Wii Sports Resort (Wii)

One-sentence review:
Wii Sports Resort is pretty much the same as Wii Sports.

Longer review:
Remember the memory card upgrade that came free with Donkey Kong 64? Nintendo decided that, from then on, all its first-party N64 games would require the memory card upgrade, so everyone would be practically forced to buy one.

History repeats itself with the new Wii MotionPlus, an accessory that Nintendo says will be required to play their upcoming first-party games like Zelda Wii (when it comes out in 2030). The Wii MotionPlus is a fancy thing that you connect to the bottom of your Wii-mote, and it improves the motion controls in some highly-technical fashion. The Wii MotionPlus comes free with Wii Sports Resort, the sequel to Wii Sports.

To be honest, I don’t like Wii Sports all that much. I’d rather play a full-length game than minigames, and only two of its minigames are worth playing, anyway. I played it for about an hour before banishing it to my shelf of games I’ll never play again.

So I’m not exactly chomping at the bit for more Wii Sports (or its less-beloved half-brother Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games). I heard through the grapevine that plenty of people do enjoy pretending to play tennis without actually having to get off of the couch, though, so perhaps this was a good game to bundle the Wii MotionPlus with.

The general consensus seems to be that the best game is fencing. Fencing really shows off how great the Wii MotionPlus is, as you need to have extreme precision to land touches on your opponent and—nah, I’m just kidding. It’s not like real fencing, and the controls aren’t precise. Instead, the way to play Wii fencing is by waggling your Wii-mote like crazy and hoping it hits the other character. If you try something like jumping to the left to avoid your attacker, the game doesn’t register it.

So forget fencing. Frisbee is where it’s at. Frisbee is the game that shows off the Wii MotionPlus controls, because there really is a 1:1 correlation between how you tilt the Wii-mote and how you tilt the frisbee. That’s pretty cool for about half a minute, until you realize that the game doesn’t let you experiment with the tilting mechanism—the game wants you to hold the frisbee/Wii-mote level. You could totally cheat your way to victory by putting the Wii-mote on a table.

As for the other sports, I think they’re supposed to have the same 1:1 motion, but I can’t really tell. Take wakeboarding, for example. The game wants you to hold the Wii-mote level for wakeboarding. The game does not want you to tilt the Wii-mote forward and backwards during wakeboarding, so if you try to do that, the game doesn’t register it. Which, I have to say, is pretty lame. What’s the point of having super-sensitive 3D motion controls when the game only registers 2D motion?

As I said earlier, Wii Sports has two games that are worth playing, and I’m afraid Wii Sports Resort is pretty much the same way. So I’ll just go through the list of games I played and talk a little about each one.

Bowling is OK, but the problem with it is that there is no discernible difference between the bowling in this game and the bowling in Wii Sports. Now, with table tennis, there is a discernable difference, but I’m afraid that’s to Wii Sports Resort‘s disadvantage, as table tennis here is nowhere near as good as it was in the original. The original, of course, being Pong.

Hang gliding is ridiculously boring. Just like frisbee and wakeboarding, the goal is to hold the Wii-mote level. If you think “hold the Wii-mote level for five minutes” sounds like fun, this is the sport for you.

Paddling has the least intuitive controls of the bunch. Instead of using your Wii-mote like an actual paddle, you need to tilt it left and right, like a metronome. Tie your Wii-mote to a metronome, and you will paddle perfectly. A weird control scheme, if you ask me.

Actually, scratch that. Bicycling has the least intuitive controls of the bunch. How are you supposed to imitate riding a bicycle with just your arms? GameCola Editor-in-Chief Paul Franzen suggested taping the Wii-mote to your leg, and that certainly would have been more fun than the choice they went with: doing an odd midair doggie paddle.

The graphics? They’re Miis. Nothing too exciting there, unless you like the idea of seeing your Miis wearing Hawaiian t-shirts. The controls? As I said, they can be totally awesome for the sports that register full 3D, 1:1 movement, but for most of the sports, one of the three dimensions is usually ignored. That’s a major disappointment, considering this is supposed to be THE definitive game for the new motion controls.

In conclusion, I conclude this article.