Leger vs. Wii Play (Wii)

To say that Wii Play is something even remotely close to an essential experience would be ridicilous.

As the fith best selling game on the Wii the reason for this very thing should be nothing but the fact that it came as a bonus when buying a Wii Remote, not matter what reality has to say about it all.

Almost 30 million copies sold, which is quite insane numbers, even qualifying as one of the best selling games of all time.

A truly smart move on Nintendo's part.

Wii Play is a collection of tech demos evolved into minigames to demonstrate the functions of the Wii Remote aswell as defining the Wii universe Nintendo created. All the characters are presented in Mii fashion, and the ones created on the system will appear in the game in one way or another.

Nine minigames are available and apparently vary wildly in depth and quality. At first only one minigame is accessible, but when certain criteria are met in the minigame the next one is unlocked.

Good results are awarded with medals (bronze, silver, gold and platinum, and I have not managed to get one single platinum yet) and to further expand on the longevity multiplayer is available where two players can battle it out.

I guess that the fact that the very first minigame, Shooting Range, turns out to be something of a modern version of Duck Hunt is everything but conincidence; Back in the eighties when Nintendo launched the NES Zapper Duck Hunt became an instant classic when released.

The Wii Remote is in many ways a NES Zapper in disguise, so to let the generation of players having grown up with Duck Hunt enter the zone of nostalgia when blasting ducks and clay pigeons feels logical.

This time, however, the experience suddenly ends after five stages. No matter the inclusion of shooting balloons, going Hogan's Alley by juggling cans or trying to save your Mii's from being abducted by aliens, the game has a beginning and an end and after that nothing is left but trying to perfect one's run.

From here on out it becomes obvious that the minigames lack true depth, with one exception which I will come back to later.

Find Mii is a take on Where's Waldo where it is up to the player to find identical Mii's or Mii's doing their shit in ways different than the others. Sometimes in the dark, sometimes swimming in water and sometimes just standing there on an escalator, and it all happens under the pressure of time.

Sometimes it all seems to get stuck in waiting mode, just hoping that the Mii's you are trying to find will appear on the screen at the same time, all while losing precious seconds.

Even simpler is Table Tennis, where you have to bounce back the ball as many times as you can while more and more Mii's appear as audience.

Pose Mii showcases the rotation function of the Wii Remote. Bubbles with Mii's in one of three poses falls to the bottom of the screen while the player have to match the pointer acting as a silhouette with the Mii's in the bubbles.

Laser Hockey plays out in a similar way, almost Pong style, where the player controls a rotatable paddle to bounce a puck into the goal of the opponent. Unfortunately one frequently have to deal with the issue of getting the puck stuck in the behind of the paddle when doing quick movements just to score a self goal when trying to shake it loose.

Then comes the depth movement, which is presented through the Billiards minigame aswell as a fishing pond. Both minigames do a good job of showcasing how the hardware completely lacks the ability to properly register how the player move the Wii Remote closer to, or further away from, the sensor bard.

Getting a shot to register in Billiards feels like pure luck, and trying to adapt the strenght of the shot just do not work. The same becomes apparent when trying place the fishing rod in a desired position and this issue completely ruins the minigame.

For the last two minigames a cow racing racer and a tank shooter introduces on one hand the gyro in the Wii Remote and on the other the Wii Nunchuck.

Tilting the Wii Remote in either direction, while holding it as a NES controller, makes the coves move to left, right, speed up or slow down and even making a jump if quickly shaken upwards. All while trying to plow down all the scarecrows and jumping over hurdles.

The tank shooter presents itself as a 2D, top-down shooter, where one is aiming with the Wii Remote and moving the tank with the analogue stick on the Wii Nunchuck. The tank can also drop mines and the projectiles fired can use the walls to change its direction once with a bounce.

Different enemy tanks behave in different ways, the stages are varied in their layout and as many as a hundred are available.

Unlike the other minigames Tanks! almost feels like a small game which could have been released on Wii Ware with just some small adjustments and additions.

The main problem with Wii Play is how quickly one can unlock all the minigames, and most of the minigames lack the depth to keep playing them until a platinum medal is achieved.

While multiplayer can be enjoyable in short bursts the package simply fails to reach beyond the feeling of being more than some simple tech demos put togheter to form a game.

I can not think of any reason why more effort was not put into making progress in the games seem relevant and fun by introducing, say, checkpoints aswell as more unlockables.

Sure, playing Find Mii for extended periods of time will introduce some new type of situations to deal with and the difficulty constantly rises, but reaching a late stage and getting game over does not really make it attractive to go through all the easy stages again.

Trying to beat all the one hundred stages in Tanks! feels just as daunting and tiresome, even though the mechanics of the game are solid all the way through.

Wii Play may have been huge success, selling loads, and looking at is almost as a freebie along with a Wii Remote it does it job.

As a game, as a collection of minigames, it falls short in pretty much every way possible besides the presentation which is quite solid throughout.

But managing to showcase one of the worst aspects of the Wii Remote, the horrible depth perception, is in no way a good thing and the longevity of the experience for the single player hardly lasts beyond the initial session no matter the optional (boring) medal hunting.

Passable, I would say, aswell as a curiosity considering its context.