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Wii Sports Resort
Nintendo's Motion Plus peripheral reminds us what the Wii is all about.
July 31, 2009 | 8:36 AM PSTby: Eric Frederiksen
Kombo's Review Policy: Our reviews are written for you. Our goal is to write honest, to-the-point reviews that don't waste your time. This is why we've split our reviews into four sections: What the Game's About, What's Hot, What's Not and Final Word, so that you can easily find the information you want from our reviews.
What the Game's About
Wii Sports Resort is Nintendo's first in-house game to support their new Motion Plus peripheral. Like Wii Sports before it, Resort is a collection of mini-games designed to show off the strengths of the Motion Plus' 1:1 tracking.
Wii Sports Resort features 12 mini-games including Swordplay, Wakeboarding, Frisbee, Archery, Basketball, Table Tennis, Golf, Bowling, Power Cruising, Canoeing, Cycling, and Air Sports. Each sport includes single and multiplayer, along with additional gameplay modes.
What's Hot
My back hurts. And my shoulder. And Sakura defeated me! Again! It's been a while, but my Conan O'Brien Mii is back in action, but now with full motion tracking and an awesome sword! Wii Sports Resort is finally here, and it's a lot of fun. I'll admit, when I saw the first videos of Wii Sports Resort during Nintendo's E3 2008 briefing, I was skeptical. When Cammy came out to show us "the cutest game ever," I was quickly losing interest. That went away quickly once I had the Motion Plus connected and my virtual sword in hand. With 12 sports and even more sub-games, there's a lot more to play than Wii Sports. Even if some might still call it a tech demo, it definitely feels like a full game. More than anything else, Resort does exactly what you'd expect: Show off the Motion Plus beautifully in a variety of games. A few of the games stand out above the others. Where the bowling and golf were the stars of Wii Sports, the sword battles and Frisbee golf will be the Resort games that people keep coming back to. They not only show off the Motion Plus well, but they also work. They're fun to play and easy to pick up.
As you might expect, Resort's fun factor grows quickly with the number of people in the room. Sending the Frisbee straight down the fairway and onto the green is much more satisfying with an opponent and an audience. That said, the single player is a lot of fun as well. Most of the games have one or two additional games. Sword fighting, for example, has Duel, Speed Slice, and Showdown. Showdown is a single-player mode that has you facing off against 100 Miis at a time. Thankfully, they think they're in a Kung Fu movie and only attack you one at a time. Archery, too, is fun. As the only title without any additional modes, it would be easy to assume this mini-game is lacking. The feeling of sending an arrow across the map at a tiny target and watching it actually land is one of the most satisfying aspects in the game.
Even old games like golf and bowling come back with upgrades. The tricks we used before to spin the ball don't work quite as well, and mini-games like Spin Control, which forces you to avoid bumpers on the court to knock the pins down, do a great job acquainting you with the new sensitivity of the remote. Golf is probably the best way to demonstrate the difference the Motion Plus makes. Taking the same swing you did in Wii Sports won't work here, and the game has become much more technical. You really have to control your body while you take a shot. This is one of the few places I would've liked more tutorial content. Even tennis is back, albeit with a table. While it doesn't feel quite as different as golf, it's definitely possible to put some mean spin on your shots.
Resort gets a lot of the little things right, too. The game includes badges for accomplishing various tasks, and the badges cover the gamut of difficulty, ensuring that just about anyone can grab a few. The levels, too, are interesting. The graphics aren't going to blow anyone away, but the way the island has been put together, something especially apparent in the Flyover and Dogfight modes, gives the whole game a coherent feel. While it's not an open-world map (you don't have to go find the table tennis court to play table tennis), being able to see the different courts as you fly over them gives it a coherent feel.
What's Not
Of course, for all the good games, there are a few duds in there. Wakeboarding is fun enough, for example, but besides deciding when to jump into the air, you don't have any control over what stunt you pull off. Cycling, which is probably the best workout of the different sports, feels weird. You control it by pumping the remote and nunchuck alternately, leaning to one side or the other to turn. This isn't the sport for those afraid of looking goofy, and pedaling with your hands isn't terribly fun.
Power Cruising (Jet Ski) and Canoeing sit between fun and lame. The ski is too hard to control to really be fun, even if twisting the remote to get a turbo boost is a lot of fun. Canoeing in single player is, in a word, boring. With four players, however, coordinating your movements to make it to the end of the course could have hilarious results.
The only game I outright dislike, though, is basketball. Maybe I am just not picking it up, but this is one of the few cases where I found the controls just don't work. The Pick-Up Game 3-on-3 mode might be fun if it had a cooperative mode but the weird rules break up the play too much for it to be fun or feel like basketball. A friend who likes basketball a bit more than me did like the 3-point contest a lot more than me.
One other thing worth mentioning is the sheer amount of tutorial in the title. When you plug the game in for the first time, a Motion Plus connection video plays. It only plays once, but it also stops just short of assuming you've never seen a Wii remote before. In the game itself, any time you take a new Mii into a sport, the tutorial is presented. Meaning, if you have three friends over, and they all pick Miis you haven't used on that sport, you'll have to watch or skip the tutorials that many times. The flip side of that though, is that practice mode is easily available for every sport and every player, so that no one has to feel like a goon the first time they pitch the Frisbee sideways.
It's important to note, too, that the control is not perfect. You will occasionally have to recalibrate your controller, or a shot might go wide for seemingly no reason. This is not nearly common enough to negatively impact the player experience, though.
