Wii Sports Resort
Well, we know where you’ll be heading this July.
Everyone is so enthralled by Nintendo Wii that only the dullest people must question how the magic is made. Everybody who owns a Nintendo Wii owns Wii Sports and has seen how this compendium of bite-size activities transforms the living room. Wii Sports is a true phenomenon, as is Wii Fit. You could argue quite convincingly that Nintendo is currently doing more for family life in the UK than any politician.
Brits being as we are, and today let’s blame the weather, any follow-up to a huge success is often greeted with doubt and some derision. “They’re just cashing in now.” “It’s just more of the same.” “Why didn’t they just put more games in the first time around?” Aha! On that last note Nintendo has a genuine good reason for events in Wii Sports Resort not making the cut in the original game. And this reason is that the events are improved by a higher degree of accuracy in sensing your movement.
Now, to achieve this new level of precision you’ll need a new gizmo that attaches to the Wii Remote, just as you would the Nunchuck or Classic Controller. The add-on required to play Wii Sports Resort, which comes packaged with the game, is called the Wii MotionPlus. Although you can already buy a Wii MotionPlus for £24.99 we imagine most of you will prefer waiting for Wii Sports Resort in July, just as we all bought Wii Play for that extra controller. At the moment the only game that supports the Wii MotionPlus is EA Sports Grand Slam Tennis… which sadly isn’t great.
Wii Sports Resort retails at £49.99 (but you’ll find it for less) as standard. No moaning about shelling out extra, please, because if you want Wii Sports Resort that’s the price you’re gonna pay. As with Wii Fit and the Balance Board the two go together like pasta and mozzarella. And you will most certainly want your Wii Sports Resort.
There are 10 new events to enjoy here on sun-drenched Nintendo Island, plus enhanced versions of Golf and Bowling – the perennial Wii Sports favourites. Your first experience of the heightened degree of control comes with Sky Diving, a fun and non-competitive event that opens the sports festival. Here the Wii Remote + MotionPlus illustrate how tightly your movements correspond with your Mii diver. Since we’ve never tried anything similar with a standard Wii Remote there’s nothing to compare this to, but it is impressive how your Mii mirrors even the slightest twitch.
It was important for Nintendo to demonstrate the precision benefits early on, because when it comes to most other events you could be convinced there’s not much new going on with the MotionPlus. With the exception of Basketball that requires a steady hand and a good aim plus a feel for the ball before its release most events are performed by the familiar waving of arms this way and that.
Cycling requires punching the air with both Wii remote and Nunchuck, leaning the remote to steer. Sword Fighting lets you chop left, right, up or down plus diagonally in both directions with fast movements. Archery requires a steady hand, as also needed in games such as Trauma Centre, and fools you into thinking you need to stand posed as with a bow and arrow when in fact you only need to press the Z button on the nunchuck to create the tension while aiming with the remote. Canoeing is frantic fun, scooping left and right with a vertical remote, but during our session the Wii MotionPlus appeared to be struggling to identify the switch in sides.
We enjoyed Wakeboarding a lot, although you need to be perfectly level when you land from performing a stunt – achieved by jiggling the remote this way or that. We could’ve spent hours throwing a Frisbee for our little doggie; we did seem to be making progress with the positioning of the arm before letting go. This will be our first port of call on 24 July when Wii Sports Resort is released.
Summer is traditionally, rightfully even, the season when videogames usually fall off the bottom of our leisure routine. Wii Sports Resort and its new batch of fun mini-games have the power to buck this trend, and most likely enjoy a second wind in time for Christmas. It’s truly great fun, but don’t expect miracles from the Wii MotionPlus. The improvements – on first impressions – are incremental not radical.
