As Miyamoto (translatedly) put it during our Tuesday evening roundtable, Wii Sports Resort isn't just Wii Sports 2—it's an expanded vision for the game, so fleshed out and complete that it will likely totally replace the original on your shelf.
Resort (or at least the near-final-looking build they have playable on the floor) contains twelve "sports," with each one containing a variety of events. For instance, the Swordplay category contains "Duel," which is your traditional one-on-one faceoff, "Speed Slash," (or something with that approximate title forgive me I forgot), which is a one-on-one activity that pits you against a mystery referee who tosses objects into the air, whereupon landing in front of you are marked with a slash direction that you must perform faster than your opponent. The final Swordplay event is "Showdown," which involves you taking on a gauntlet of cronies with swords. And that's just one event! If the trend is any indication we can expect at least thirty-six separate events. several of which improve upon original Wii Sports titles: the new MotionPlus versions of Bowling and Golf offer vastly more control and precision than their prototypical counterparts.
Archery feels more than natural, with the player holding the Remote in their off-hand and pulling back the Nunchuk with their primary hand. Buttons are used to approximate gripping, pinching, and releasing the arrows, and every twitch and movement of the bow is reflected on-screen. Basketball is (seemingly) pretty difficult—I observed our site manager Cory face off against former EGM writer Dan Hsu, with both of them slugging it out in a three-point contest that ended breathlessly at the score of four buckets to three (go us). The flick of the wrist at the top of the arc along with the release of the B button to let go of the ball both seem to be sticking points, with mysterious intangible factors like the speed of the shot and the angle of the release playing major roles. Mr. Hsu let go shallow and his shots flew with less arc than Mr. Faller's, doinking off the front of the rim or convincingly bricking against the back, while particularly rain-making shots floated up and off the top of the screen before dropping back down.
The descriptions could continue forever: the swordplay feels like you always imagined it should, with enemies waving their weapons around in front of them waiting for a chance to strike. At one point I raised the Remote above my head samurai-style which caused the enemy to do the same—from there it was a quick descending cross-slash to the midsection that dropped him with satisfaction. Table Tennis follows in turn, with very accurate spin and slice, while the Air Sports airplane tour of the island feels just like it did at E3 2006. In general, it's just all more solid, and the little quirks that came about from the Remote not knowing exactly where the thing was moving, but just that it was, seem to have been excised.
To again reference Mr. Miyamoto's own comments on the game, one thing he said he disliked about the original Wii Sports was that you couldn't really "improve your skills" beyond a particular point that was imposed by the limits of the hardware—the (my terminology) "fudge factor" of the imprecision of the Remote. This game appears to rectify that in spades by requiring the MotionPlus, such to the extent that professional athletes that played the game were noted to claim "it's more realistic than what we do in real life!" Bold and a bit hyperbolistic of course, but certainly more accurate now than with Sports.
In addition to the myriad sports and events, Wii Sports Resort also includes 100 different "stamps" to collect throughout all the events which reward not necessarily "better" performance, but are meant to encourage new ways of playing, according to Miyamoto. This writer imagines events where you might be tasked with hitting Showdown enemies only in the legs, or an archery event where you need to target items in the background (this was confirmed in some minor conversations with a booth attendant who pointed out that "bonus objects" might occasionally pop up in the scenery).
Packed with a MotionPlus and retailing for $49.99, Resort makes the original Wii Sports frankly look like a tech demo, with every event save for baseball and boxing being somehow represented far more completely in the new iteration. Add in the island, which lends the game a sense of cohesion, the 100 stamps, the dozens of events, and the variety of solo and multiplayer options, along with the depth of precision and skill that is now possible to build in order to tangibly improve your abilities at the games, and you have a total package that is far more enticing this year than it was at last year's E3. The extra time has done it well, which means the wait until late July will be particularly protracted. Prepare your frisbee arms—this is one for the library.
Resort (or at least the near-final-looking build they have playable on the floor) contains twelve "sports," with each one containing a variety of events. For instance, the Swordplay category contains "Duel," which is your traditional one-on-one faceoff, "Speed Slash," (or something with that approximate title forgive me I forgot), which is a one-on-one activity that pits you against a mystery referee who tosses objects into the air, whereupon landing in front of you are marked with a slash direction that you must perform faster than your opponent. The final Swordplay event is "Showdown," which involves you taking on a gauntlet of cronies with swords. And that's just one event! If the trend is any indication we can expect at least thirty-six separate events. several of which improve upon original Wii Sports titles: the new MotionPlus versions of Bowling and Golf offer vastly more control and precision than their prototypical counterparts.
Archery feels more than natural, with the player holding the Remote in their off-hand and pulling back the Nunchuk with their primary hand. Buttons are used to approximate gripping, pinching, and releasing the arrows, and every twitch and movement of the bow is reflected on-screen. Basketball is (seemingly) pretty difficult—I observed our site manager Cory face off against former EGM writer Dan Hsu, with both of them slugging it out in a three-point contest that ended breathlessly at the score of four buckets to three (go us). The flick of the wrist at the top of the arc along with the release of the B button to let go of the ball both seem to be sticking points, with mysterious intangible factors like the speed of the shot and the angle of the release playing major roles. Mr. Hsu let go shallow and his shots flew with less arc than Mr. Faller's, doinking off the front of the rim or convincingly bricking against the back, while particularly rain-making shots floated up and off the top of the screen before dropping back down.
The descriptions could continue forever: the swordplay feels like you always imagined it should, with enemies waving their weapons around in front of them waiting for a chance to strike. At one point I raised the Remote above my head samurai-style which caused the enemy to do the same—from there it was a quick descending cross-slash to the midsection that dropped him with satisfaction. Table Tennis follows in turn, with very accurate spin and slice, while the Air Sports airplane tour of the island feels just like it did at E3 2006. In general, it's just all more solid, and the little quirks that came about from the Remote not knowing exactly where the thing was moving, but just that it was, seem to have been excised.
To again reference Mr. Miyamoto's own comments on the game, one thing he said he disliked about the original Wii Sports was that you couldn't really "improve your skills" beyond a particular point that was imposed by the limits of the hardware—the (my terminology) "fudge factor" of the imprecision of the Remote. This game appears to rectify that in spades by requiring the MotionPlus, such to the extent that professional athletes that played the game were noted to claim "it's more realistic than what we do in real life!" Bold and a bit hyperbolistic of course, but certainly more accurate now than with Sports.
In addition to the myriad sports and events, Wii Sports Resort also includes 100 different "stamps" to collect throughout all the events which reward not necessarily "better" performance, but are meant to encourage new ways of playing, according to Miyamoto. This writer imagines events where you might be tasked with hitting Showdown enemies only in the legs, or an archery event where you need to target items in the background (this was confirmed in some minor conversations with a booth attendant who pointed out that "bonus objects" might occasionally pop up in the scenery).
Packed with a MotionPlus and retailing for $49.99, Resort makes the original Wii Sports frankly look like a tech demo, with every event save for baseball and boxing being somehow represented far more completely in the new iteration. Add in the island, which lends the game a sense of cohesion, the 100 stamps, the dozens of events, and the variety of solo and multiplayer options, along with the depth of precision and skill that is now possible to build in order to tangibly improve your abilities at the games, and you have a total package that is far more enticing this year than it was at last year's E3. The extra time has done it well, which means the wait until late July will be particularly protracted. Prepare your frisbee arms—this is one for the library.