Wii Sports

"Wii Would Like to Play"

Everyone knows what Wii Sports is. Ever since the game was announced, it was given a ton of attention by the gaming press and just the “press” in general. Frankly, the game was revolutionary in that it made video games much more interactive. Just like how the NES revolutionized video games by introducing many gameplay elements, themes, and characters that are still used today (platforming, Mario); just like how the Game Boy provided that awesome NES gaming experience coupled with THE greatest puzzle game of all time, Tetris; just like the Nintendo 64 introduced the concept of truly 3D environments and revolutionized a generation of gaming with the timeless classic Super Mario 64…now, it's the Wii's turn to revolutionize the gaming world with its motion control capabilities…and it comes packed in with one of the best sports games you will ever play.

Sure, Wii Sports isn't a very deep sports game. Where it gets its meat from is that it has multiple sports for you to play, not just one, it has some unlockable content to keep you playing, it can keep stats on how well you do daily, and it has some very interesting and entertaining mini-games based on the sports to keep you interested. Do you know what the best part is? It's freaking free.

One of the most publicized sports included in the game is tennis, and for good reason. You have a variety of options for tennis. You can play alone against a doubles team that has a skill level mirrored to yours or slightly higher/lower so you are always challenged, you can team up with a friend to take on the A.I. (whose skill level reflects both you and your partner's skill levels), you can verse your friend in a friendly unranked competition, and up to four players can play.

You may have noticed that I didn't mention singles games in the above paragraph. No, the game doesn't have singles games, so how in the hell do you play by yourself? Your swings account for both of the Miis (a feature I'll get into later) on your side. While this may look dorky at first, you will get used to it in no time.

What makes this version of tennis better than any other representation of tennis in any other video game before it is the fact that you actually have, more or less, full control of your racket. If you shake the Wii remote quickly, the racket on the screen will shake in accordance. If you move the Wii remote to the left, the racket moves to the left, and if you move it to the right, the racket moves to the right. While this sounds simple, when you first interact with the game this way, you will be floored. You don't have to move around for your Miis to move towards the ball, you just swing the racket and they'll dive for it.

Serving is done in a variety of ways, but the coolest way (I think) is to flip the Wii remote up, and then swing it downward as hard as you can. If you time your serve just right you can unleash a power serve that is pretty hard to return.

By winning games (either cooperatively or alone; you can't get points by playing against another human) you are awarded points based on your performance and how long the game was (you can set the number of points you play to). Similar to ranking systems of games like Halo, if you do poorly or lose you will be penalized and have some of your points stripped from you. Pro is the highest status you can reach, and trying to get to the “pro” status will take you a while as your skill increases.

Tennis isn't the only offering obviously, and the “sport” that will probably be played the most, especially if you have some friends over, will be bowling. Bowling is a simple, ten-frame game that four people can enjoy, either each with their own Wii remote, or you can alternate remotes as turns switch.

Motion control truly shines and works very well in bowling. You take a couple of steps away from the screen, hold the B trigger, ready your ball, step forward, swing, and release the B trigger to send your ball sliding realistically down the lane.

What makes bowling maybe a little more entertaining than some of the other sports available is that there are a couple of secrets and Easter eggs to be found. If you drop the ball behind you, the crowd of Miis watching the game will jump and yell in surprise. You can't help but chuckle every time this happens, whether it is by accident or not.

Similarly to tennis, you have the same ranking system in bowling. Once you reach Pro status in bowling you are awarded with a sparkly new ball that proves that you're a Pro. However, the game doesn't necessarily get more difficult as you rank up, but if you do poor in a game then your score will fall, sometimes drastically, and you can lose your Pro status.

Baseball is also great fun and the baseball bat is just as interactive as the tennis racket. How far the ball goes depends on how hard you swing the Wii remote and how well you timed your swing. You can also pitch in a similar manner to bowling (except you make a throwing motion instead of a swinging motion) and you can aim where you throw the ball, and depending on what buttons you're holding down, you can throw a variety of pitches.

Even though the baseball games only last three innings, they can sometimes last a decent amount of time. Two players can play, each using their own Wii remote obviously. Baseball also has the same ranking system as bowling and tennis, so you won't get bored of it fast.

However, the baseball game does have some painfully noticeable flaws. For example, you cannot control the action in the outfield. This means that balls are caught, dropped, and missed pretty much randomly. While you will probably be able to look past this, you will probably feel cheated a few times.

Golf has never been a favorite sport of mine, and that's no different in Wii Sports. I have seen some people absolutely thrilled by golf, but I found it to be boring and I found the motion controls did not work as well as those found in the other sports. The golf swings feel awkward and the matches are tedious, boring, and seem to drag on forever. The nine hole games are long as hell and you'll have to force yourself to finish them.

However, golf does have a redeeming quality, and that is the ranking system. You will still find yourself playing the golf game, as boring as it is, simply to become a Pro. The ranking systems that have been very prominent and practically exclusive in online games recently definitely do work offline, so I hope developers take notice of this.

