Platform: Nintendo Wii

Genre: Party

Number of Players: 1 - 4

Anyone who owns a Wii has undoubtedly experienced trying to find a Wiimote or nunchaku only to have no luck at all. The stores are sold out or you can only find one part. There are two answers though; you could pay far too much on eBay for a set or you could pick up a copy of Wii Play, a game that also includes everything for an additional controller. At just $10 more than what both pieces would cost, it seems like quite a bargain, but Wii Play is barely worth the additional money that it begs for and actually should be paying you for taking it home.

Wii Play is the type of game that really equals being a pack-in title to show off what the Wii can do more than it is a true and legitimate game. Having a collection of nine mini-games all on one disc sounds like the perfect thing, at least it does until you discover that the games really aren’t a replacement for any true games and what is found here gets old very quickly. Every mini-game is designed to take full advantage of the control scheme for the Wii, so for some, it might be considered a training title, but why would you need something like this? After all, Nintendo has stated that games on the Wii are designed in such a way that anyone can play them, so to get in some added training seems to really be overkill, but there is the issue of getting an additional controller, but I’m not necessarily sure that it’s really worth the annoyance factor that comes with Wii Play.

Normally with a title that has a selection of games, I could find at least one that was entertaining, but Wii Play doesn’t have anything that was fun or could keep my interest long enough to want to keep playing it. The game is also set up so that you will have to play the games in order to move past the single game that is available. It’s almost like Wii Play is forcing you to play it since you’re hoping that maybe the next game will be a little bit better, but it never is.

You begin the game with Shooting Range and yes, all of the games have very basic titles that are a reminder of the Atari 2600 days. Shooting Range is exactly what you think it is and you’ll point and shoot at balloons, cans, UFO’s, and just about anything else you can think of. It’s a good idea, but it’s a pale imitation of what Duck Hunt was on the original NES. Find Mii is basically a Wii version of Where’s Waldo and you will be given the details on the Mii that you are to locate. All you need to do is find them in the crowd of Mii’s.

Table Tennis is . . . table tennis. That’s it. You’ve played it, you know it, and you just hit a ball back and forth until one player misses. There’s an audience and more and more of them will show up as the game moves forward, but that’s really not something that makes it worth playing. Pose Mii has you turning and twisting the Wiimote in order to get your Mii into the right pose, and it’s fairly boring. However, not nearly as boring as what Laser Hockey is. Sure, it has a name that makes it sound like it might be enjoyable, but it’s merely air hockey played with the wiimote and nothing more.

Fishing. I think that really sums it up, and while some things about it are similar to other fishing games, like casting and reeling in the fish, it’s not nearly as in-depth as what the other games are. Given the choice between the generic Finishing that’s a part of Wii Play or something like Fishing Master, I think that the choice is quite obvious. Billiards in case you didn’t already know is just another name for pool, so you’ll use the wiimote as you would a pool cue. Charge will have you riding on a cow and toppling scarecrows in order to score points and finally there is Tanks where you control a small tank using both portions of the controller, and this is more or less a more advanced version of Combat from the Atari 2600.

Wii Play is very simplistic in terms of graphics much in the way that Wii Sports is. This isn’t a game that’s out to impress people with its look as much as it is just trying to show what can be done with the controller, but that’s not really something that I find to be a huge draw. Other games do the same thing and some of them quite a bit better. Wii Play would have been better left as a secondary pack-in title for the Wii or even one that could be sent away for and unless you’re absolutely dead set on having a new controller when one can’t be found any other way, Wii Play is better left where it is because the “play’ option is very, very limited.

-mike-