The Final Word
All the Wii fans out there reading this probably already own Wii Sports Resort. This is for those of us that might've let our Wiis collect dust a bit too long, or given up on them altogether. Wii Sports Resort is a worthy addition to the Wii library. It'll remind you why you picked up the console in the first place and, more than likely, spark a renaissance of Wii parties. Definitely don't miss this one.
What the Game's About
Wii Sports Resort is Nintendo's first in-house game to support their new Motion Plus peripheral. Like Wii Sports before it, Resort is a collection of mini-games designed to show off the strengths of the Motion Plus' 1:1 tracking.
Wii Sports Resort features 12 mini-games including Swordplay, Wakeboarding, Frisbee, Archery, Basketball, Table Tennis, Golf, Bowling, Power Cruising, Canoeing, Cycling, and Air Sports. Each sport includes single and multiplayer, along with additional gameplay modes.
What's Hot
My back hurts. And my shoulder. And Sakura defeated me! Again! It's been a while, but my Conan O'Brien Mii is back in action, but now with full motion tracking and an awesome sword! Wii Sports Resort is finally here, and it's a lot of fun. I'll admit, when I saw the first videos of Wii Sports Resort during Nintendo's E3 2008 briefing, I was skeptical. When Cammy came out to show us "the cutest game ever," I was quickly losing interest. That went away quickly once I had the Motion Plus connected and my virtual sword in hand. With 12 sports and even more sub-games, there's a lot more to play than Wii Sports. Even if some might still call it a tech demo, it definitely feels like a full game. More than anything else, Resort does exactly what you'd expect: Show off the Motion Plus beautifully in a variety of games. A few of the games stand out above the others. Where the bowling and golf were the stars of Wii Sports, the sword battles and Frisbee golf will be the Resort games that people keep coming back to. They not only show off the Motion Plus well, but they also work. They're fun to play and easy to pick up.
As you might expect, Resort's fun factor grows quickly with the number of people in the room. Sending the Frisbee straight down the fairway and onto the green is much more satisfying with an opponent and an audience. That said, the single player is a lot of fun as well. Most of the games have one or two additional games. Sword fighting, for example, has Duel, Speed Slice, and Showdown. Showdown is a single-player mode that has you facing off against 100 Miis at a time. Thankfully, they think they're in a Kung Fu movie and only attack you one at a time. Archery, too, is fun. As the only title without any additional modes, it would be easy to assume this mini-game is lacking. The feeling of sending an arrow across the map at a tiny target and watching it actually land is one of the most satisfying aspects in the game.
Even old games like golf and bowling come back with upgrades. The tricks we used before to spin the ball don't work quite as well, and mini-games like Spin Control, which forces you to avoid bumpers on the court to knock the pins down, do a great job acquainting you with the new sensitivity of the remote. Golf is probably the best way to demonstrate the difference the Motion Plus makes. Taking the same swing you did in Wii Sports won't work here, and the game has become much more technical. You really have to control your body while you take a shot. This is one of the few places I would've liked more tutorial content. Even tennis is back, albeit with a table. While it doesn't feel quite as different as golf, it's definitely possible to put some mean spin on your shots.
Resort gets a lot of the little things right, too. The game includes badges for accomplishing various tasks, and the badges cover the gamut of difficulty, ensuring that just about anyone can grab a few. The levels, too, are interesting. The graphics aren't going to blow anyone away, but the way the island has been put together, something especially apparent in the Flyover and Dogfight modes, gives the whole game a coherent feel. While it's not an open-world map (you don't have to go find the table tennis court to play table tennis), being able to see the different courts as you fly over them gives it a coherent feel.
What's Not
Of course, for all the good games, there are a few duds in there. Wakeboarding is fun enough, for example, but besides deciding when to jump into the air, you don't have any control over what stunt you pull off. Cycling, which is probably the best workout of the different sports, feels weird. You control it by pumping the remote and nunchuck alternately, leaning to one side or the other to turn. This isn't the sport for those afraid of looking goofy, and pedaling with your hands isn't terribly fun.
Power Cruising (Jet Ski) and Canoeing sit between fun and lame. The ski is too hard to control to really be fun, even if twisting the remote to get a turbo boost is a lot of fun. Canoeing in single player is, in a word, boring. With four players, however, coordinating your movements to make it to the end of the course could have hilarious results.
The only game I outright dislike, though, is basketball. Maybe I am just not picking it up, but this is one of the few cases where I found the controls just don't work. The Pick-Up Game 3-on-3 mode might be fun if it had a cooperative mode but the weird rules break up the play too much for it to be fun or feel like basketball. A friend who likes basketball a bit more than me did like the 3-point contest a lot more than me.
One other thing worth mentioning is the sheer amount of tutorial in the title. When you plug the game in for the first time, a Motion Plus connection video plays. It only plays once, but it also stops just short of assuming you've never seen a Wii remote before. In the game itself, any time you take a new Mii into a sport, the tutorial is presented. Meaning, if you have three friends over, and they all pick Miis you haven't used on that sport, you'll have to watch or skip the tutorials that many times. The flip side of that though, is that practice mode is easily available for every sport and every player, so that no one has to feel like a goon the first time they pitch the Frisbee sideways.
It's important to note, too, that the control is not perfect. You will occasionally have to recalibrate your controller, or a shot might go wide for seemingly no reason. This is not nearly common enough to negatively impact the player experience, though.
The Final Word
All the Wii fans out there reading this probably already own Wii Sports Resort. This is for those of us that might've let our Wiis collect dust a bit too long, or given up on them altogether. Wii Sports Resort is a worthy addition to the Wii library. It'll remind you why you picked up the console in the first place and, more than likely, spark a renaissance of Wii parties. Definitely don't miss this one.
February 8, 2010
