As soon as you boot up the game, you're inside a plane as one of your Miis, and you have to skydive down to the island. You catch a few Miis and form up a circle. As soon as the photographer gets her shot, all of you parachute upwards and the streaking, bright letters on yours beckon you to paradise- Wii Sports Resort.
The MotionPlus thing works wonders, although it does take up a bit more battery power. Some of the sports seemed like they were meant to be controlled with the new peripheral. You just can't imagine the swordfighting game without 1:1 motion control. Sure, there's the annoying thing about calibrating the MotionPlus before you start playing and sometimes it goes a bit off, but a button press is all you need to reposition it, so it's all good. Swordfighting has been done before on the Wii, but without MP you could only slash with the pointer on the screen the whole time(I'm looking at you, Dragon Quest Swords). It's clunky, that it is.
Table tennis is wonderful, it's much, much easier to do backhands and spins than with the Wiimote alone. It's a whole lot more fun than Wii Play's offering, although it's just a 6-point game(you could increase it to 11 by holding down the 2 button before each game, but that's beside the point). Archery is also quite fun, but without competition it gets old.
New golf and bowling controls well with MotionPlus, but angles make golf a little frustrating(go straight DAMMIT!). Fortunately, one major issue from Wii Sports has been addressed, the putting. No more swearing when a small waggle of the Wiimote causes your ball to fly past the hole when it's only a foot away. Frisbee is cute and the extra golf frisbee is just great. Holes in ones have never been easier to do.
What wasn't so great...anything that involved the water. All three water sports(Power Cruising, Wakeboarding, Canoeing) were boring and didn't have many clear cut goals other than getting high scores. You have no competition in these sports at all. Sure, you might argue about golf, bowling and archery, but the difference here is those 3 are more fun than the water sports could ever be. You also get the same unmotivated feeling for the 3 Point game in Basketball.
Want to know the island in more detail? Get on a plane and tour the island and visit all its landmarks. You'll be rewarded with different times of day, a balloon shooter and even your own resort home(you can't enter it, obviously. Dang.). If you so please, you can tour the island via a cycling race. Really, it's not as bad as most people make it out to be(it's not like the MotionPlus could be strapped to your feet while you make pedaling movements).
I know it sounds more like a love letter than a review, but Sports Resort really is great. However, great as it is, it only has so much lasting appeal solo. You might want to go to the Pro Cla$$ on all the activities, or you could have a go at completing the stamp collection- mini achievements in the game like getting 3 strikes in a row on bowling, or getting 3 bullseyes in one round of Archery, but the main attraction of Wii Sports has always been its multiplayer. It's the perfect party game. Have 3 friends over(make sure they have their own MotionPluses) and your afternoon's probably spent.
Overall, a great Wii game that no one should miss out on. It's made for the casual crowd, but regular gamers should have quite a time with it too. It's 'Everyone's Game', as Nintendo put it in their E3 2009 presentation. Brilliant stuff.
By: pikaby
