Deca Sports 2 is the followup to Hudson's original Deca Sports, which I've never played, so if you're looking for a judgment call as to whether anything's been improved over the original, I'm not your man. I didn't even know if Sports 2's online play was new to the series without looking it up (it seems to be.)
Where I'm coming from in this evaulation of how the review copy (with promotional sports gloves) Hudson sent me a couple weeks back stacks up is the point of view of a guy who likes the Wii Sports way of thinking: get me into a game, quick, with a minimum of fuss. Character creation and the like doesn't really excite me, and if there's an especially thick wall of equipment-purchasing and customization between me and the action I tend to get turned off entirely.
The ten sports included in Deca Sports 2 make up a mixed bag. I feel like a few could have been pruned entirely, feeling too minigame-ish rather than sportslike to be included in the package. But there are enough good sports and additional features, I think, to make the game a decent value at its asking price of $30.
The standouts include Tennis, which, like Wii Sports, is played with a single Wii Remote; but unlike Wii Sports, adds a handful of additional controls to make the game a little deeper. The core is still swinging the Remote at the right time, returning the shot at a different angle depending on your timing, but you've also got the option to run up and down on the court, lob the ball, and offer up variations in serves. The serves proved to be particularly tricky; it took my wife and I a few tries to get it right, and I noticed a random opponent online was having similar trouble. It's harder and deeper than Wii Sports as a result, and given the Tennis from that game was one of my favorite activities for awhile, I was surprised at how poorly I fared at first.
Another good time is the Blades-of-Steel-esque Ice Hockey. While it seems to have a major shortcoming in its lack of goalie control, this Nunchuk-and-Remote-played sport puts you in control of a team of players, cycling between them with clicks of the Z button, passing, shooting, and checking with various combinations of buttons and Remote waves. It works pretty well, though you should definitely not be counting on your goalie to stop an incoming puck.
In a less-actiony context, I also liked Petanque quite a bit—a game I'd not heard of before, actually. This is a game of tossing balls onto a playfield as close as possible to the jack, a smaller ball thrown out at the beginning of play. Aiming and throw type selection (crouching or standing) is done with the d-pad, and your throw is measured by the Remote's velocity while you swing it upward. What I found particularly fun about this one was the strategy element of knocking your opponent's thrown balls out of the way or even the jack itself. It's a much slower-paced game than the rest but definitely one of Deca Sports 2's best.
Rounding out the "good" list are Road Racing (motorcycle racing using a sideways-held Remote; tilt to steer), the very tricky Darts (target with the pointer and make a tossing motion with the Remote—but don't screw up your aim too much in the toss), and to a lesser extent, Dodge Ball (supporting catching and passing with buttons and throwing with a swing of the Remote).
But, as previously intimated, the package isn't all sunshine and roses. Synchronized Swimming is interesting initially as a sort of rhythm-action game—swing the Remote in a given direction to the music and onscreen cues—but it grows old quickly and can be a bit finicky besides. Kendo feels just plain weird with its d-pad moving and jumping about and using vertical and horizontal Remote swings to distinguish between head and body blows—definitely not giving Wii Sports Resort's Swordplay a run for its money. Speed Skating and Mogul Skiing are basically "swing Remote on cue" games, and neither is fun for very long. Even with these exceptions, though, the list of good games is still long enough to make the package worthwhile.
As for the features, Deca Sports 2 does definitely do one thing that's pretty cool: Tennis, Ice Hockey, and Dodge Ball are are playable online. I only played random matches for this review despite an offer to get together with players from Hudson, owing mostly to my inability to plan ahead to do much of anything, though I ended up apparently playing them—or someone else called "TEAM HUDSON"—once in Ice Hockey anyway. (Thanks, guys! Sorry for the spanking!) You've got the option to jump into either a preset-rule match or try to start up a match with your own rules. (Though I tried the latter, I grew tired of waiting for the matches to start and quit. I had better luck with the former.) Online play was surprisingly smooth, though I did note a little jumpiness when stealing pucks in Ice Hockey. Definitely a nice feature to have, even if it regrettably suffers from the ubiquitous-to-WFC dropped connections and time-intensive—sometimes fruitless—matchmaking.
There's also an element of team building and selection that comes into play with all the games. A number of preset teams are supplied for you, which I used mostly, or you can create your own and tweak it—in fact, you need your own custom team to play online (a simple enough process if you just want to make a random team and be done with it, like I did). There's also "league" and "tournament" modes that let you compete in a random distribution of sports as well as versus all the other teams in any given sport if you like a more substantive play experience, as well as per-sport challenge modes.
Deca Sports 2 ends up a decent package overall, even if you consider that you'll probably look at half its games once and never go back. Online play for some of the best sports is a nice thing to have, particularly if you expect you'll be doing it with a friend. Most of all, though, it appeals to me because it does a respectable job of getting me up and playing without jumping through hoops, while still adding just enough to make the games interesting.
