Wii Play - Playing Two Player

The reviews were fairly uniform: Wii Play isn't that great. It is more of a tech demo for what the Wii can do with motion sensing. Still, it is $50 for the game plus a remote while a remote by itself is $40. And everyone seemed to agree that paying $10 for the game is worth it. I'd agree with that.

When you first start up Wii Play, you have to start with the first game - the target shooting. Once you play that, you then move on to the rest of the games until you have played all ten. So basically, in a short period you "unlock" all of the games. I had to do this so that when my friends came over we could try any that we wanted.

In the course of doing this, I discovered that about half the games are worth playing: Shooting Range, Laser Hockey, Billiards, Charge!, and Tanks! Shooting Range gives you a crosshair where your remote points at the screen and you must shoot various objects that appear. It is enjoyable, but I am noticing that there doesn't appear to be much randomness to it. It seems to me that the same things appear in the same spots every time so that game may lose its luster after awhile. Billiards is a game of 9-Ball and works very well. It may be the best game on the disc. Charge! is a game of cow racing where you hold the remote horizontally and tilt it to turn and accelerate and can even quickly move it upwards to jump. While not as deep as Excite Truck, it works pretty well and the jumping gives it an added dimension. Tanks! is probably the best game on the disc. With the nunchuk attachment, you move a tank around the screen. A crosshair appear where the remote is pointing toward the screen and you can fire in that direction. Your shells will ricochet off a wall once so there is lots of strategy to planning your shots.

Laser Hockey, while not the best game on the disc, is the most interesting. Mostly because I really enjoyed it, but my friends did not. It took them awhile to figure it out and even then I'm not sure they totally did. The game is air hockey. Moving the remote up, down, left, and right does the same to the paddle. Twisting the remote clockwise or counter-clockwise rotates the (horizontal) paddle. I "got" this game the first time I played it, but others didn't. Regardless, I enjoy this game even if others don't.