Wii Sports showed players what their Wii could do; now Wii Sports Resort shows off another new technology from Nintendo -- the Wii Motion Plus accessory. The $25 device, which launched a few weeks earlier, snaps onto the bottom of the Wii-mote and enables the Wii to pick up movements more accurately than before.

Of course, that's not the reason people will run out to buy 'Resort.' The game challenges players to 12 sports, including table tennis, basketball, archery, Frisbee, power cruising, wakeboarding, canoeing, golf, cycling and more. It's almost like a vacation in a box, and, by our estimate, it's a vacation worth taking.

Archery is one of the best new games in the Wii Sports lineup, we just wish that it had more than one mode.

The game offers challenges for all levels of players. Start out playing an easier mode for a sport and unlock more difficult modes as you progress. The game also tracks your performance, providing graphs that charts of your highs and lows. Win big, and the game rewards you with achievement stamps, which can be used for bragging rights later. You know, if you're into that sort of thing.

Fans of Wii Sports' Bowling and Golf get a chance to play again with the Wii Motion Plus' enhanced controls, even though the game mechanics seem largely similar. While Bowling, you'll notice that the game does a better job picking up any twisting motions in the player's wrist. We also found that our poor Golf skills weren't helped by the more sensitive controls (hitting a 2 yards to the hole shot about 12 to 36 yards over), sending our shots flying willy-nilly all over the course.

The basketball mini-game is one of the best games in the batch, and begins with a 3-point contest game (shoot 25 balls from five positions on the court) for up to four players. Getting the ball into the basket -- press B to grab ball and shoot in one quick motion -- takes a little time to master. Pass the first level, unlock a second level -- a Pickup Game lets you play a 3-on-3 game against a friend. Cycling, the game most likely to break a sweat, tasks the players with moving the Wii-mote and Nunchuck up and down to simulate pedaling a bike. It's slightly awkward, because you have to do that while making sure the two controllers are pointing directly at each other. Table Tennis replaces Wii Tennis, and in place of wide strokes, lobs and killer backhands from its predecessor, short paddle swings send the ball scuttling across the net. Secretly, we found ourselves wishing we could just load and play the old Wii Tennis instead.

The non-traditional sports included with Wii Sports Resort each offer new ways to control and several new challenges that really do showoff the MotionPlus' abilities. Frisbee lets you take hold of a popular plastic disc, which you'll start off by throwing to a dog. While holding a Wii Remote feels strange versus a disc, wrist rotation, the height at which the disc is thrown and the speed used in the toss all come into play here. Points are gained here with a dartboard-like scoring system where colored rings and where the dog catches the disc give you a number. The unlockable Frisbee Golf adds three, six or nine hole versions where you use long, intermediate and short range discs to get closer to the hole -- represented by a towering pillar. Get inside the pillar to score. Similar to golf, it's quite challenging and your Frisbee skills do get tested.

Slicing sushi, bamboo and even pencils is a great way to test your sword slashing skills.

Archery is normally slightly dangerous in real-life with sharp arrows, wrist guards and that arm pad used for any skin-peeling accidents. In Wii Sports Resort's Archery, the goal here is accuracy without the pain. Placing the Wii Remote into your left hand (as if you were holding a bow), you use the Z button and the Nunchuk in the right hand to pull back the arrow and string. Once done, your angle and power on the string is translated into more clearly focused area of the target at the other end. Wind speed and yardage do come into play here too so determining your arrow's trajectory does turn challenging. Swordplay begins as you Duel against an on-screen player and the speed and height of your swings really translate well from your real-life hand movements (make sure that there's nothing that's made of glass above your head). Speed Slice mode adds a fun versus match where you have to chop up sushi, pencils faster than your opponent and Showdown, which pits a single player against other sword fighters is good for a challenge but doesn't really feel fun -- it's just lots of hacking. Air Sports, which includes Skydiving, also comes with the Island Flyover mode which lets players test their flying skills as they search for information icons around the island (found inside a volcano, lava tubes, etc), pop balloons for added points. Dogfight, a two-player only game, looks like fun as players attempt to test their flight skills by blasting their opponent's balloons but since we only had one MotionPlus accessory, we weren't able to play.

Water sports like Wakeboarding offer lots of fun and casual-style challenges as you hold the Wii Remote sideways, angling to use the wake of the boat you're riding behind as a ramp. Once on the side of the wake, you jump the Wii Remote a few inches to get some height and use the movements and angle of the Wii Remote to perform tricks. Of course, you have to land with the remote sideways in order to get points. One issue here is the camera angle, often, you're riding outside of camera range, only to angle back into view to perform a trick. It doesn't kill the experience but it is frustrating. Canoeing is a mixed bag of a game. Using the Wii Remote as a paddle, players navigate their canoe through floating markers and racing down waterways. Sure, you do get to guide ducklings back to their mommy for points but it's boring, repetitive and at times, too sensitive to your movements. Finally, Power Crusing (aka the Jetski game), is controlled by using the Nunchuk and Wii Remote as makeshift handle bars with the rotation of the remote as the acceleator (the A button can be used too). Timed races against the waves do prove entertaining for fans of the personal watercraft but the experience lacks a stunt mode like Wave Race fans have been waiting for.

Wakeboarding looks good, plays OK but really lacks any depth to make it one of the Resort's best games.

The game's mostly fun, but a few technical issues often put a damper on the experience. The MotionPlus enhanced Wii-mote often needs calibration before a game (done by placing the remote on a nearby flat surface for a few seconds) -- something that should have been fixed before release. And Wii Sports Resort requires MotionPlus in order to play, so if you have one to three other Wii Remotes, you'll need additional MotionPlus accessories -- not a cheap expense at $19.99 each. And Nintendo's attempt at Xbox 360-like achievements, Stamps, fails to compel. There's no real way to monitor your achievements except that each stamp or achievement-like success leaves a message in your Wii mailbox (and you'll find many of them there after you play for a long time). And while there is a great deal of two-player experiences here, none of them are available to play online against a friend. Given the success of online play with Mario Kart Wii, not having this feature is a severe oversight on Nintendo's part.

Regardless of its flaws, Wii Sports Resort is the kind of game that every fan of Wii Sports will rush out to buy. As with Wii Sports, it's fun to play alone and only gets better when you have a live challenger beside you. We predict Wii Sports Resort will sell fast, sell lots and will undoubtedly become the must-have Wii game this summer -- if they don't sell out first.