Where I'm coming from in this evaulation of how the review copy (with promotional sports gloves) Hudson sent me a couple weeks back stacks up is the point of view of a guy who likes the Wii Sports way of thinking: get me into a game, quick, with a minimum of fuss. Character creation and the like doesn't really excite me, and if there's an especially thick wall of equipment-purchasing and customization between me and the action I tend to get turned off entirely.
The ten sports included in Deca Sports 2 make up a mixed bag. I feel like a few could have been pruned entirely, feeling too minigame-ish rather than sportslike to be included in the package. But there are enough good sports and additional features, I think, to make the game a decent value at its asking price of $30.
The standouts include Tennis, which, like Wii Sports, is played with a single Wii Remote; but unlike Wii Sports, adds a handful of additional controls to make the game a little deeper. The core is still swinging the Remote at the right time, returning the shot at a different angle depending on your timing, but you've also got the option to run up and down on the court, lob the ball, and offer up variations in serves. The serves proved to be particularly tricky; it took my wife and I a few tries to get it right, and I noticed a random opponent online was having similar trouble. It's harder and deeper than Wii Sports as a result, and given the Tennis from that game was one of my favorite activities for awhile, I was surprised at how poorly I fared at first.
Another good time is the Blades-of-Steel-esque Ice Hockey. While it seems to have a major shortcoming in its lack of goalie control, this Nunchuk-and-Remote-played sport puts you in control of a team of players, cycling between them with clicks of the Z button, passing, shooting, and checking with various combinations of buttons and Remote waves. It works pretty well, though you should definitely not be counting on your goalie to stop an incoming puck.
In a less-actiony context, I also liked Petanque quite a bit—a game I'd not heard of before, actually. This is a game of tossing balls onto a playfield as close as possible to the jack, a smaller ball thrown out at the beginning of play. Aiming and throw type selection (crouching or standing) is done with the d-pad, and your throw is measured by the Remote's velocity while you swing it upward. What I found particularly fun about this one was the strategy element of knocking your opponent's thrown balls out of the way or even the jack itself. It's a much slower-paced game than the rest but definitely one of Deca Sports 2's best.
Rounding out the "good" list are Road Racing (motorcycle racing using a sideways-held Remote; tilt to steer), the very tricky Darts (target with the pointer and make a tossing motion with the Remote—but don't screw up your aim too much in the toss), and to a lesser extent, Dodge Ball (supporting catching and passing with buttons and throwing with a swing of the Remote).
But, as previously intimated, the package isn't all sunshine and roses. Synchronized Swimming is interesting initially as a sort of rhythm-action game—swing the Remote in a given direction to the music and onscreen cues—but it grows old quickly and can be a bit finicky besides. Kendo feels just plain weird with its d-pad moving and jumping about and using vertical and horizontal Remote swings to distinguish between head and body blows—definitely not giving Wii Sports Resort's Swordplay a run for its money. Speed Skating and Mogul Skiing are basically "swing Remote on cue" games, and neither is fun for very long. Even with these exceptions, though, the list of good games is still long enough to make the package worthwhile.
As for the features, Deca Sports 2 does definitely do one thing that's pretty cool: Tennis, Ice Hockey, and Dodge Ball are are playable online. I only played random matches for this review despite an offer to get together with players from Hudson, owing mostly to my inability to plan ahead to do much of anything, though I ended up apparently playing them—or someone else called "TEAM HUDSON"—once in Ice Hockey anyway. (Thanks, guys! Sorry for the spanking!) You've got the option to jump into either a preset-rule match or try to start up a match with your own rules. (Though I tried the latter, I grew tired of waiting for the matches to start and quit. I had better luck with the former.) Online play was surprisingly smooth, though I did note a little jumpiness when stealing pucks in Ice Hockey. Definitely a nice feature to have, even if it regrettably suffers from the ubiquitous-to-WFC dropped connections and time-intensive—sometimes fruitless—matchmaking.
There's also an element of team building and selection that comes into play with all the games. A number of preset teams are supplied for you, which I used mostly, or you can create your own and tweak it—in fact, you need your own custom team to play online (a simple enough process if you just want to make a random team and be done with it, like I did). There's also "league" and "tournament" modes that let you compete in a random distribution of sports as well as versus all the other teams in any given sport if you like a more substantive play experience, as well as per-sport challenge modes.
Deca Sports 2 ends up a decent package overall, even if you consider that you'll probably look at half its games once and never go back. Online play for some of the best sports is a nice thing to have, particularly if you expect you'll be doing it with a friend. Most of all, though, it appeals to me because it does a respectable job of getting me up and playing without jumping through hoops, while still adding just enough to make the games interesting.