Wii Sports Resort Review

[SRTie4k]

I figured since its been a couple days since I picked this up, it at least deserves a review.

Gameplay - It's got lots of new games over the original Wii Sports, 12 in all (including some of the original games, although more in depth). My favorite games so far are Ping-Pong, Golf and Swordplay although other good games include Archery, Frisbee and Basketball. There's a few really lame ones in here, including Power Cruising (Jetski, its NOTHING like Wave Race), Bicycling, and Canoeing.

Ping-Pong is definitely my favorite, it's very realistic with extremely accurate acceleration tracking, spin physics, great save and power shot abilities. I used to play real Ping-Pong a lot with my neighbor and got pretty damn good, and this is the closest thing I've ever seen to simulated Ping-Pong. Very fun.

Golf is similar to the original, except now it adds wrist movement tracking. In order to hit the ball in a straight line, you have to keep your wrist straight through your swing. It's a little more challenging, and the courses make for quite a challenge themselves.

Swordplay is fun, especially the speed slice. You have to slice an object in the direction of the arrow before your opponent does. It's got interesting destruction physics, as the objects will break apart wherever you slice them in the correct direction. I've never seen that before.

Archery is pretty technical, taking into account arrow drop over a given distance as well as wind. It's fun.

Frisbee is interesting, although its hard to figure out exactly where your throw will travel in relation to where you release in reference to the tracking sensor.

Basketball is a little strange, its hard to figure out how to line up a shot. Once I figured it out, it seemed pretty straight forward. The 3-on-3 is a little tough to get used to, though.

Some of the other games include Air Sports (Skydiving, Flying) and Wakeboarding (not all that exciting).

Overall, this game is much more fun the more people you have playing.

The WiiMotion Plus - Interesting concept, it definitely tracks more technical movements than the Wiimote does, although I still think it should have been built-in from the beginning. It seems to simply add the ability to track roll, pitch and yaw. I don't think the actual motion sensor is used to track any of its movements, I think it just uses internal level sensors that relay through the Wiimote. You do have to calibrate it every time you restart the game by laying it flat on a table or something, so I'm making an educated guess.

Graphics, Sound - Nothing special here, pretty much the same thing that Sports and Fit uses.

Value - Is it worth the $50 you have to pay for the game and one WM+, and the $25 you pay for every additional WM+? That's all subjective. For me and my girlfriend who get wasted and play around with it on the weekends from time to time, I'd say a definite yes for the humor alone. But if you typically play alone and you don't enjoy Ping-Pong or Golf, I'd say its not.