Review

It’s already strongly apparent that mini-games are going to be well served by the Wii. Not only do we have Wii Sports bundled with the console but the launch line-up alone has no less than three other titles packed to the gills with mini-games vying for your attention. Out of those games, Wii Play has the dual advantage of being slightly cheaper than the others and providing an additional Wii Remote in the package.

So the big question isn’t whether this game is worth £30, with an extra Remote usually going for £25, it’s more whether this is worth that extra fiver?

It must be pointed out that Wii Play isn’t really a game at all. Each of the nine mini-games it offers has been designed to help you learn all about the Remote. One minute you’ll be shooting targets, the next, moving a ping-pong bat left and right, before tilting the controller to line up shapes. It’s all pretty basic stuff really, but basic doesn’t necessarily mean it’s bad.

Unfortunately, despite the fact that some of the games here are great fun to play, they’re all incredibly short lived. The best example of this is the table tennis where a number in the corner of the screen counts up how many hits you’ve managed so far with the aim being to rack up a high score. When your score reaches 100 however, the game just ends. It’s not too difficult to achieve this figure, and it only takes about two minutes to get there, leaving you with a game you’ll never go back to.

This lack of a challenge continues through all nine games on offer and in the end only two remain entertaining enough to play more than once. It’s probably not a coincidence that these two bring back memories of vintage games from my youth with the shooting being essentially NES Duck Hunt with greater accuracy and tanks is just like Combat off the Atari 2600! To get the most out of Tanks though requires you to buy a second Nunchuk controller.

So is it worth a fiver? The short answer would be: no, not really. Two out of nine isn’t a particularly great return, especially when you could simply get Rayman Raving Rabbids instead and find most of the same challenges included there, only with the added bonus of actually being fun.

When I consider the potential behind it, Wii Play is a crushing disappointment.

About the Review

Platform

Nintendo Wii

Developer

Nintendo

Publisher

Nintendo

Released

8th December 2006