Wii Sports Hands-on Preview

WiiSports is a bit odd. It’s the simplest manifestation of what the Wii controller is designed for, and it’s genuinely good fun, but unbelievably simple. Really, there’s no reason at all why it should be so entertaining. WarioWare manages to pull off its simplicity by blending it with complete insanity and some awesome noises and artwork, but WiiSports’ style is clean and simplistic and functional and nothing more. And yet Tennis still has the power to render two grown businessmen in suits (they look like CEOs of something, I’m not sure what) completely inebriated with glee as they prance idiotically around this tiny closed booth in which the game is being shown, whacking a virtual ball from one to the other with ridiculously exaggerated arm gestures. They don’t seem to realise that they don’t actually have to run left and right across the room in order to reach the ball (the character does it automatically), but hey, they’re having fun. Who am I to interfere?

Interfere I do, though, eventually, as the greying men have been playing for about fifteen minutes and the queue is getting restless. I make pleading faces at the nice booth lady, desperate to get my hands on the controller. Immediately after she politely asks them to stop they turn red and hand over the controllers like they have suddenly started to burn through their hands. But playing the Wii will do that to you – the whole concept of the thing is so very silly that you end up acting extremely silly yourself, and in all my experience of Wii games it is WiiSports that is ablest to reduce people to grinning loons. Like SingStar, like EyeToy, it is simple and fun and very easy to understand, and therein lies its power. I suspect, though, that like EyeToy, the novelty will fade; it’s not like it takes long to get good at WiiSports, and I can’t see that it will have much longevity.

It is, though, an ideal game to introduce the world (and, I’m sure, to introduce non-gamer friends aplenty in the coming years) to the Wii, which is probably why it is the only first-party title that is not still shrouded in mystery. A sparse collection of Tennis, Baseball and Golf (at the moment – more games are almost certain to appear soon, either added to the initial package in time for launch or downloadable via the Wii online service), to play WiiSports for five minutes is to know it in its entirety. In Tennis, you swing your arm about in a doubles game against a friend or three as a little on-screen you runs automatically into the path of the ball. In baseball, you hold the controller above your shoulder and swing as ten balls are pitched to you – there’s no actual game of baseball to speak of, just a little pitching contest where the aim is to hit as hard as possible without sending the Wii remote flying across the room. Golf, meanwhile, requires nothing more of you than to hit a ball with appropriate force, as it aims automatically in the correct direction. We suspect that Golf at least will be a little more sophisticated by the time of release, but Tennis and Baseball are probably as complex now as they ever will be.

In one sense, this is discouragingly shallow – it takes about two games to perfect Baseball and hit a homer every time, and Tennis is just a matter of timing. On the other hand, though, it’s pleasingly uncomplicated, which is essential as this is clearly designed as a game for all of us to bring out whenever we have drunk friends over who aren’t really up for a game of Tiger Woods PGA Tour – it’s something that shows off what the Wii does to anyone who doesn’t know already. And it really is fun, especially in multiplayer. As illustrated by those mystery besuited gentlemen, Tennis is tremendous played competitively, and as one player pitches and one bats in Baseball the lack of depth will be forgotten entirely thanks to the inevitable physical comedy that will ensue in the living-room (or demo booth).

WiiSports is basically My First Wii Game. It’s simple and shallow, but given the context, it doesn’t really matter; as more and more games are released as time goes on, it’s probable that more complex games than Tennis, Baseball and Golf will follow this original trio. Like the concept of the Wii itself, WiiSports’ concept is at once so obvious, so simple and so fun that it’s almost unbelievable that nobody thought of doing it sooner (save the EyeToy people, but that’s another issue entirely). There are going to be people who dismiss WiiSports out of hand as little more than a tech demo, but I would challenge them to be cynical when faced with the incongruous and magnificently absurd sight of two businessmen, suitcases carefully left by the wall, swinging at nothing, with grins on their faces and Wii remotes in their hands. There’s something indefinably great about that.