Resort Review

School gets tough, boring, and downright tiering.  Sometimes you just need a little vacation.  Well, I just got back from mine!  I took a vacation to a nice little resort on a small island somewhere in fantasy land.  Oh, the fun times that were had!  I went jet skiing, flew a plane over the islands volcano (even took a quick fly through inside!), sword fought with some good friends, played some ping-pong, and when the moon came up and things stared to cool down, I took a trip to the basketball court to shoot some hoops!  It was a great vacation indeed.So, this review cheesy enough for you yet?  Well, I'll stop with the vacation describing, and get into my review of Wii Sports Resort for the Wii!

Wii Sports Resort is the sequel to the oddly popular Wii Sports, that was launched with all North American and European Wii's.  I say oddly popular, because in all honesty, Wii Sports was kinda lame.  It was fun for a few moments, as you realized that the motion controls could in fact be awesome.  But, once you got used to it, there was almost no point in playing it.  Unless you were super casual about it that is.  

Resort turns that around.  While on the outside, the game looks as casual as ever, it really is not.  There are many elements that make this game hardcore... if you will.  (It is tough to call a game where your Mii is the main character "hardcore".)  There are a total of 12 "sports" games in total, all of which utilize the Wii MotionPlus, a new device released by Nintendo that improves to motion sensing capabilities of the controller to the point of 1:1 movement.  What you do with the remote, is mimicked exactly how it should be on screen.  Awesome.  This little device (packaged in with the game) is incredibly fun.  Granted, I think the Wii remote should have had these abilities to start with, but alas, but late than never, right? 

As for the games, they can be played for surface value alone.  For example, during the plane flight simulator, you could simply fly around the island, look at things you cannot normaly see during normal game play, quit, and pretty much never come back to it.  Now, if you are looking for a deeper experience, try finding all, what is it 40, 44, I dont remember to be quite honest, but try finding all 40ish hidden "locations", marked with a little token, around the map.  Not easy, trust me.  Also, each game has 5 "achievements" or "stamps" that you can earn through doing outstanding things during the game.  An example of this would be striking the bulls eye three times in a row during archery.  And that is one of the easier ones!  These little extras make Resorts replay value much longer than one would expect.  I have logged about 25 hours into it (more than I thought I would initially) and still am just over halfway done.  

I would talk about presentation, such as graphics, sound, etc., but on a game like Resort, that sort of seems pointless.  The aim of this title was to present Nintendo's new little device, the Wii MotionPlus, and along those lines, I can say from the bottom of my heart that I believe the thing shows a lot of promise.  I am not gonna lie, the MotionPlus did have some minor issues, such as needing to be recalibrated regularly, which really breaks the flow of the game, but I think those little problems can be ironed out by the time bigger titles start utilizing the Plus.  Regardless, for the most part, like I just mentioned, it felt pretty awesome to use the MotionPlus, and see it actually work.  I could not believe the smile that creeped up my face as I played Table Tennis.  Give it a shot, trust me on this one.

Wii Sports Resort is the embodiment of Nintendo.  They try to make games that appeal to the casual audience, something that Sony and Microsoft just can not do, despite their efforts.  Resort does that with the cute presentation and the ease of playing the games.  At the same time, Nintendo tries to cater to the hardcore audience at the same time, which Resort does with tough challenges that the casual player would never bother even attempting.  It is a shame that most hardcore players are too lazy to look past the cute graphics and kiddy appearance of the game to see a truly great game that cannot be experienced anywhere else but with Nintendo.

Wii Sports Resort: 7.5/10