If you are familiar with the Wii, you are probably wondering why I haven't said anything about the nunchuck attachment. None of the sports use the nunchuck except for boxing, where the nunchuck acts as your other fist. The first time you play boxing and you see the hands on the screen move in accordance to where you're moving your hands in real life, you will be freaking amazed. Sadly, this quality doesn't give boxing very big legs, as it degrades into a fest of swinging your arms forward wildly, and the punches aren't always as accurate as you would hope.

On the bright side, boxing does support multiplayer, and you actually feel like you're doing something besides just playing random games while you build your ranking. As you rank up the crowd that comes to watch you will grow in size and your opponents seem to have more of a personality than the opponents you face in the other games (though this is by a very small margin). You feel like you're in a more focused career mode as you start out in a stadium with barely any people and as you start winning matches and your rank increases, you end up facing extremely challenging opponents in three-round boxing matches in front of a much larger crowd.

This review is already huge, but I can't stop now. There are still more features that Wii Sports provides that definitely need to be mentioned, and one of those features, and probably one of the more entertaining ones, is the Training Mode.

Training Mode isn't what it sounds like. Instead of some tutorials on how to play the games, Training Mode is actually a collection of mini-games themed after the sports available in the game that provide various challenges. Almost all of these mini-games are very fun and some of them are extremely challenging. Notable mini-games include a tennis game where as you repeatedly have to hit the ball from court to court, using a slowly crumbling wall to bounce the ball back at you and a bowling mini-game where the goal is to hit down as many pins as possible…with hundreds of pins showing up on the screen at once! And who said the Wii wasn't that powerful? Plus, you are given a medal (bronze, silver, and gold) based on your performance in these mini-games so you'll keep coming back for more.

Wii Fit has been buzzing around the media lately, but that game owes some of its concept to Wii Sports. A chart system is in place in Wii Sports that is similar to the one found in Wii Fit (from what I've seen), but the major difference is that Wii Sports focuses more on calculating your “Fitness Age” as opposed to your BMI. Many things are taken into account to calculate your Fitness Age, like your balance, speed, etc. In order to do this, you are tasked with completing a random set of challenges that are taken from the Training Mode on a difficulty that reflects how high your Fitness Age is with some minor tweaks. Your Fitness Age can only be calculated once a day, so the game has that redeeming “play it once a day” quality that games like Animal Crossing have (I'm still popping that sucker in!).

A long, long time ago in this massive review, I mentioned the use of Miis. You are probably aware that Miis are customizable avatars that you can create on your Wii. In Wii Sports, your Miis are your primary protagonists, and other Miis on your system can appear in the crowd during games sometimes, or even end up on your team (like in baseball). The use of Miis was a clever and smart idea and I hope that Miis are used more in upcoming Wii titles.

My only major disappointment with the gameplay of Wii Sports was that there was no online available. If have read some of my other reviews, you have probably noticed that I have criticized some games for having online, but that's only when they have online only and no offline component. If Wii Sports included an online mode where your ranking could be affected by the people you played against around the world while maintaining its fun and addictive offline multiplayer features, it quite possibly could have achieved a perfect score.

I have spent nearly two thousand words of text on the gameplay aspects, but what about the graphics? Like I said, the Miis are your main characters, and they don't even have arms, so you could imagine that they're not a very detailed bunch. However, I found no glitches and the frame rate was perfect. While the Miis aren't very detailed, they still look good, and the environments, while some lack in detail, are very impressive. People who criticize the Wii for having inferior graphics compared to the Xbox 360 or the PlayStation 3 should check out the golf courses found in Wii Sports as the water effects there are just as equally impressive as a lot of the titles found on those systems, and the grass, trees, etc. look amazing.

Unlike most Nintendo games, the score in Wii Sports isn't very memorable. The sounds the Miis make are hilarious, though, and everything synchs perfectly. The noises that come out of your Wii remote when you hit a baseball or something work pretty well, but I wish they were louder. It is unlike a Nintendo game to lack in the audio department, but for some reason Wii Sports does.

Wii Sports will definitely last you a while, but not because it takes long to complete. Admittedly, it may only take you a few days to reach Pro on all of the different sports, but after that there is still the addicting multiplayer to take into account, your Fitness Age (which can be done once a day and the results from each day are compared on an easy to read graph) challenges, and you can always try to get the gold medal in the Training Mode. This one will keep you busy for months, especially when you're trying to show off your Wii to your friends (ignore the innuendo there).

If you own a Wii then you have this game. So, I can't really give you advice on whether you should rent or buy it, but if you are thinking about buying a Wii, then I can definitely give you some help there. Wii Sports comes packed in with the Wii for free, and it will provide loads of entertainment for months on end. Sure, it could have used an online mode, a better musical score, and maybe a career mode or something, but the game does have a load of redeeming qualities. Over a year after the Wii came out, Wii Sports is still one of the biggest reasons why you should own the console.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 06/09/08

Game Release: Wii Sports (US, 11/19/06)