Wii Sports Resort (Wii)

Wii Sports Resort is a sporting game developed and published by Nintendo for the Wii to act as sequel to the ever-famous Wii Sports. The basic plot is that you are a Mii going to Wuhu Island, a luxurious resort with 12 activities with which you can amuse yourself. These are: Swordplay (which is basically kendo), Wakeboarding, Frisbee, Archery, Basketball, Table Tennis, Golf, Bowling, Power Cruising (again, more like a jet ski), Canoeing, Cycling, and Air Sports (Skydiving and Biplane Flyover).

I have to admit, I was seriously determined to get this game when it came out. I was so psyched about it; I wanted to do Archery, Swordplay, and Bowling (my old favorite) especially.

Overall, it turned out in the end to be an...average game. The issue is that some of the controls for the sports were either too sensitive, or just plain broken due to the fact that this was the early Wii MotionPlus era, so it's hard to expect it to work perfectly, for good reason.

In no way am I calling the game bad. I enjoyed every sport to a certain degree, but they all could have been done better, and this small annoyance made everything get old over time.

Let's go over some of the major errors I found as far as controls go:

The first major one was with Table Tennis. You'd constantly have to re-center your Wiimote and re-calibrate, because if you tried to do realistic swings (that felt comfortable, to be quite honest), it would start to go haywire and swing the wrong way. For this reason, you had to make very small movements, and that completely took away from the whole experience.

The next was with the Swordplay (oh, man, that is so disappointing to me), for essentially the exact same reason as for the Table Tennis. Large, realistic swings would cause the motion sensor to read your movements wrong, so that you'd end up swinging the wrong way. This was really annoying because the swings were supposed to be authentic, and while that did remain the idea, you would have to do too much to actually make it work properly.

The final issue(s) were with Bowling and Golf. These were the two best-done sports from the previous title, but with this game, Nintendo tried to "soup them up" in order to attempt to make them more realistic than they already were, which was very realistic. In doing so, they made the controls way too sensitive. It got to the point where the Wiimote had to be positioned just right in Golf so that the ball didn't stray ridiculously. It's roughly the same with Bowling; the ball would keep curving so much that it would hit the gutters every time. The tediousness took all the fun out of these wonderful sports.

On top of all this, there were issues with the games themselves. The elephant in the room was Canoeing; they gave you a pond to paddle around in and a series of tight little courses, but they didn't give you the option of going down a raging river! That would have been EPIC, especially with all four players! It just made it a boring option.

The next problem is that they didn't let you do the Island Flyover for long enough! Well, not necessarily that, but there should have been some way to earn more time to spend in the air. It's such an amazing experience, and yet they keep capping it off to keep your joy in check. That's just mean.

One last complaint I have is a minor one: I sort of wish that they had let you roam the island on foot. You know, look around, maybe complete tasks to earn neat changes of clothes. This is something they basically fixed in Go Vacation! that should have been here to complete the resort experience.

I'm sure some of you who enjoy the game very much are starting to think, "Geez, EK is a total jerk, why did he even buy the game? Is he a nut?" Well, I guess that last bit is kind of true. But the thing is, I am starting to be a bit of a jerk. There are some incredibly fantastic things about this game that I should really be covering, so let's get to some of those!

As I mentioned before, I completely love Island Flyover. It's an amazing way to get to know the incredible feat of nature and now engineering that is Wuhu Island. Plus, I really enjoy the fact that they put little collectible symbols over the important sites; I've gotten almost all of them, and it is crazy fun looking for them!

On another good point, the Swordplay is completely fantastic. My favorite function by far is the Showdown mode, where you're a lone warrior fighting an onslaught of opponents of varying difficulty (don't worry, nobody dies, the swords are fake). This is something I was wishing for for so long, and it was great to see it there.

Other sports I completely love are Archery, Wakeboarding, and Cycling. They all work fantastically and I went back over and over to get the stamps in each of them.

That reminds me: this game has a huge improvement over the last game: collectible stamp awards! There are a total of five stamps that your Mii can earn for each sport by completing certain tasks within each sport. This adds a huge replayability factor to the game; can you get all 60? Talk about enticing!

And who am I to be slamming the rest of these sports? I'm sure tons of people out there love them, especially Bowling and Golf. Plus, if you don't like the way those sports are done here, just go to Wii Sports! Practically every Wii owner has it!

All in all, Wii Sports Resort is a great game; it will be enormous fun for you, your family, and your friends if you decide to get it. The catch is that it's an early MotionPlus game, meaning it has a whole lot of holes in it. What I'm trying to say is that it's a good game, but not a fantastic one. We have Skyward Sword for that.

So my final verdict on the game is that you should rent it for however long it takes you to soak it all in, because I don't think it will take such a long time that you'll have to buy it. However, if you and your folks like it enough to want it permanently, go ahead, because that means you will treasure the investment (partly because it comes with a Wii MotionPlus, which you'll want to have, trust me).

(By the way, this is my 60th review! Awesome!)