If you buy a Wii Remote, better known as the ‘Wiimote’, you can choose if you want to buy Wii Play with it for a few dollars more. It’s not much for a Wii game, but should you buy it? Is Wii Play worth the few dollars you must spend in addition to your new Wii Remote?

Wii Play is a collection of 9 mini games to let you show the use of the Wii Remote and the Nunchuck. The game presents itself as a “how to use the Wii Remote” tutorial. You begin with pointing, and every mini game ads a new move you can perform with the Wii controller. Of course, you must unlock the games one by one, because the next mini game can be a bit to hard if you’ve skipped the first one…?

laserhockey… a shocking original name

Don’t ask me what’s the use of this, the mini games don’t offer a lot of game play, and you won’t learn to use the Wii remote. When I play this game I get the idea it’s a sort of Wii promotional material, to show of the things you can do with the Wii remote and get people interested in the Wii so they buy it. But I’ve already bought this console, so what’s the point getting me interested in it?

Not that you will get interested in the Wii because of Wii Play, they offer you 9 games you can play on millions of sites on the internet (table tennis, air hockey, shooting things), with only one difference: the controls. Luckily the controls do work smoothly, some game producers could learn a thing or two from this.

A duck hunt variation, the reason why I’ve bought the game, I guess the original duck hunt is more fun…

Well, we know which parts of this game aren’t interesting, so, what is interesting? You can compete against your own high scores, and win medals if your scores are high enough. It will actually take some time to reach the platinum medal scores, giving the game just a small bit of entertainment and a big challenge (it’s quite hard to get the platinum scores, and I believe some are impossible to reach).

There’s also a multiplayer function: two players can compete against each other. This function really increases the lifetime of the game, the billiard game is actually fun to play against someone.

yes, poking the eye is more fun than the game itself

If you buy a new controller, and you don’t have a multiplayer game yet or if you just like ping pong and billiards, you could have some fun with Wii Play, but if you have a low budget, rethink, the game doesn’t offer much and you probably won’t be spending hours playing it.

Score: 6

It’s already the 4th Wario Ware game, and I think this is again the proof that follow-ups aren’t much better most of the times, but I can’t be totally sure about that, this is the first time I’ve played a Wario Ware game, and when I play this game I’m glad about it, it’s not total crap, but also it’s not a game where you want to stuff your money in… Or I don’t like the whole idea of this game, or the game sucks, to make it more simple for me to say something positive, I’ll take the first as the problem.
This is a game for the hardcore minigamer, the goal of the game is to play minigames till you drop dead, faster and faster and faster. You must use all the utility’s of the Nintendo DS: the microphone (yes, it looks stupid when you are playing in the bus and you must blow into the microphone) and the touch screen, which they’ve used very well.
The game starts very slow, but to make it a little bit more exiting, the games are going faster and faster till you got a headache and you are irritated by the fact that this game is to fast for your simple human mind J. When you gain new high-scores you unlock new characters, more mini-games, and get toys for your toy room.
The idea of making use of the touch screen in this Wario Ware as for controlling mini-games was a good idea, it is fun, plays simple and therefore feels natural, the only point is that after you hear the screen squeak, you are more worried about your touch-screen then about your highscores. This of course is totally useless, if you don’t press to hard, your screen shall be fine.
The mini-games contain a large portion of toilet-humor and already has gained the status: what a nonsense (in the positive way). Another nice idea is the mix, you can play the minigames in different mixes, making the game harder and more surprising. In this way you can stay mini-gaming for the rest of your life, and it’s the ultimate game for the people who are screaming for mini-games, but not for the gamers that want a large game, with a nice story in it.

The cursor and the upper screen is fake, the screen below contains the real game

Story?
Hmmm, where did I left it…. It is the missing link in this game, they’ve could at least make one nice story in it, I don’t like the method of a own story for every character, that even don’t have a cross point or a funny plot in it, an extra drive to play the game. The little movies in it are (luckily) good, and contain a large chunk of Nintendo humor.

Nice kitty…. Ehhh doggy

Err, are there more missing elements?
Well, I do miss some things, I didn’t even told you the most important thing, the multiplayer system. After seeing a review about the cube version of Wario Ware, I at least expected a multiplayer on the DS. But except of a little ping pong toy, with which you can really play a sort of 2d ping pong with a friend on one DS *WOOOW* I couldn’t find it. I think it’s a bad thing, especially because the DS multiplayer WIFI system is very handy, and the game is perfect to base a multiplayer mode on it, shame on you, Nintendo….
Another thing I really missed was the 3d, I hoped they would make a little more use of it, for the most games they’ve used the GBA graphics.
The last bad thing I want to mention (phew) is the simplicity of the game. In a astonishing short amount of time I had unlocked all the games, mixes and characters. I hoped that it would be a little bit harder, but I still had hope that making high scores with playing individual minigames was harder. I must say that it was even very simple to get enormous highscores with the most of the games (+- 600 and then you don’t want to play even more), after you’ve made it 50 times, the game won’t be going faster, and the minigame stays the same. Luckily the mixes are harder to play.
The last thing I want to mention (sorry) is that the highscore system isn’t very good, you can’t even set your name in the highscore list, something that excludes the one system battles with friends, but for the people with a good memory it is still a nice thing to have.

Finally you can legally draw moustaches under drawings

Conclusion
Unless al my comments on the game, it stays a nice game, not a fantastic one or one with a new idea, but you can have good fun with it.

Marks
Graphics: It suits the game, but it’s a pity that they didn’t have used the full power of the DS
Gameplay: A bit simple, no multiplayer and nog Story, 3 things that kill the game a little…
Sound: Nice sounds, that don’t annoy you, even at full speed
Length: Not very long if you don’t like minigames (one or two weeks) otherwise you can have fun for a year, or maybe longer.

Score: 7