Time for another Wii game review, and this time it’s "Wii Play" from Nintendo.  Like Wii Sports, this is a collection of "minigames" that work with the Mii Avatars.  The game plays out as a "Wiimote Training guide", showing a decent collection of different ways you can expect to see the Wiimote used in various games.  At the start you can only play the first game, but after successfully playing the game once, it unlocks the next until eventually you’ve unlocked them all.  Once you’ve unlocked them you can go back and play them again and try to win the Bronze, Silver, or Gold medals for various scores.  The games are (in order):

  1. Shooting Gallery – Very reminiscent of the old Duck Hunt game, you start off overlooking a green meadow shooting targets.  The target start as simple stationary plates, then moving to clays, tin cans, and eventually UFO’s.  The "easter egg" in this game is that occasionally you’ll hear the classic Dog Bark as a duck flies across the screen.  Shoot it for big points!
  2. Hide & Seek – a collection of randomly generated Mii’s (along with a few from your own collection) appear on the screen, along with an objective like "Find 2 matching Mii’s" or "Find the different Mii".  Simply point and click on the correct ones to win, but do it within the timelimit.  At the beginning it’s trivially simple, but in later levels the Mii’s start walking or running around, and eventually even start swimming!
  3. Pose Mii – Bubbles appear on the screen with the Mii in one of 3 different poses (switch between poses with the A&B buttons).  Simply align the Mii with the Bubble and it’ll pop, but do it before the bubble touches the bottom of the screen.  This one makes heavy use of the Rotational aspects of the tracking.
  4. Table Tennis – I had high hopes for this game, but was somewhat letdown by the reality.  The computer hits the ball to you (and never misses), and you simply return the shot.  Your score is the number of times you return it before you miss.  After every 10 returns the ball speeds up a bit, turning this more into a game of Breakout than Table Tennis.
  5. 9 Ball – This one I’ve been very pleased with.  It’s a very good implementation of a Billiards 9-ball game.  Complete with english, jumping, and lots of trick shots, it’s a pretty faithful simulation and I’ve had alot of fun with it.
  6. Laser Hockey – Basically Air hockey but with neon graphics.  Simply point the remote where you want your puck to be.  The pucks aren’t round, they’re planar, so orientation of the controller can let you get some interesting bounces.
  7. Racing – In this one you ride on a Cow (Yes, a cow) around a short track running over Scarecrows.  This uses the Excite Truck controls: Hold the wiimote sideways, turn left/right to steer, tilt foward/backwards to adjust speed.  They add one more control: Jump by quickly raising the remote. 
  8. Tanks – This is the one nunchuk game, but the nuncheck is optional.  Simply drive a little tank around with the Nunchuk (or directional pad) and point the crosshairs with the Wiimote to target. 

So it’s a Fun collection of games, but (as many others on the net have said) not worth the $45 price tag.  Fortunately, it does come with a Wiimote, which is typically $30 – $40 .  That means the game is really only $5 – $15, and for that price it’s a pretty good deal.  It’s a decent little training game, good for seeing how the remote will work in various control situations, but I haven’t found too much replay value in it (except for 9-ball).  So for now, I’m gonna stick with Call of Duty 3.. Check back again soon for a review of that!

[tag:wii][tag:game][tag:wiiplay][tag:review]

Be Sociable, Share!