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At first glance, Prot�thea resembles any other top-down scrolling shooter. You control a ship, and you shoot stuff. Point the Wii Remote at the screen, though, and greater depth immediately becomes apparent. Whereas many vertical shoot'em-ups lock you into shooting straight forward, Prot�thea gives you full 360-degree control of your ship's firepower. The on-screen cursor also allows you to aim and drop an unlimited supply of bombs to destroy ground targets.

It's a control setup that few vertical shooters have attempted in the past -- Psikyo's Zero Gunner series offered similar 360-degree shooting, but lacked the bomb-dropping gimmick. The experience resembles a cross between Namco's classic Xevious and the Wii port of Geometry Wars Galaxies. If nothing else, it's an interesting combination that packs tons of potential.

Unfortunately, Prot�thea's limp gameplay wastes every bit of this potential. Though Prot�thea is difficult enough to demand precision controls, your ship's movement is anything but reliable. Even the slightest tilt of the Nunchuk's analog stick is enough to send your spacecraft veering across the screen. Worse, once you ease off the stick, your ship continues to slide away long after you've wanted it to stop. As a typically difficult entry in a genre that requires exact controls and precision movement, it's ridiculous that Prot�thea provides neither.

Prot�thea's sloppy design doesn't end there. Switching weapons requires you to take your thumb off of the fire button, which...well, you can imagine how this would be a problem in a game about shooting things. Speaking of which, do you ever wish your shoot'em-ups had less shooting? If so, Prot�thea may be exactly what you're looking for, because using your guns will eventually cause them to overheat.

This leads to many awkward situations where you're forced to keep your thumb off of the fire button for several seconds while your guns cool down. Your enemies, of course, will swarm and pelt you with bullets whenever this happens. Any attempt to escape will usually end with you careening head-on into whatever you were trying to avoid, thanks to the shoddy controls.

Brown: The Shooter

Even if Prot�thea's many design failures didn't result in an almost-unplayable mess, there would still be little reason to play it at all. Prot�thea's presentation is the blandest of any WiiWare title thus far. No attempt has been made to spice up its graphical style. The enemy design is as generic as you can get, and backgrounds sometimes consist only of a single undulating texture.

Prot�thea's music is the worst offender, though -- its muffled tunelessness recalls the early days of hack composers attempting to extract vaguely music-like noise from the Super NES's default sound libraries. Expect lots of muddy bass and cheesy synth guitars.

Prot�thea is the Wii's Aegis Wing. Like Aegis Wing, Prot�thea had the potential to be a decent shooter, but completely missed the point in regard to presentation and playability. While Microsoft had the decency to give Aegis Wing away for free, though, Ubisoft is charging 1,000 Wii Points for its mistake.

Another key difference: Prot�thea wouldn't be worth playing even if it were free. Don't bother wasting your Wii Points on this one.
-Daniel Cowan

PROS: Concept had potential; first level is more dull than terrible; title has an umlaut in it
CONS: Sloppy, underachieving design; awful gameplay; playing for extended periods will make you sleepy and sad