WTF: Work Time Fun [PSP]

We'll just get this out of the way first: If you're a fan of Wario Ware-style mini-games, wacky Japanese sensibilities, and unlocking hundreds of amusing but ultimately pointless collectables, WTF: Work Time Fun might be right up your alley. If any of these things annoys you, stop reading right now and save yourself the thirty bucks; trust us, this one's not for you. WTF is one of those titles that gamers are either going to love or hate. Both sides will be entirely justified in their opinions, and it's more than likely that they'll both cite the exact same aspects of the game to back up their arguments.

Here are the facts: WTF is a collection of 40 insane mini-games, which gives it the appearance of being a Wario Ware rip-off. Unlike Wario Ware, though, the mini-games last longer than five seconds each. And some of them last a whole lot longer. For example, Baseball Superstar puts you in the role of a shortstop in an 8-bit style baseball game, where the objective is to field 1,000 hits without letting three balls get past you. (Please do not let Bill Buckner play this game.)

Even more ludicrous is Pendemonium, which requires you to put caps on the tips of an undecillion pens -- and for those too lazy to Google the word, that's a one with 36 zeroes at the end of it. Of course, you're not expected to actually complete these games; you and your PSP would both crumble to dust long before you got even one percent of the way through Pendemonium. The whole idea is that these mini-games are all "jobs" that you perform as long as you can stand to do so in exchange for a meager paycheck, which you then go and blow on useless stuff you don't really need. Just like real life!

Not all of the jobs are as tedious as pen-capping, but they all follow the mini-game mantra of taking no more than five seconds to learn how to play. You start out with four unlocked jobs, and there are 40 in total. Some are skill-based, like 4 Fingers, where you stab a knife between four outstretched fingers until you eventually slip up and poke a digit. Others test your reaction time, like Chick Sorting, which requires you to quickly place baby chicks into one of three different bins: male, female or "heaven-bound" (dead).

As you unlock more jobs, they start to become more elaborate, like Demonstration Round Up, where you run around a town, luring people out of their houses and into a park for a protest, while avoiding marching squads of riot police. As you can probably imagine, although each of the jobs has a very different graphical style, a frenzied, absurdist sense of humor runs through each of them, tying them together into a unified whole.