After seeing what a huge success Wii Sports was when it was first released, it was the assumption by most gamers that Wii Play, the second installment in Nintendo’s series that features their unique Mii characters, would be equally successful or even more so. However, due to a complete lack of depth and spotty control, Wii Play is a weak collection of nine mini-games with little or no replay value to speak of that can also be considered one of Nintendo’s biggest disappointments of the year.
As a matter of fact, the only real reason to buy Wii Play is because Nintendo has bundled a Wii-mote in with the game for only $49.99, which means that technically, the game only costs $10.00. With that being said, it shouldn’t surprise anyone when they play Wii-Play and feel like they’re playing nine tech-demos, instead of a clear-cut, well-crafted and polished game on a next-generation system. For the most part, despite the implementation of Mii’s, the created characters used in Wii Sports, Wii-play is absolutely void of the charm, depth and fun that make games of this kind on the Wii a joy to behold.
Instead, Wii Play feels like a rushed collection of haphazard demos that only show the gamer a small glimpse of what the Wii is capable of.
Consisting of classic games such as table tennis, billiards, a version of air hockey, fishing and other games such as tanks, charge and shooting gallery, Wii Play had the potential to be something special. However, most of the games end before any of the fun really begins and don’t feature the same intuitive and ingenious control of the better games on the system.
For instance, while table tennis is probably one of the better games in the collection, the single player mode consists of only a volley mode, which strips the player of any opportunity to play competitively by themselves. In addition, the control scheme is an absolute joke, as it forces the player to only move the Wii-mote from left to right, instead of swing the controller like they were actually swinging a ping-pong paddle. The same thing can be said for Billiards as well, as the control scheme takes away any fun that could have been had playing the game.
The only two mini-games on the disc that actually are as fun to play as they are realistically controlled are the shooting gallery and fishing. Using the Wii-mote as a light gun, the player can play a fast-paced combination of the NES classics, Duck Hunt and Hogan’s Alley that could have proved to be an entertaining game by itself if it was a bit deeper.
Fishing, as well, offers a fun and entertaining experience that takes advantage of the Wii-mote’s capabilities. Using the Wii-mote’s rumble feature to know when a fish is biting your hook and a quick pull up on it in order to reel any fish in, Wii-Play’s fishing mini-game is one of the only games on the disc that’s worth the price of admission.
In the end, with only a small portion of the games featured on the disc using the Wii-mote in an entertaining way and an even smaller amount promoting long periods of gameplay, Wii-Play is an absolute disaster that isn’t worth any Wii owner’s time until they need a second Wii-mote.
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