Wii Play

"An easy way to introduce you to innovative Wii"

One of Nintendo's recent goals across its line of gaming devices to reel in people that have never played games before at any stage in their lives. To make it as mainstream as watching movies or the TV. One of the initial hurdles Nintendo has to cross if they want people unfamiliar with games to play the Wii, is to introduce them to the concepts of games and show them how to use the Wii Remote. Wii Sports manages to do it in what can be a familiar environment with the easy to grasp motions of mainstream sports, Wii Play makes it a bit easier by doing it with some extremely simplistic game designs that aim to provide a short burst of fun, and give a people a glimpse to the wider range of possibilities with the controller, and is also packed in with one to boot.

Wii Play is basically a collection of mini games. Nine in total to be exact. Each are presented with plainly designed graphics and straightforward sound effects and aim mainly to educate in the use of the controller. The first of the games is is an elementary light gun game, which has you shooting at a variety of objects with the controllers point functionality. Find Mii is the next, which has you searching for a Mii - again with the pointer - after being given some clues to the identity of this character. Table Tennis is the like exact opposite of Tennis in Wii Sports. Instead of swinging the bat and not moving your character, you are moving the bat to where the ball is headed, and the game handles the swinging by itself. Pose Mii is one of the odd games in the package. By selecting through three different poses using the A and B buttons, you have to twist your controller to get the Mii to fit into the correct position of the falling shapes. Laser Hockey is like a more advanced game of pong. You use the pointer to to aim the position of your paddle, and try to obviously get the puck into the opposing players goal. Billiards is one of the more fleshed out mini games. Using the D-pad you aim the direction of the cue ball, aim at where you want to hit the cue ball with the pointer, then hold B, pull back the controller and push it forward to hit the cue ball. Fishing is a little hard to grasp at first. You move the controller around in 3D space in front of you to pull the hook around in the pond on screen. When a fish bites on the hook, you pull back with the controller to reel the fish in. Charge introduces you to the steering mechanic becoming common with racing games on the Wii. You hold the controller in a horizontal position, and turn to steer a bull. Tilting the controller forward accelerates your bull, and lifting the controller up quickly makes it jump. And finally, Tanks has you moving a tank around on screen with the choice of either the D-pad on the controller or by using the nunchuck attachment. You aim the turret of your tank by using the the pointer. All these are used with Mii's, so make sure you create one before you jump into the game.

The gameplay featured in the titles is easy to jump into. But there isn't much depth to the overall experience and I found myself getting bored rather quickly. All games are multiplayer, so you can play with only one additional friend at a time. This provides some additional enjoyment.

I suggest getting this as your first additional controller. It is only a couple of dollars more, and you can't exactly go wrong with that.

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 12/20/06