Although we love playing basketball, none of us consider ourselves NBA caliber players. Sure, we have our moments, those off balance fade-away jump shots that bounce off the iron and swish through the net, but we're not about to quit GameDaily and enter the draft. At the same time, we're good enough that shooting 25 consecutive air balls, sober, is impossible, yet that's what happened when we played Summer Sports for Wii, a game that fails to capture the magic of Wii Sports, and does so in jaw-dropping fashion.
Basketball will drive you insane. Prepare to get nothing but air.
But then there are the other sports, and this is where things get ugly. Basketball, in particular, is quite awful, in part because of developer bumbling, but also because it's a difficult sport to translate to Wii. First, it's almost impossible to gauge how much force one needs in order to reach the rim or deflect the ball off the backboard. Sure, we made a few lucky shots, but for the most part we threw up air balls and had to watch the horrible "Air Ball" graphic float across the screen, accompanied by an equally abominable whistling noise.
Second, the game recognizes misses as makes. During a game of HORSE, which lasted an atrocious 45 minutes, our computer-controlled opponent matched one of our shots illegally, as in, the ball missed the rim and it counted. In fact, we finally won the game when the computer misread one of our misses and awarded us the basket. This glitch is unacceptable.
Then we played miniature golf. Again, Summer Sports' developers deserve praise for the imaginative designs. We love the courses and the hazards that force us to rethink our shots, but putting is terrible. Like basketball, it's difficult determining how much force to apply to the ball, and when we do try to tap it into the cup, the remote doesn't register these subtle movements.
The other sports are novel, but nothing we'd rush to play. Badminton works, but we'd much rather play Wii Sports Tennis, and while we appreciate Destineer for showing love to croquet, it's not exactly the type of game we crave on those warm, Saturday afternoons. Perhaps it's the New Jersey/New York in us talking, but we'd much rather play dodge ball or hit someone with a water balloon.
As for volleyball, that comes off a little better. We're not fans of the animation that shows the server completely missing the ball despite actually hitting it, but spiking said ball in the faces of our opponents is good for a few laughs.
With that said, a few laughs pretty much sums up the entire game. Summer Sports offers very few thrills, outside of collecting trophies and other awards for winning and competing with up to three other players. It's that troublesome basketball glitch, however, that kills the game. When you can't rely on a computer to keep score, you know you're in for a bad experience. Just stick with Wii Sports.
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