bosh’s trajectory on the fly.

Freestyle mode on the Wii is a fully-featured track creation tool that lets you play around to your hearts content on an immense blank canvas. This is essentially a ramped up version of the first basic Line Rider program, and fans will have no problem diving into the familiar freedom it gives you to come up with wild creations. A separate mode also allows you to concoct your own puzzle tracks to unleash on friends or upload for other players to test out via Nintendo’s WFC. Sadly, it doesn’t seem like anyone has taken the time to do so, but user generated tracks and puzzle content should eventually begin to crop up in good time.

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Unbound on the Wii manages to nail the free-flow creativity of the original, while adding in enough actual gameplay and challenge modes to satisfy a broad range of tastes. The overtly kiddy vibe tends to get annoying quickly, unless you’re the intended demographic, but all-in-all this is a relatively good upgrade from a freeware to retail release.

By Nathan Meunier
CCC Staff Contributor