Deca Sports

"Deca Sports goes for the bronze"

With the Olympics in Beijing coming to a close, the wannabe athletes of the world will soon have to find a new fix. The Wii has so far been an excellent source of entertainment for these folks, as it comes packaged with one of the best sports games you can get for the system - the aptly titled Wii Sports. However, those who have tired of the same five activities Wii Sports has to offer may be looking for something new, and many of them will undoubtedly pick up Deca Sports.

And why not? Deca Sports certainly looks promising, offering up numerous sports - none of which were included in Wii Sports - and numerous modes and collectibles. However, once you actually get the game home and hear the Homestar Runner-esque opening theme song, you may start to rethink your purchase. The problem with Deca Sports is that it assumes people want quantity over quality. If it had narrowed the field down to five sports and taken their time to perfect each one, this would be a genuine competitor to the beloved Wii Sports. Unfortunately, it instead tries to cram as many sports as possible into one game and hopes you don't notice how crappy most of them are.

One feature it does have over Wii Sports however, is its game modes. Deca Sports offers the standard free play mode, along with a tournament mode, a training mode, the Deca League, and a challenge mode. The Deca League pits you against three other teams to compete in every sport in the game, while the challenge mode is similar to the challenges in Wii Sports.

Curiously, the game does not feature Mii support, instead replacing them with their own bland characters that look Mii-like, but are completely devoid of any personality. Each team you can play as is made up of a mixture of heavy-weight, medium-weight, and light-weight characters. Which weight class you pick can often mean the difference between winning and losing, as some classes are just better for certain sports. In the Deca League, your teammates can get tired, which means you had better let them sit out the next sport, lest they under-perform. However, when it comes to the CPU-controlled characters, it hardly matters. They always seem to under-perform when they're on your team, yet can be insanely tough opponents on higher difficulty settings.

As the title of the game suggests, the game offers ten sports: badminton, kart racing, curling, snowboarding, motocross, beach volleyball, archery, figure skating, basketball, and soccer. The activities range in quality from the very fun to the very awful.

Badminton and Beach Volleyball are basically clones of Wii Tennis, only the controls are less responsive, and the view of the courts is on a diagonal, rather than straight on. Both of these sports basically require mad flailing of the wiimote whenever the ball or birdie is headed your way. When the incoming object flashes, you can pull off a spike - but it only seems to work half of the time.

Kart racing and motocross are both unresponsive messes. Each sport only offers three courses, all of which are bland and uninspired. Yet it hardly matters since getting your kart or bike to stay on the track will blind you with rage. Stick to Mario Kart if you need a racing fix.

Snowboarding also suffers from bland, and extremely short, courses. Not to mention there are once again only three of them.

Basketball is a painful affair. The ball will constantly be stolen from you when you're trying to shoot, and the CPU never misses a shot. Soccer fares much better, although since the CPU controlled goalies are quite skilled, games tend to drag on long into overtime.

Curling, archery, and figure skating are the three sports that come out on top. Curling is an excellent game. The controls are spot-on and easy to learn. Archery is well done as well, although you may find yourself having trouble with it if your hands tend to shake. Figure skating, which seems like the oddest inclusion in the game, is actually done extremely well also. You follow a track around an ice ring skating to music, every once in a while shaking the wiimote to do a trick when you are cued to do so. It sounds trite, but it's actually the most fun I had with the game. Unfortunately there are only three routines to play, so the fun is short-lived.

The graphics are standard Wii fare; insanely colorful but otherwise not very impressive. The music is bearable most of the time, aside from the aforementioned opening theme. One final triumph that Deca Sports features over Wii Sports is the Locker Room, where trophies and achievements you've won are proudly on display. Those of you that love collecting will appreciate this added incentive to play the single player modes.

When the Wii already comes packaged with a brilliant sports game, it's hard to justify the purchase of what, in a way, amounts to an excellent curling simulator. Unless, of course, you're Canadian. But if you're so sick of Wii Boxing that playing it one more time will cause you to bite someone's ear off, Deca Sports isn't a horrible way to spend your time. Just don't expect it to win any gold medals.

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 08/22/08

Game Release: Deca Sports (US, 05/13/08)