Wii Play Motion (game review)

This game will be the sleeper hit of the summer. I’m calling it right now.

Whenever I have friends over and I fire up the Wii, there are always my go-to games for parties. They include Super Mario Bros, Smash Bros Brawl, Mario Kart, GoldenEye, NBA Jam, or Wii Sports Resort. Never Wii Sports and never Wii Play. I got those on Christmas Day, the same day I got my Wii, but I rarely every play them.

But, unlike Wii Sports, a game that its sequel rendered pointless, Wii Play had me coming back at least for the target practice and that tank game. Wii Play is marketing genious at work. Because it came packaged with a Wiimote, it was basically a way for the consumer to buy a Wiimote and get a disc with a bunch of mini-games on it to show off the motion-sensing tech. And it sold. And sold. And sold. Around 27 million units as a matter of fact.

So, when Nintendo announced that they were releasing a Wiimote that had Wii Motion Plus built into it, I thought surely they would release a sequel to Wii Play as a way to get people to buy that second Wiimote, but instead we got Fling Smash. Never played it, never will. It got panned by the critics and at the time, I didn’t think I’d need much more than the Motion Plus attachments. Wii Sports Resort and Skyward Sword were the only two games I thought I’d ever buy that needed Motion Plus.

But, that all changed with the announcement of Wii U. I had been keeping up with some of the leaked info and early on it was all but officially confirmed by Nintendo that the new console would be fully backwards compatible with the Wii. I immediately thought, “Hmmm, that will most likely mean Nintendo will phase out the Wiimote and just stick with Wiimote Plus.” This thought was further confirmed when it was revealed that Nintendo plans to stick with the Wii-mote as its standard controller beside the new controller. And even if they don’t, having a couple of Wiimotes with Motion Plus built in is something I would want to have for the long run.

So, I preordered Wii Play Motion and got to play it today. Here are my initial thoughts: