I’ll be playing it multiplayer tomorrow. So these are my impressions of it single player.
Whoever at Nintendo thought it was a glorious idea to force a lame tutorial of Motion Plus when you are trying to play the game, and not even be able to skip but be forced for minutes to watch non-entertaining Motion Plus documentary needs to be shot. This goes against basic rules of game entertainment. The first five minutes are the most important. And you never, EVER, take control away from the player.
Why do companies treat their customers like idiots? If a customer bought my product, I would treat the customer with respect and good taste. If I needed help to install Motion Plus, I would look at the freaking manual that came with the game or I could click on the information button that is flashing real big on the menu. It really burns me that the user is unable to skip this ‘documentary’ at the beginning. It left such a bad taste in my mouth, the initial ‘skydive’ to WuHu Island fell flat to me.
Never, ever, take control away from your users. Everyone knows how I hate ‘cinematics’ and this ‘tutorial’ at the beginning is like a cinematic that isn’t remotely entertaining. It began my experience with the game in a foul mood, foul not so much because of the stupid video but because I wasn’t given control. It is saying to me that Nintendo thinks I, the customer, am too stupid to learn how to put a little plug into my controller, too stupid to read a manual, too stupid to click on a button to show the video at the main menu, so I have to be forced to watch it. Whoever made that decision deserves to lose his/her decision making position. I do not interpret such a forced video as ‘helpful’ but as annoying if I could skip it, that I cannot skip it as insulting.
So let us get to the game. One thing I have been mystified is why Nintendo bothers sending out review copies of Wii Sports Resort to hardcore game reviewers. It would be like sending out review copies of Halo to non-gaming media. You know such people wouldn’t review Halo in any decent context. Why bother with the hardcore game reviewers? They are at a loss as to how to possibly review such a game.
Since I am a member of the Expanded Audience, and I play my multiplayer games with other Expanded Audience members, I will put forth my views in not just how I view it but in how I believe the Expanded Audience will view it. If you happen to be a Hardcore Gamer and are offended that I am leaving you out, too bad. This game is not about you.
Why was the original Wii Sports successful? It was because the controls were simple, the games were universally understood, and the barrier to the new gamer trying them out is very very low. The games were also fun.
Another reason is because many people in the Expanded Audience can no longer play the Wii Sports games in real life because they are too old, do not have the time, or do not have the opportunity (such as many children). God bless the Wii Sports players in Retirement Homes. If I was in a Retirement Home, I’d be damn happy to play the Wii. These people are overjoyed they can play Tennis or Bowling while, in real life, they no longer can. And they also understand that they will never be able to play these games in real life ever again. One of the purposes of video games is not just to have fun but also to do things you cannot normally do in life (people who like Nintendogs cannot get a real dog for whatever reason as an example).
It was a massive mistake not to include an upgraded Tennis, to go with Bowling and Golf, in Resort. Ping Pong will not catch on with the Expanded Audience. I can just walk to my garage and, lo and behold, there is ping pong. Playing Ping Pong in Resort is not making ping pong easier or simpler to me. Even people in retirement homes can still play Ping Pong! While the ‘hardcore’ will likely love ‘Ping Pong’, I feel confident in stating that this will be ignored by the Expanded Audience and they will wonder, “Why didn’t they put Tennis in here?” Tennis was the major draw to the original Wii Sports, as you know. Ping Pong is an absolute joke, customer experience wise, to the original Wii Tennis. It is not that Ping Pong is ‘better’, it is, but that no one is going to buy a Wii to play Ping Pong. They did buy a Wii to play Tennis. Massive mistake.
And what about Golf and Bowling? Putting full 18 holes on Golf was a great idea. The spin on Bowling is great but Bowling was already great. The 100 pin mode was a genius stroke.
