It is one of the facts of life that wherever there is a geek collective, there has been a Nerf battle. Of course, in more recent years, people are trying to get away from the imagery of a legion of man-children shooting each other with foam darts from children’s toys, but one must admit that it is still quite fun. Nerf is not something that comes to mind when developing a video game however, but that’s obviously not enough to prevent Electronic Arts and Hasbro from trying it out anyway.

Nerf N-Strike is the fruit of their labours, a traditional light gun rail shooter for the Wii without the usual level of violence. Rather than assaulting your enemies with bullets and rockets, you pelt them with foam Nerf Micro Darts. The game is essentially a collection of mini-games where players get to blast robots and such with one of more than 25 Nerf guns (both real and fictional) in order to reach a target score. There’s a basic plot about a kid named Shane and a few of his friends becoming recruits of the N-Strike team, because they’re so awesome at the associated video game.


Players can choose to relive Shane’s N-Strike recruitment in the mission mode, or just play the various games on offer in free play. Each of the eleven mini-games fall into one of the following seven categories: Blocks, Revolt, Onslaught, Range, Sniper, Draw and Spheres. Blocks contains two games, Blockade and Pummel, which involve shooting blocks to destroy a structure or uncover a goal block. Revolt involves the Revolt of the Machines mission, an on-rails trip through the heart of N-Strike where the player must destroy all hostile targets. Onslaught pits players against a never-ending wave of robots, but events the odds by allowing players to find power ups and extra weapons. Range provides a fairly unimaginative shooting range in the N-Strike labs. Sniper consists of two mini-games that test players’ long long-range shooting abilities. Draw is all about speed and precision shooting. Finally, Spheres involves vacuuming and painting spheres to solve puzzles.

None of the mini-games stand out particularly well, which is a big problem in a product with such a limited lifespan. There are a few cool effects in the game though, like reasonably accurate physics calculations on the Nerf Micro Darts and block puzzles, but nothing really impressive. The game is clearly directed at kids, but it doesn’t seem structured in a way that would keep their interest for very long. In fact, one would really struggle to get more than about 4 four hours play out of Nerf N-Strike, and that’s being generous.

To avoid completely defeating the purpose of Nerf in the game, Electronic Arts and Hasbro have included a Nerf gun in the package. The Switch Shot EX-3 Blaster is a dual purpose gun, in that it can be used to fire Nerf Micro Darts, but you can also remove the barrel and use it as a gun shell for your Wii remotes. As a Wii peripheral, the Switch Shot performs pretty well; it’s solidly built, though the trigger feels rigid. When it comes to shooting Nerf Micro Darts however, the Switch Shot almost seems to err on the side of dangerous as shots move at a very rapid velocity, with a distinctive whirring sound. Shooting a wall from ten metres away resulted in a five metre rebound, while shooting my girlfriend in the back of the leg resulted in a lot of complaining. Nerf has obviously become a lot more serious since I was a kid.

As fun as it is shooting foam bullets at defenceless girlfriends, Nerf N-Strike lacks any sort of engrossing gameplay or staying power, and the Switch Shot EX-3 Blaster, while useful as both a Nerf toy and a Wii gun shell, isn’t really good enough to justify the price of the bundle, when similar products are sold for a fraction of the cost.