Wii Sports (Wii) Review

Wii Sports is made up of: tennis, boxing, bowling, golf and baseball, a delightfully international mix of favourite sports, all of which have one thing in common: arms. Every single game involves you hitting something with an attachment placed on your arm, or in the case of boxing a glove on your hand. Ergo, all you have to do is swing the Wii remote about a bit and you'll do fine. Right?

Wrong. Wii Play has a remarkable amount of depth for something that looks like it is made up from characters out of Playmobil. In tennis the slightest change of angle of shot or flick of the wrist will make a huge difference to what shot is played on the screen and your movements are recreated in the virtual world with remarkable accuracy. In blowing, if you bowl with a slight spin or angle, that will happen in the game and the complexities of golf will have you tearing your eyebrows clean off your face.

The best place to start is probably tennis, which in our view is the finest of all the Wii Sports games. Select up to four players to take part, pick whether you are left or right handed and then get ready to start. Serving is pretty damn simple, throw up the ball by raising the Wii remote and hit it by slamming down. You can do it with flicks of the wrist or do it like 'them off-telly' and wave your arms about like an idiot. In all honesty, it doesn't actually make any difference, but for us smaller movements result in more powerful, more accurate and better shots. Everything is really easy to execute and if you think about what you are doing you can play some excellent shots and get some very cool rallies going.

Our second favourite title in the Wii Sports range is golf, simply because we are determined to beat it. This game is uncompromisingly difficult. You have to be so precise, so accurate and really think about what you are doing otherwise your shot will go out of bounds, into a bunker or go flying miles away from anything that even looks like a fairway. Simply put, this game is hardcore. But at the same time it is such brilliant fun and so rewarding when you do get it right that it is a bit of a stroke of genius. Get it? Stroke...

Moving swiftly on and we have boxing to contend with. Everyone wants a bit of the punching action, and this has proven to be one of the most popular games on our Wii so far. It must be that violent streak inside us. Shove the nun-chuck attachment into the end of your Wii controller, imagine you are now a crazed boxer and lay into your opponent like a punch bag. You can dodge and lean away from oncoming punches by leaning yourself and unleash various different types of punches by simply doing the punch in real life. Its fast, its frantic and it is hugely violent and competitive. However, it is hugely flawed. You'll do an upper-cut, try to slam a punch into your opponents torso or try to swing in a punch right into their temple and your Mii character on the screen will just punch straight forward. It doesn't pick up your motions properly.

We could go on about baseball and bowling, but we won't. They really do work on the same premise as everything else in this game, you do the action as you would imagine it in real life, there is nothing else to it. Whilst bowling is excellent fun and has loads of replay value, we do have some major gripes about baseball though, easily the worst game in the package. First problem, if you sit down and waft your hand forward whilst pitching it will register at 80mph, put everything behind it and nearly dislocate your shoulder in the process and it will register at 82mph. Also, why when you have a very expensive piece of motion sensing technology in your hand do you do curveballs and splitters by pressing A and B? It's totally nonsensical. Batting is a bit of a lottery too, you either hit it or you miss it. If you hit it, how well you hit it or in what direction is pretty much down to pure luck. One time it might go out the ground, next time it might fly straight to the man in the deep or a short fielder. It doesn't make any sense, it isn't a whole hog of fun. All in all, baseball is fun for about ten minutes, by which time you will have decided you hate it.

Two nice little features worth a mention are Fitness and Training. Fitness acts a bit like Brain Training and gives you an 'age' for each day of training you complete. Tasks are pretty simple and you will notice a big improvement the more you play. We went from 45 on day one to 33 on day two, which is a pretty big improvement we think! It is great fun to play and you'll come back every day to try and get better and better. Training gives you various tasks for each sport, from punching bags to hitting targets and bowling over certain pins. All in all, a great addition to the title.