However, there is another massive problem with Wii Sports Resort in how it seems like a backwards step from the original Wii Sports (the first massive problem was replacing Tennis with Ping-Pong). Wii Sports did not just have five sports games with it. It has TRAINING GAMES that came with the five sports games and increased the longetivity of the title immensely. The original 100 pin bowling was from one of the training levels in Bowling. The complete and utter lack of these training games makes Wii Sports Resort feel very hollow. Even though Wii Sports Resort has ’12’ games, the original Wii Sports feels it has as much or maybe even more content due to having all the training games in it. Every Wii Sports player I knew LOVED those training games.
Sports that people can easily do in real life are not going to be popular with the Expanded Audience. While Ping Pong obviously fits this, Frisbee Dog and Basketball are things most Americans do by easily just walking outside. I really liked Frisbee Golf, probably because there are not many places to play Frisbee Golf, but Frisbee Dog is just frustrating and feels like a waste of time. There is no barrier to someone getting a free frisbee and just walk outside as opposed to the barriers that many people cannot do Tennis, Bowling, or Golf, especially inside their home. Frisbee is something no one has trouble with. Basketball, less so, but I can’t see how Basketball is going to impress anyone in the Expanded Audience. The controller movements for it are interesting. I keep scraping my controller on the ceiling due to the shots. Many Americans cannot play something like Baseball in their yards but baseketball is very common in the driveway. I don’t think Basketball was a correct game to put in due to how there is little to no barrier between the real thing and common people. Ditto with Frisbee Dog. (But Frisbee Golf is awesome.)
What about the Air Sports? Parachuting is incredibly dull, but what saves it is the sheer spectacle of jumping out of an airplane and falling through the sky. Most people are never going to experience that, therefore it was good that it was included. Even though the gameplay of it is pretty dull, the experience, which is skydiving, saves it.
Airplane is extremely interesting and almost, single handedly, steals the show of Wii Sports Resort. The use of controls for Airplane are perfect. What makes Airplane work so well is because of quality content (WuHu Island was polished enough that it is fun to explore. If there was no WuHu Island, Airplane would likely not have been much fun), and because Airplane provides a very different experience than all of the sports games. The problem with the sports games is that they begin to bleed into one another. After you play swordplay, you are not going to jump into canoeing. Why? It is because the player’s arms tend to be tired. So the player would do something a little different like golf or bowling, something where he could recooperate. In the original Wii Sports, the very active Tennis was complemented by the less active Golf and Bowling. I suspect Boxing and Baseball were not as popular because they were a little too demanding in activity to be enjoyed, especially boxing.
One problem with Motion Plus is that the older ‘more laid back’ sports games such as Bowling and Golf are now more ‘active’. Golf and Bowling are more demanding to the player (as it should be with Motion Plus). Too many active games makes the player want to turn off the game instead of switching to one game and then going back to the others. It is this where Airplane shines.
Airplane is not an ‘active’ game. I ate some rather tasty hamburgers I grilled with playing it for the first time. You only need one hand for it. You can sit back, recooperate from all the swordplay, get a few more tokens, and then go back to the rest of the active sports. Airplane is fantastic because it complements the rest of the game very well. Airplane is a very different experience and it is such an experience that actually benefits the other games since the player can re-cooperate.
Airplane is also very addictive. Why? It is because the user has absolute control. Nintendo did not make the Airplane on ‘rails’. The player is in full control and can go wherever he desires on the merry island. It is a crying shame this absolute control was not extended to canoe or cycling. WuHu would have been fun to explore on land and water (canoe does have a free mode but you can’t really go anywhere).
In other words, this should be a major signal to Nintendo that gamers, and non-gamers, like having absolute control. One game that came out that was a hit with non-gamers, back during the NES days, was called “The Legend of Zelda”. Perhaps you have heard of it. What was so great about the game was that you could go anywhere. This is something that has been sorely missing in all the later Zeldas as they focus on a badly written narrative. Games are more fun when players have more control.
