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Wii Sports: Baseball
Featured as one of the handful of
Wii Sports titles at E3 due to appear at Wii Launch as part of
the Wii Sports compilation, Wii Sports: Baseball
demonstrated the unique nature of the Wii Remote with ease. Whilst
being visually basic in the grandest of terms – the NintendoDS would
clearly have sniggered had it been asked if it was able to push such
minimal 3D effects – the calibration of the unique Remote was the
most accurate and lucid of any title on Nintendo’s Wii stand.
Demanding the player held the Remote
away from the screen in the identical fashion to a baseball
bat, the on-screen avatar mimicked the players movements perfectly.
As the pitcher threw the ball the player had to swing the Remote as
you would a baseball bat with astonishingly accurate timing and
representation on-screen. Although standing in an arena surrounded
by literally thousands of on-lookers, the game enticed you to
become one-hundred percent involved in the action and, even with our
Nintendo representative standing beside, it was impossible not to
ruffle the impeccable attire the Electronic Articles staff
attended with. A full-swing was the only option as a title which
will most commonly be referred to as a Mini-Game engrossed the
player into believing that imitating a professional Baseball player
was the only way to play Wii Sports: Baseball.
Wii Sports: Golf
While Wii Sports: Baseball
encouraged the player to really go for the full swing and use the
Remote as outrageously as possible, Wii Sports: Golf
encouraged the player to use the Wii Remote in a far more controlled
manner, showing off the finer-points of Nintendo’s excellent
calibration.
Holding the remote as you would a
Golf Club, pointing the Remote towards the floor, the player can
take a few practice swings to gauge the power (indicated by a Meter
bar in the bottom-left corner) before stepping-up to smack the ball,
but hitting the ball full whack would mean missing the green by
miles. Once on the green the player is given a Targeting Line which
can be adjusted with the D-Pad for going over any mounds that might
change the path of the ball, then it’s down to the players
slight-swing of the Remote to tap the ball in. This really does show
how well Nintendo have produced this effect; it’s so precise and
accurate that, for a Mini-Game, it in itself is a great game, and
you just can’t help liking Wii Sports: Golf.
Wii Sports: Table Tennis
Wii Sports: Table Tennis
was yet another of the tech demos on display at the Wii stand and
for many people, the first demonstration they tried. As a way of
introducing the controller to the player, Wii Sports: Table
Tennis performed extremely well, focusing only on the very easy
hand motions of left-and-right but delivering a very enjoyable
experience at the same time. Graphics are basic to say the least,
but then eye-candy really isn’t what Wii is all about. Although at
first it seems the Wii’s Remote is perhaps a little too sensitive,
the forgiving difficulty of the demo allowed players to get used to
the behaviour of the controller and, without too much trouble, start
a decent rally. This shows that the Wii will have games that are
incredibly easy to pick-up-and-play, but whether that will spur the
non-gaming public to buy the console remains to be seen.
Wii Sports: Tennis
Wii Sports: Tennis
is the game millions of Nintendo fans will have seen Reggie
Fils-Aime, Shigeru Miyamoto, Satoru Iwata and a random contest
winner playing at this years
Nintendo Pre-E3 conference. On playing
the game it becomes clear that Wii Sports: Tennis is one of
the titles that was made for the pick-up-and-play factor, not for
realism. For instance, player movement is not controlled, only the
swing strength. Your character runs toward the ball at all times and
the player must swing the Remote like a Racquet in order to hit the
ball. Twisting the Remote slightly while swinging can put spin on
the ball but aside from that there is little more to playing Wii
Sports: Tennis. Despite its intuitive play design, the actual
hitting of the ball is a little harder than you might think,
although player skill does play a large part. The bare basics of a
great Tennis game are there, but Wii Sports: Tennis has a way
to go to becoming a fully fledged game. |
