"Wii Can Play Together"

The Nintendo Wii is marvellous. Really. An experiment which could have went horribly wrong upon creation has turned out to be a major success and one which, if marketed right and used to its (mammoth) potential, can bring a whole new generation into games. It can be the ideal first console for a 5-year old or 65-year old due to its extreme simplicity and Wii Sports, bundled free with the Wii console (the first time that has been done for Nintendo since Super Mario World way back with the SNES) is one part (along with its sister title 'Wii Play' of the the showcase intended by Nintendo to showcase their revolutionary new console.

The concept of Wii Sports is simple; weild your 'Wii-Mote' and nunchuk in one of 5 sports; Tennis, Golf, Bowling, Baseball and Boxing with each game utilising a different type of play required. Swing your Wii-Mote like a racket in Tennis and swing it like a club in Golf. It's an easily accessible game which pulls off its goal very well.

In Tennis, take your Wii-Mote and swing it like you would a racket to win on the court. The trajectory of your shot is affected by the height at which you hit the ball and a quick flick of the wrist can be enough to hit an extreme shot across the court, rendering the two Mii's opposite befuddled. This is strangely addictive well past the initial novelty period and the prospect of multiplayer against an opponent who is equally as skilled as yourself can result in a very challenging (but never impossible) and entertaining experience.

Baseball, however, is a weird one. Holding the Wii-Mote like a bat, you swing toward the ball as the pitcher fires it toward you. When played with friends, it can be funny to witness everyone trying their best to distract the batter going for the final home run or the pitcher aiming for the third strike but as a single player experience, it's lacking. Timing is of the essence and can be difficult to get just right until well into your gaming by which time, you may very well have moved on to another sport. While multiplayer offers the obvious jokes and comedy, single player is, to be blunt, boring.

Golf is, by far, the game which requires the most skill out of the package. When you first fire up the game, your first swing will undoutedly be a sliced shot and your second will be barely above a tapped putt. And that's the killer problem with Golf; you just never know when you've got it just right. While it is fun to hold your controller like a golf club (and shamelessly do a couple of Happy Gilmore-esque run-ups before driving), you'll find yourself getting frustrated at the sensitivity well before you've reached the nine-round games. What adds to the frustration is your requirement to check the wind direction and speed which can cause a perfect drive to go awry if unmonitored. Overall though, it seems like with Golf, once one problem is overcome, another is launched your way.

Bowling is my personal favourite out of the collection. Holding your Wii-Mote like you would a bowling ball, throw it down the aisle and try for a perfect game. There's something strangely compelling about that last part and while getting 8 strikes in a row and then only knocking down 9 pins on your 9th throw would be enough to have you throwing the console out of the window in frustration, here it only serves to make you try again. Possibly this console will bring about calmer gamers?

Boxing is the only game here which requires the 'nunchuk' controller; taking that in your left and your regular controller in your right, punch toward the screen to make your boxer do so and jab, uppercut and weave your way to the championship. While oddly compelling to punch a cartoon until he needs to be stretched out of the ring, it suffers from extreme lagging problems, especially when you fire a flurry of punches at your opponent. But, all problems aside, this is still a great little addition to the collection.

While that seems very thin on the ground, the addition of skill points means that the difficulty curve is very slight, getting progressively tougher in each sport. In some games like Tennis and Boxing but with Bowling and especially Golf, it seems fairly redundant. Still, reaching to 1000 and 'Pro' status is something that you'll want to get, even if it's just for bragging rights.

Another nice addition is the Wii Sports Training and rather than hastily rehash the main games, Nintendo has put some thought into it. Three stages consist for each sport which can be roughly broken up into 'Basic', 'Intermediate' and 'Advanced' stages. In Tennis, you have to hit a target 10 times to win the training; In Bowling, the power throw training gives you a number of pins to knock down (the video of which I'm sure you've seen); in Boxing, you have to string together combinations to knock punchbags from their chains and unlike other sports games, because of the nature of the Wii, this goes some way to improve your skills and provide a meaningful and fun sidetrack from the main games.

Finally, the Wii Fitness feature allows you to take part in some of the training stages in order to get a Wii Fitness age. While a nice little feature, it has little in the way of playability aside from a few novelty tries.

All in all, Wii Sports is undoubtedly the stronger of the two 'showcases' with clearly more thought and time gone into crafting the stronger games. That said, Wii Sports is still low on any real depth, meaning that it provides a little distraction from your main games but as a stand-alone title, it would be a very poor game indeed. But still, being gifted such a great party game for free with your console is a stroke of luck. Of course, it's no Super Mario World but if it doesn't show potential for a whole new era of gaming, then it shows nothing.

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 01/02/07