The Review Site - Wii Sports

Review Guidelines

Please read before submitting a review

Find a Review

On The Road

Websites & The Internet

Finance

Miscellaneous

User Login

Wii Sports Featured

Computer Games Nintendo Wii

Written by Josh Philips

Wednesday, 31 October 2007

User rating

6.4

out of 10

1 User reviews

View details
Read user reviews
Write review

Description

Recommended?: Yes

Relevant Information: Free sports game bundled with the Nintendo Wii
Brief summary of the item: A sports game for the Nintendo Wii. Consists of Bowling, Tennis, Baseball, Boxing and Golf.
Good Points: Fun
Free
Get's you on your feet
Bad Points: Graphics
Limited Lifespan
Some of the games aren't very accurate with the sensor.
General Comments: There was a split in opinion when Nintendo first showed off Wii sports back in May at E3. Some were stunned and excited at the prospect of waving the Wii Remote around to hit the ball in tennis, while others took one look at the graphics and went back to the Xbox 360 booth.

Wii Sports is a package of five simple sports games: tennis, baseball, boxing, golf and bowling. As you can see, it doesn't sport much in the way of depth, neither in the graphics department nor its features, but the straightforward gameplay shows off the capabilities of the Wii very well.

Tennis is undoubtedly the best game in the package. Although you don't control the movements of your character - the computer does that automatically - you are in full control of the timing, positioning and power of your shot, all done by swinging the Remote like a tennis racquet, and it feels great.

You serve by flicking the remote above your head (like you're throwing up the ball) then, with good timing, you swing the Remote to smack it over the net. The game even tracks the way your swing the 'racquet', so you put lob on your shots, top-spin or apply some curve by swinging your arm like you would in real life.

It's not as super-intuitive as you would at first assume - it takes some getting used to and at first it's all a bit hit and hope. But once you get to grips with the basics, you then start to discover the intricacies of the gameplay.

There's also a series of training mini-games, like a game that has you hitting the ball at targets on a wall, which tests you accuracy.

With four players playing a doubles match, tennis is brilliant fun. It's all about the feel - you're all on your feet swinging your arms and, just to add to the illusion, each player's Wii Remote speaker will make the hitting sound and give out a short punch of rumble as the ball hits their racquet.

Bowling is my other favourite because, while tennis is a fast and highly physical game, Bowling manages to be equally as engaging and fun in multiplayer, yet due to the nature of the sport, is a far more subdued play experience.

Again, you treat the controller like you would the bowling ball, with a hold on the A button representing your grip. You swing your arm forward and release the A button at the right moment to send the ball down the alley.

Your direction, speed and curl on the wrist is all transferred to the ball, which is fantastic. Although Nintendo's promotional photos of whole families jumping around in front of their TV might be a bit idealistic, this is the one game that'll get your granddad playing.

Golf is also relaxing, but there unfortunately doesn't see to be as much skill or depth to it as in bowling or tennis. The main challenge of the game is getting the right power on your shots. A bar on the left indicates roughly how much power you need to reach the hole, and how much power was in your swing.

The problem is, out on the fairway, you just want to hit is as hard as possible but it penalises you for swinging too hard. The putting is a bit better, but that's not enough. Maybe a crazy golf game would have been better (there's an idea for you developer people!).

Boxing is a disappointing mess of confusion and defective controls. The Nunchuk and the Wii Remote act as your hands, and you punch out in front of you to attach, or position the controllers in front of your face to block. In two-player, the screen is split in half and you're both given a first person view from your fighters' eyes.

It would be great if it worked but your movements don't convert to the screen accurately enough. You'll be holding the controllers right up to your forehead yet your on-screen fighter will have his gloves resting below his chin.

It still counts as blocking, but it doesn't LOOK like it, so the illusion is lost. It never seems to pull off the right punch as and when you want it to either. It's good for a crazy half hour, and can be a laugh if you annihilate a mate or, even better, your dad, but it's technically flawed.

And the last of the games, baseball, feels great - it's just a shame that there's not much to it. You can pitch or bat. When you pitch, you can do a lazy throw and it'll register a 70mph pitch, or you can put everything you have behind it, winging the controller forwards and risking loosing grip and smashing your TV (it has already happened), and the game will register 76mph. It's not accurate.

Also we find it completely nonsensical that, despite having this awesome motion-sensing controller in your possession, curve balls are pulled off by holding the A or B buttons.

And there's nothing more to bating other than timing. You miss or you hit, and then you just hope the ball flies into the crowd for a home run. It's fun and satisfying, but not for more than ten minutes.

Extending the whole game's life a little is a neat Training mode that gets you playing a selection of activities within the five sports in the package, then tells you your Fitness Age - a bit like Brain Training on DS.

It maps your supposed fitness level on a chart to show your improvement, although it has less to do with your fitness and more to do with your proficiency at the games.

But we don't care about the fitness score - we just have good fun playing the challenges. The boxing challenges has you hitting dummies and targets, bowling gives you, like, a million pins (slight exaggeration) to hit and there are all sorts of cool tennis games, like the target practice mentioned earlier.

Wii Sports is neither bulging in features nor graphically impressive, but when you put everything together, you have a fun package that, although better in places than others, is varied enough to keep you entertained for a good while and brilliant in multiplayer.

I'd have paid £20 for it. You're getting it in the box with your Wii.