Wii Sports Resort Continued

18 Jun 2009 at 11:43:08 by Tim McDonald

And that's the thing – the MotionPlus picks up on all of the little quirks, and feels far more accurate than the standard Wiimote as a result. The Frisbee's course is altered not only by how fast you fling it and at what point you release, but whether you tilt it before you throw it. It also provides new and amazing ways to test the strength of your Wii strap, because I can already imagine how easy it would be to let go of the Wiimote through instinct when playing Frisbee. These little quirks also tie perfectly into Table Tennis (the Tennis replacement) and it'll be really interesting to see how something like Grand Slam Tennis stacks up to this, because Table Tennis matched the shots I wanted to make perfectly in my quick play.

Air Sports and Swordplay are two of the other big ones. Air Sports is reminiscent of Pilotwings, with flying, parachuting, and dogfighting. There's a massive degree of freedom here, and it's nice being able to explore the island and fly around points of interest to learn bits and pieces about the island. And shoot balloons, obviously. And fly around and find secret things, and unlock new bits and pieces.

Swordplay is the one that's stolen my heart, though; just ignore Reggie and Cammie battling it out at E3 2008. You can flail around if you like, but parried blows tend to unbalance you, leaving you open to an easy return strike. Staying calm and only attacking when an opening presents itself works far better, and it's all simple enough – your Mii avatar mimics your Wiimote position with its sword. If you swing, he or she swings. If you hold down the B trigger, your Mii brings the sword in closer to block. It's hard to tell how the blocking works behind the scenes (whether blocks are measured based on high and low, or horizontal and vertical, or whether it truly checks to see whether the attack hits your sword before it hits you) but one way or another, it does indeed work, and there was never a moment where I felt I should've blocked a particular attack but didn't.

Swordplay, too, has three modes. There's a one-on-one duel, which is what we saw at E3 2008, where each player tries to knock the other off a raised platform into water, Gladiators-style. There's a speed slicing mode where objects which must be sliced in a particular way (bottom right to top left, or top to bottom, for example) land in front of the player, and the first player to slice it the correct way gets a point. The first to reach a certain number of points wins. The third mode is the one that I really adored, though – a survival mode of sorts. The player has three lives, and faces off against a mass of goons in a scene evocative of samurai movies. Most require one hit to dispatch, while others have two or three. The ability to hit one, then another, then another, then another in quick succession with different strikes makes it astonishingly quick moving and hilariously entertaining. Nintendo, seriously: change the setting, add in dismemberment and a load of gore, release it as a stand-alone game, and I'll happily pay full price.

There are a lot of games here. Some are naturally throwaway, and some will have staying power, but the package as a whole should last a hell of a lot longer than Wii Sports did. Fun as it is in a party setting, and fun as it was for the short time I had with it, the real question is how it'll measure up for a solo player over an extended period of time, and that's something we're going to have to find out when the game launches later this year. Hopes are high, but not without reservations for single-player.

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