GregHowley.com

Nintendo has done it again. Just as Super Mario Brothers, which they bundled with the NES back in 1990 was arguably the best game for that system, Wii Sports currently seems to be the best Wii game out there. True, I have not yet tried Twilight Princess, but I will soon.

Wii Sports includes five games: tennis, baseball, bowling, golf, and boxing. And although they don't do a perfect job of catching in-and-out motion, and they don't work exactly like a light gun when pointing them at the screen, the Wiimote controls work pretty damn well for most of the Wii Sports games. I'll provide here my quick review for each, going in order from my least to most favorite.

Boxing
Wii boxing is the only one of the five games that I feel doesn't work. Perhaps it's because the controls have trouble with the in-and-out motion that you use for punching. But when I try to hold the controls up to block my face, the boxing gloves are all out of place. To block my face, I have to do this crazy thing where the controls are crossed and the wiimote is about a foot higher than the nunchuk. Half of the time when I throw a punch, my Mii stands there and does nothing, and the rest of the time I have trouble controlling where the punches are going. Maybe it's just that I'm a perfectionist when it comes to fighting games - rarely have I met my match at Street Fighter 2. But Wii boxing just gets on my nerves.

Bowling
Wii bowling is pretty fun, even for a guy who doesn't like to bowl. Apparently, I tend to put a spin on the ball without really trying, so I've learned to aim to the far right end of the pins, and have gotten a fair number of strikes that way. I guess what I need to do at this point is teach myself to better control the spin, by twisting the wiimote slightly as I pitch the ball. I've also learned that if you throw the ball rather than roll it, it removes a good deal of the spin, which is sometimes desirable. And unlike a real bowling alley, you don't have to worry about putting a hole in the alley floor with a heavily dropped bowling ball.

Golf
Of all the Wii sports, golf is probably the one with which I'm most out of touch. Funny then that I'm enjoying it so much. You don't really do any actualy aiming with your golf swing. You line up you aim beforehand and the swing only controls how hard you hit the ball. But you do have to compensate for wind, and when putting you need to take the hills into account. There are nine courses, six of which I've yet tried. And it's a lot of fun.

Baseball
I've probably spent more time playing Wii baseball than any other of the Wii Sports games. One of the best parts about Wii baseball is that if you create many Miis, they'll all come up to bat. Right now, the only good Miis in our system are myself and Linda, her sister Regina, and my brother Sean. I'm sure we'll end up adding other friends and family, and I'll eventually add Borat and Charlie Brown and other random celebrity Miis. But baseball consists entirely of two parts: hitting and pitching. Pitching is fairly straightforward: you move the wiimote as if you're pitching, and it measures your speed. You can hold different buttons to throw four different pitches, and toggle between overhand and underhand pitches. The fielders are entirely computer-controlled, so after the ball leaves your hand, it's just sit back and watch. Hitting is a lot more fun. Not sure exactly why, since it's actually a much simpler process, but it is. Maybe it's just fun to smack things with a bat. The only factor in batting is timing. Way too early or late and you miss. A bit early or late, and it's a foul ball. You're trying to hit the ball with the very center of the bat. I try to make a sort of scooping motion when I bat, but I'm not sure that matters. It's also strange that if you hit a grounder and it's scooped up by an infielder, it counts as an out. But that's the way it works. It's always fun to see Linda's sister catch a fly ball. We've got to make some more Miis so that the generic ones all go away.

Tennis
Tennis is my favorite Wii Sports game. Maybe that's because it's the one I'm best at. I've always been a good badminton player in real life - maybe there's some carryover of skills. The bottom line in tennis is to just hit the ball. You need to be aware of whether you're using a forehand or backhand shot, and you can scoop the ball to hit it high, or put a foreward or backward spin on it. I haven't yet gotten good at putting spin on the ball, but I still do very well. When we were over Michael's house in Connecticut, we played 4-player tennis, and that was awesome. Wii is always more fun with more players.

So that's my take on Wii Sports. Always fun, but when you've got a large group it's even funner.