Celebrity Sports Showdown

17 Nov 2008 at 13:50:12 by Spanner Spencer
Systems used to review this title: (WII)

Years ago, Electronic Arts pretty much saved itself and the Sega Mega Drive when it made a bold move to license the names and likenesses of sporting celebrities. Nintendo had all the big name games tied up, with no way in for Sega, but these sports games – accompanied by the leaders in their respective fields – turned out to be 16-bit money printing machines.

EA’s never forgotten that lesson, though whether it’s as relevant today as it was in 1991 is another matter. In Celebrity Sports Showdown we’re seeing a game that returns to the power-license premise, but ultimately smacks of a concept born not out of design inspiration, but superficial marketing.

Just looking at the box and hearing the name it becomes nigh on impossible to put aside the shameless promotions to view the mini-game compilation unbiased. And, after all, why should we? If the celebrities are included, it’s not unreasonable for us to assume they’re included for good reason. Yet their presence seems to be entirely in the hope that a few (almost) recognisable faces will help to push a lacklustre and feeble Wii Sports remake off the shelves.

For the moment, however, we’re going to ignore the C-list and concentrate on the actual sporting mini-games. We’ll come back the licenses in a few minutes to beat them into the dust. What EA has done here is to woefully underestimate the power of Wii Sports. That simple, bundled game is still one of the finest and most played Wii showcases available, and going up against it is to challenge the Nintendo console itself. You’d have hoped EA realised the magnitude of that task with the terrible EA Playground, but apparently not.

The 12 mini-games in themselves are not a bad selection, by any means – it’s their application where the system falls apart. They comprehensively misuse the Wii-mote at every turn, apparently unable to fathom a better representation of the on-screen action than random and disparate shaking and gesturing. This inherent misconstruction leaves you feeling as though a simple joypad would serve Celebrity Sports Showdown far better, though shackling the Wii like that seems completely contrary to the system’s purpose.

Volleyball, for instance, recreates none of the (incredibly simple and obvious) hand motions you’d associated with serving or punching a ball over a net – instead replacing button presses with arbitrary gesturing, and taking much of the control off your hands to avoid coming up with a way to move your celeb about the screen. Archery makes no effort to recreate the action of knocking and pulling an arrow, instead requiring you to simply point and click where you want to shoot. Others, such as dodgeball and joust duelling are quite inexplicable – waving the controller about the place seems to work, most of the time, though this is hardly any representation of virtual sports. And, speaking of sports, when did racing pastel-coloured jets through a canyon become the kind of activity you’d entertain alongside badminton (are these celebrities members of a sports club that has its own landing strip, or something)?

Perhaps a 10-year old girl might reasonably be coaxed into buying this game on the strength of Mia Hamm’s inclusion, or the idea of going skiing with Nelly Furtado, but their disappointment will be greater than anyone’s when they discover their favourite celebs of yesteryear don’t so much as speak a line. Their Mii-esque depictions stand up to very little scrutiny, and even the sporting stars such as Sugar Ray Leonard and Kristi Yamaguchi (as talented as she appears to be in real life, I still had to Google her) don’t carry the torch for their respective sports.

As with all Wii games, multiplayer can step in to save the day, and Celebrity Sports Showdown is no different. Gather four players together to have a go at the mini-game collective and you will raise a few smiles – often thanks to crude and unprintable jokes at the celebrities’ expense – but this just brings us back around to Wii Sports. Nothing in this compilation can compare to a single game on the console’s fantastic bundled game, and the four of you will quickly revert to a round of golf or bowling.

Celebrity Sports Showdown ultimately comes across as perplexing. How EA ever imagined it could compare to any other mini-game collective on the Wii (let alone Wii Sports) and how/why these ten struggling celebrities put their names to it is a complete mystery. For exactly the right Fergie-enamoured girl who’s planning a brief Wii party with three other Fergie-enamoured children, there’s some enjoyment to be had from Celebrity Sports Showdown. For everyone else it’s an aggravating and laborious way to put a few pound notes in the pockets of famous people you probably haven’t even heard of.

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