Sports Champions Review

Table Tennis is a tricky one. The movement of your paddle in the game is excellent, with the angle determining the spin applied to your shots, but it's also incredibly easy to hit the ball when your intention is to just move the racket into position. It's also much harder to get into than Wii Sports Tennis. The one-to-one movement of the paddle in relation to the Move controller is great, and no doubt this why the sport was picked for the compilation, but it's simply not as instantly playable as casual gamers would want.

Last and definitely least is the dud of the group, Volleyball. Here you control your arms using single or dual Move controllers, but everything feels far too scripted, with you simply moving the controllers at the right time. It's hard to understand why this is in here instead of something like baseball, bowling or tennis.

Each of these sports can be played alone, with friends, or in a Champions Cup against a series of increasingly tough opponents. Complete this cup and you'll unlock a challenge mode for that sport, which is essentially a set of mini-games built around the event's mechanics. There are leaderboards for each event and items to unlock, but that's your lot. If playing alone you'll grow tired of the events fairly quickly, but the multiplayer options should make this one of the most popular Move titles.

Visually Sports Champions uses a realistic style, but with characters that are caricatures of real people. They are exaggerated in terms of their design and animations, which is fine in the more exciting sports but somewhat odd when they're involved in a fairly peaceful game of Bocce. Thankfully there's no annoying announcer to worry about, and you can play your own music if you want.

As an example of the kind of control Move is going to allow in future titles, Sports Champions is easily the best of the launch line-up, but compared to the obvious competition (Wii Sports Resort) it's lacking content. It's still the best of Sony's initial Move titles, but it needed a handful more well-realised sports in order to be classed as a great game.