Nintendo's follow-up to its wildly popular Wii Sports game (which comes packaged with the Nintendo Wii for free) takes players back to WooHoo Island to try their hands in a new series of sporty mini-games, enhanced by Wii Motion Plus, new hardware that snaps onto the end of a Wii Remote and enables the system to translate more complex movements on screen.
What kind of complex movements? The new add-on allows for new games like fencing, with the ability to pick up your swipes from all possible directions; like Frisbee, basketball and table tennis, since the Wii-mote can now determine when and at what direction your wrist breaks when you mimic throwing a basketball and the like. Wii Sports Resort comes with 12 games total, which also includes archery, bicycling, rowing a canoe, wakeboarding, swordplay, air sports and a jet skiing game called "power cruising."
We played through a swordplay level where compete against another player in slicing objects using a sword. The game tells you which direction to slice, and whoever slices the object correctly first wins the round. It's a simple game -- one that adoesn't require any extra button-mashing -- but it's a true testament to the Wii Motion Plus' ability to detect more subtle arm, wrist and hand movements.
Then we moved onto the Frisbee game, where you toss a flying disc using the Wii Remote at a target. Of course, there's an adorable cartoon dog who catches the flying disc and returns it to you -- hit 'B' to take the disc and toss it again and again until the round ends. As the game progresses, score multipliers, like giant balloons, will appear near the target. Hit the balloons to wrack up mega points all at once.
The next sport, archery, requires using both the Wii Remote and the Nunchuk. Hold them both up in the air hit the 'A' button to aim the bow and then 'Z' button on the Nunchuk to control the blow -- pulling the Nunchuk straight back to aim and then let go of 'Z' to send the arrows flying at a bull's-eye at the end of the course. The better you aim, the more points you get, which will get gradually more difficult as the game progresses: target ranges get longer and windier, which means you'll have to compensate with your aim. This and the swordplay games were our favorite of the three -- and we predict spending many hours perfecting our archery skills.
If there's any question that Wii Sports Resort will be the same blockbuster hit as its predecessor? From what we've seen so far, this will be a welcome additional to anyone's Wii gaming collection, that is, if you're willing to shell out the cash Wii Sports Resort and Wii Motion Plus will be packaged together and hits stores on July 26 for $50. You'll most likely need to buy a separate Wii Motion Plus ($25) for each additional player for this game.
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