Do you often plan to do things and then sort of half do them and come back to them later, in their unfinished state, and wonder why you didn’t bother to finish them in the first place?

Such is the case for me and my review of ‘Wizards of Waverly Place’, another Nintendo DS game that my brother and nieces decided to inflict upon me. I must have originally done my thirty minutes of playing in July because I took some photos at the time. I was clearly gearing up for a post with the details and then nothing; I didn’t write anything else other than some hastily scribbled notes on a random bit of paper from my work bag.

For the uninitiated, ‘Wizards of Waverly Place’ is an American sitcom shown on the Disney Channel about a teenage wizard who undertakes training to be some kind of better wizard alongside her two brothers. It features one now famous person (Selena Gomez who, at the time in my subconscious, I referred to as “that rapping chipmunk”) and lots of people I’ve never heard of. The premise sounds a lot like ‘Sabrina: the Teenage Witch’ but with a family of magic people instead. It ran from 2007 to 2012 but according to Wikipedia will be coming back again soon in a sort of semi-sequel of sorts. Keep an eye out for that everyone.

I am sure that whatever kids were watching this at the time loved every second and begged and pleaded to their parents to buy the tie-in video game so they could continue the, I don’t know, wizarding. It’s the successful formula of young people acting like adults mixed with comedy that Disney has been churning out for the last few decades that will make anyone over the age of 21 throw up in their hands but works because children will watch anything.

Enough of that. Back to me, consider me! The notes that I wrote are as follows:

• Picking up coins – why?
• Let’s head to the lair?
• Sandwiches
• Keep skipping dialogue
• Floating sarnies – catch game
• Bottle on a podium
• Smaller than me
• Make a *can’t make out what this is, could be cake* – end

As you can see, I was my usual in-depth and very thorough self, going through the majority of the intricacies and idiosyncrasies of the gameplay, graphics, history of development and everything else. Ahem. This is why you should never start a job unless you intend to finish it. I get that now.

I am at the point where I don’t have time, not even a mere thirty minutes, to go back to understand this nonsense. I must therefore move forward and count this sham as my attempt at a game review.

After re-reading the notes, I do remember a mini game where you had to assemble sandwiches to serve to customer. When a magic spell goes awry, you have to try and wrangle the sandwiches back into a bag, or a hat, or a bin. It was a fairly average video game, much like the previous one I did, with nothing too bad and it seemed to fit with the property. Not that I’ve ever seen ‘Wizards of Waverly Place’ or know anything about it. If you were to ask me in passing, I would tell you it’s about a teenage girl who goes around collecting coins to stash in her lair so that she can afford to make sandwiches and sell them. Surely some kind of philosopher’s stone would eradicate the need for some of this but whadda I know?

Apparently Selena Gomez has an estimated net worth of $1.3 billion and is the most followed woman on Instagram. Not bad for a rapping chipmunk.

Can you? Can you imagine a girl band? I bet you can’t. I bet, when you try, all you have is a blank space and the feeling of hopelessness when your favourite steak knife (?) is out of stock and you have to settle for second best.

The ‘imagine’ games were a series of shovelware nonsense pushed out by Ubisoft to capitalise on the casual gaming market that was en vogue during the Nintendo Wii and DS era. Don’t fancy your kids shooting soldiers in ‘Call of Duty’ or smashing deities in the face in ‘God of War’? Get them into some harmless touch screen fun on a Nintendo. They covered a lot of bland topics and you can regularly find them taking up space in charity shops and lining the walls of CEX because parents and grandparents bought them in droves and now nobody wants them.

You start by choosing your name and what instrument you want to play. I went with Fluke, cos I’m cool, and bass guitar, because everyone knows that’s the coolest. You also get to choose one of three genres of music to specialise in so I opted for funk. After some perfunctory story about being in a band and looking for a new member, you start practising. When I say “practising” though I mean engaging in a basic version of any rhythm game from the past 20 years. My band is called The Oppress because funk music is very music about sticking it to “the man” and how much he’s holding us all back. Fluke and the Oppress. Yeah.

The song plays in the background and coloured buttons move across the top of the screen. When the button reaches the circle at the end, you tap the corresponding button with your stylus. The closer it is to being perfectly in the circle, the higher the score you get is. You can choose to practise with the rest of your band mates at home or you can perform… in the library?

This, to me, had “bar in the aquarium” vibes. Do music and reading go together? I get distracted when trying to do both but each to their own, I suppose. I was practising the whopping three songs our band had in the library and getting fairly good scores, however the game wasn’t moving forward so I took the girls to the mall instead.

You can buy instruments, new items of clothing and accessories at the mall like a real mall. As my character is a teenager and we hadn’t done any gigs yet I didn’t have a lot of money so I bought a new top and trousers to complement the funk style the band was going for. Still nothing. I went home to speak to what I thought was my brother but was actually my boyfriend who I never see because I’m either at school or with the girls trying to kick out the jams. Still nothing. With very little options, I went back to the library and performed each song until my score was off the charts.

Success! By smashing the songs, I opened up a brand new place to visit on the map; the park. I also earned some decent cash from performing at the library so I headed back to the mall to buy another bass guitar. I needed my instrument to match my new outfit, of course. It was then that my thirty minutes were up and I decided to stop.

It’s not an inherently bad game albeit one that’s so bland you wouldn’t be able to pick it out in a line-up some six months after last seeing it. If you aim for the lowest common denominator then you’re guaranteed to refrain from offending anyone. It blows my mind that someone will have paid full price for this once.

*5 out of 10 funk trousers*