In exploring WuHu Island, it is clear the designers have never really been to an island resort. For example, a windmill farm on an island? The reason why you never see windmill farms on an island is because, for one, they are too unreliable. The energy cannot be stored. If the wind stops, which wind tends to do, all electicity stops. Second, people despise the look of the Wind Propellers which is why the ‘rich people’ ban them from anywhere near where they live, such as Martha’s Vineyard. Third, they make incredible amounts of noise, some of it invisible, and they make people sick. You might see a windmill farm in a desert or in a prairie, but never in close approximation with people and never on an island, let alone a vacation island. I consider it as breaking the illusion that I am on a resort island. It also seems strange that I am on this island, and I cannot fish, on the island or in a boat. Fishing may not add much to Motion Plus, but it would have been ideal for a Resort experience and an ideal game for the Expanded Audience. Perhaps they could have had a ‘stab-fish-with-pointy-spear’ mode. Or maybe not.
Let’s move to the Jet Ski mode. I Jet Ski in real life, occassionally in Travis Lake. An authentic Resort experience would have a ‘free mode’ Jet Ski where I go wherever I want, and when I get near the yachts, their residents glare at me and give me dirty signals. God, do yacht owners HATE people who jet ski. Anyway, the Jet Ski mode is surprisingly fun, I can play it sitting down, and I find myself returning to it. I believe the Jet Ski mode will end up being more popular than people think.
I cannot say the same about the Water-Boarding mode. What is the point of this except to frustrate the player? The reason why the other sports works is because the player can visually see the goal. I know, in jet ski mode, that I must go through the little loops and life presevers. I know, in cycling mode, that I need to beat the other cyclers. But there is no visual goal in Water-Boarding. You just do ‘tricks’ to make a number go up. This is incredibly dull. A more interesting experience would be to take the unfortunate Mii through a dangerous obstacle course full of ramps, barrels, and maybe even a shark. Water-Boarding will not be successful with the Expanded Audience.
Contiuing on the theme that Nintendo designers do not know what a Resort is, they also have no idea what a canoe is.
This is what your Mii is ‘canoeing’ with in Resort.
I’m an outdoorsman, and I canoe. Yet, I have never seen such a canoe shaped like that. The boat looks more like this:
This is a kayak. One of the differences with a kayak and a canoe is that the boat is sealed to avoid capsizing. Apparently, Nintendo’s idea of canoeing is to be stuck in a kayak with a single blade paddle.
This is what a canoe looks like.
You do not see this boat in Wii Sports Resort. You end up canoeing in kayaks.
I thought to myself, “Malstrom, surely there are canoes that look like what is in Wii Sports Resort.” And sure enough, there are.
This is a canoe. However, it is ‘sealed’ and looks like a kayak because it is intended for whitewater areas. In the ‘canoe’ mode of Resort, you are on a flat lake.
Then I thought to myself, “Well, Malstrom, maybe Nintendo made it sealed so the poor little Mii wouldn’t drown himself. That would be horrible! We couldn’t have players capsizing their boats.” We can’t have players paddle their way away from WuHu Island and into the ocean either, and the game restricts you from doing that. I was unable to flip my boat upside down or even rock it severely (which happens all the time in a canoe).
So I can come to only one conclusion: Nintendo developers do not know what a canoe is, and they didn’t even bother to look one up. A real canoe, one that the player can capsize, would not only be more authentic, it would have been more fun. If you have been canoeing with more than one person, you know that it is very easy to capsize the boat and other people seem to do it on purpose sometimes! These things, like not having a canoe in ‘Canoe Mode’, harms the illusion.
As for the experience of canoeing, it is not that well done. I found the controller not able to respond well to switching sides quickly. I went around this by paddling horizontally and turning the controller upside down so it damn well registered that the paddle was now on the other side. Since it works better with the controller being horizontal, a rowboat with two motion plus controllers would have been more appropriate. At least with the controllers, I won’t get bruises like I do in real rowboating.
