IMPRESSIONS
Wii Sports Resort
By Shaun Hatton - June 23rd, 2009
Today Jamie and I played a few upcoming videogames from Nintendo for the Wii, DS, and the DSi. Among the titles we tested out was Wii Sports Resort. The game will out July 26, packed with the Wii MotionPlus accessory, and from the looks of things, will be a hot seller.
I must admit that when the game was first announced it didn’t look too compelling. Fencing, Frisbee tossing, water skiing, and archery games do not a full game make. But since its announcement more games have snuck into the suite, and among the ones we played today was a hilarious multiplayer table tennis game. The 1:1 motion controls were spot on, and worked well for the most part until it was revealed that Jamie wasn’t actually that good at table tennis. I don’t mean to pick on the poor guy, but I easily whooped his butt three games to none.
Surprisingly, bowling makes a return appearance in Resort, but we didn’t play it long enough to discern any noticeable difference between it and the one we all already have. Still, it’s one of about 12 games, so that’s acceptable.
By far my favourite of the new games is the archery one. Here, players hold the Wii Remote vertically to emulate holding the front of a bow while holding the nunchuck in the other hand to emulate pulling back on the arrow. By holding down the A button on the remote and the Z button on the nunchuck, the targeting mechanism is triggered. Pulling back on the nunchuck to give the arrow potential energy feels natural, and with an arm outstretched to hold the “bow” in place, the sensitivity of the Wii MotionPlus is very noticeable. Every minor tremor your arm makes will be picked up by the game, which in turn really helps the feel of having aiming an actual bow – with a real bow the force built up by pulling the arrow back also causes the front of the bow to wobble.
Interestingly enough, I’ve gone from someone who had no interest in this title to someone who will pick it up on launch day, just from spending a little time with it. This must be how so many Wii adopters felt when playing the system at a friend’s house for the first time.
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Sounds cool, and like something I’ll play way too late into the night.
Any word on the price point?
maybe you have to play it to get it but while I’m very interested in M+ at the moment I don’t have any discernible interest in WSR. I’ll be getting my M+ with Tiger Woods.