E308: Wii Fanboy hands-on with Wii Sports Resort

Going into our play session yesterday, we didn't have high hopes for the fun factor of NIntendo's expected sequel. In watching it at Nintendo's E3 keynote, we thought that cutting wood on the beach didn't really look that fun and a sort of dumbed down Wave Race experience seemed like a bad addition. Good thing we were wrong about one of those things.

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Upon booting up Wii Sports Resort, the nice lady from Nintendo that was demoing the title for us suggested we start with the frisbee-tossing minigame, Disc Dog, because it was a good way to experience the changes brought to the console scheme by MotionPlus. She was right.

The level of detection by MotionPlus is incredibly impressive. The game recognized every which way we flung the Wiimote, even when we took it for a complete 360 degree spin around our body, which turned out to be a very freaky animation in-game (think head-spinning in The Exorcist, only replace the head with floating Mii hands). So score one for Nintendo here.

But, what about Disc Dog? It's pretty much what you would expect. You toss a frisbee and await your little pup as it makes a hurried dash for the floating plastic disc. The closer you get it to the target (a large arrow that changes with each toss), the more points you get. There are three distinct areas that encompass the target arrow, with each being identified by a different color, rewarding the player with different point totals per toss for landing within these zones.

Next, we moved on to Swordplay, which we're assuming will replace the original Wii Sports Boxing game. This was actually fun. No, not the cutting wood and pencils part, but the actual battling a live opponent aspect. Here, MotionPlus shined. Guarding and slashing could be accomplished in a variety of crazy ways. Swinging the Wiimote low, as if we were blind and holding a cane to navigate a busy street, allowed us to disregard high blocks and lay into our opponent's knees. Slamming the Wiimote forward from a high position allowed us to clock the enemy Mii right in the noggin. There was a lot of depth here and no two fights were the same. Out of the three available minigames, this was by far the strongest.

Finally, it was on to the Wave Race-like minigame, Power Cruising. Here, our lack of experience with MotionPlus meant we would constantly oversteer and crash into walls. The slalom-like approach of this minigame didn't really come off that fun, although the game very much felt like a Wave Race. The only problem is the gameplay wasn't reminiscent or even a clone of that title. We feel that with some other racers to go up against, Power Drifting would really have been a lot more fun.

We're anxious to see what else Nintendo has up their sleeve for this title