Cycling is underrated. It is fun, but not entirely fun. It suffers the similiar problem as Frisbee Dog and Basketball in that almost any American can do it. Most Americans have a bicycle. Going around WuHu Island is interesting, but the concept of cycling isn’t ‘fun’ because pretty much everyone can ‘cycle’. The reason why Stamp Collecting would be not fun on the Wii is not because of gameplay issues but because of the absurdity of using a virtual experience of stamp collecting. While that is an extreme example, I hope to use it to illustrate that cycling is ‘dull’ not because of race layouts or gameplay issues but because it is not something that needs a virtual experience. Miyamoto called ‘Cycling’ as “incredibly dull”. I bet this is, in part, due to Miyamoto’s extensive experience of cycling. Of course the virtual experience of cycling is going to be boring.
How about Archery? Archery is going to be popular. I thought Archery worked even back in Mario and Sonic in the Olympics game. The big problem with Archery is that its mode feels like the ‘traning modes’ that Wii Sports had and has no “real mode”. Archery feels like a series of tutorial sessions. It needs a better mode. Perhaps shooting wild turkeys on the island? “Turkey is on the move!” *Swipe* *Feathers fly up in the air.*
There was a missed opportunity to use fire arrows to, like, burn stuff. I think Wii Sports is at its best when it has an authentic experience but then adds in a video game exprerience on top of that. For example, Wii Tennis had regular Tennis but then it had the amazing ‘wall of bricks’ that disapeared when a ball hit it. Bowling had regular bowling and then bowling with 100 pins that found its way as a normal mode in Resort.
Archery needed more content. It is a good mode, and the user is hungry for more and ends up being disapointed that that is all there is.
The star of the show is Swordplay. Note that it is “SwordPlay” and not “Sword Fighting”. Sword Fighting would be more like fencing. I know why fencing is not included. The first lesson to know with fencing is to stand up while bending your knees to have your thighs almost perpendicular to the ground. And stay that way. In ‘SwordPlay’, no one bends their knees. They just swing their swords like 2×4 wooden beams!
All the modes of SwordPlay work very well. What I love is the ‘da boom’ sound coming during the duel and, especially, the horde like mode. My subwoofer purrs with awesomeness. I especially love during that ‘horde’ mode of the music change when my Mii is running to the next group of guys. I find myself jumping with excitement, eager to start slicing again. I haven’t had this much fun since the 16-Bit Era.
I can’t think of any problems with the SwordPlay. You guys know it is good. It truly is the star of Resort. I suppose what would be better is if there were various weapons to play with like, say, a staff, or a curved long blade. But then it wouldn’t be SwordPlay, would it? Alas.
I haven’t tested the game out in multiplayer, but from what I have seen, what is the verdict of Wii Sports Resort? Is the Wii going to be sold out for another two years?
No. Wii Sports Resort fails to acknowledge certain parts of why the original Wii Sports was successful. Bloating up certain ‘training modes’ (like the 100 pins in bowling) to full modes themselves is good, to an extent, but the lack of training modes is big disappointment. Now, you say people don’t like to play ‘training mode games’. And to that, I present you with the sales of Wii Play. Yeah.
While Ping Pong is an improved gameplay and controls over Tennis, it will be nowhere as popular with the Expanded Audience. No one is going to buy a Wii to play Ping Pong, folks. But they would do it to play Tennis. With Tennis, you could play four people. You strangely cannot with Ping Pong. Ping Pong can be done with four people, so why not? Despite its gameplay advancements, Ping Pong will be seen as Wii Tennis going backwards.
Much of the games’ effectiveness will depend on the players’ tastes. While SwordPlay will likely be the most popular, Airplane is probably the real surprise star of Resort. People bought Wii Sports for Tennis but ended up playing bowling more. With Resort, people will buy it for Swordplay but end up playing Airplane more. Airplane is extremely good.
Wii Sports Resort will satisfy those who felt ‘undershot’ by the original Wii Sports. However, there is really nothing in Wii Sports Resort to drive growth to the Wii. Wii Sports Resort is a game of sustaining improvements, while original Wii Sports is a game of disruptive improvements.
Wii Sports Resort improves on the values the original Wii Sports presented. If you like these values, you will like Wii Sports Resort.