I was finally able to get my hands on a Nintendo Wii this weekend. I’ve been looking for one of these systems ever since they came out, but was unwilling to pay more than retail price for it, which meant no auctions or anything like that. At any rate, I found the last one in a local shop and snapped it up immediately. I also bought the Wii Sports software (which isn’t bundled with the system in Japan) and am here to tell you what I think of these games.
Wii Sports consists of five different games designed to work with the special Wii-mote: Tennis, Baseball, Bowling, Golf, and Boxing. In each of these games, you play by imitating the motions that you would go through if you were playing for real. So in baseball, you make a throwing motion to pitch; in golf, you swing the Wii-mote like a golf club; in boxing, you make punching motions. This has its good and bad points. On the good side, it makes all the games very easy to pick up and play in just a few minutes. On the bad side, it’s hard to make precise movements this way.
I’ve played all the games several times, and thus far I’d have to say that Bowling is my favorite. As an avid bowler in real life, I loved how realistic the ball movement and pin action are in this game. Funnily enough, the scores I get in the game are very similar to the ones I get IRL (about a 175 average). For some reason, I definitely thought I’d get higher scores in the game, but I guess that will come later. The only thing I don’t like about Wii Bowling is that players seem to get an unusually high number of splits. Other than that, I love it!
My next favorite game out of the bunch is Tennis. You always play doubles matches (even if you’re playing by yourself against the AI) and you can choose to play a single game, a best -of-3 set, or a best-of-5 set. The gameplay in Tennis is not nearly as realistic as it could be, but the game is still fun.
The biggest problem I have with Tennis is that I can’t control shot placement at all. I don’t know if this is even possible in the game (I haven’t checked the manual yet), but I think it should be. As things stand now, all my shots pretty much go straight. It would be a much better game if I could place them.
I rarely play the other three games at all. Golf is the most difficult of the bunch for me, and there’s only one course to play on, so I got bored quicky. Baseball is fun to a point, but because the AI handles all the fielding, wins and losses come down to plain old luck. Boxing isn’t as cool as it could be. Half of my punches don’t connect with my opponent even though I know I’m aiming accurately. That got too frustrating, so I gave up.
Overall, I think Wii Sports is a great starter pack for new Nintendo Wii owners. The games are easy to play and fun enough, but I can see getting bored with all of them after a few weeks. I give Wii Sports 8.0 stars out of 10, and recommend that you buy it if it wasn’t bundled with your system.
It is too bad that Sports was not bundled with your software. I love Boxing and have made myself pro in it and use it as a substitute work out. If you play for 30 to 45 minutes you work up a good sweat.