How bad is Jenga: World Tour for the Nintendo Wii? It's so bad that it wasn't even on our editorial docket. We made room on the schedule just to explain how unsatisfying it is. It's so bad that we would rather go on YouTube and seek out the horrific 80s Jenga ad with the "weird lady" (the one that talks to the Jenga piece and goes "Jenga, hello?") than spend another minute with it.

The set-up should work simply enough. You have a tower of blocks stacked relatively high, and the object is to slide pieces out of place while keeping it intact. You then must place these blocks on top of the structure, seeing how tall it gets without falling over.

Part of the problem is the horrible control scheme. You manipulate pieces by using motions with the Wii remote and holding down the A button, while occasionally using the B button to nudge pieces out. Unfortunately, these functions are poorly misread. What's supposed to be a simple pullout from the middle of the structure soon becomes an exercise in frustration. We were pulling out one piece and found it "stuck" for some reason. When it finally did come out, down came the tower – and this was at the start of the round.

If you're not playing against a friend (and good luck finding someone), you'll find yourself facing horrendous artificial intelligence. It's either way too smart for its own good (moving pieces at lightning speed while the tower never budges) or it's incredibly dull (taking its sweet time, sometimes even minutes, contemplating its next move).

That's not all. As part of the horrendous World Tour mode, you'll have to contend with outside interference as well. For some inexplicable reason, Jenga: World Tour hops through time periods, going all the way back to the prehistoric era. It's not bad enough that you have to struggle with the controls, but dinosaurs and catapults make it even worse.

Throw in a mostly lifeless presentation (even a somewhat charming underwater level fails to breathe life into the game) and you have every reason in the world to avoid Jenga: World Tour. The broken controls, unnecessary complications and unbalanced AI make this one of the worst games of the year. If you give this to someone for the holidays, he or she earns the right to hit you with a fruitcake.

Our Final ScoreTerrible

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