The dangers in adapting a board game to a video game are numerous: a loss of socialization around the board, a need for more players than just yourself, and a realization that playing the board game itself may be better. Cranium Kabookii fails in all of these areas although it does have its positive features.

The original game involved team play in combining to solve puzzles, to draw shapes for your partners to guess the answer, and to brainstorm word and trivia answers. This version has all of these but instead of each team pulling together, one member uses the Wii remote while the others face the monitor instead of each other. Almost all of the heat generated comes from the players yelling at the screen rather than each other.

Using the remote has its issues as well; drawing shapes in 3-D proves to be almost impossible although the laughs from your attempts are perhaps the goal here. The music game is probably the best one in which you make song segments while the trivia games are too infrequent. A special type of red glasses provides clues to the wearer but not to the other participants, making for some fun moments.

Cranium Kabookii has great potential but you might want to stick to the actual board game due to the price tag differential and the vagaries of using the Wii remote.