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Wii Sports Resort

How do you provide a follow-up to the best-selling game of all time? By making it better, of course! Wii Sports Resort offers more than double the amount of sports found in the Wii's original pack-in, and as the pioneer of MotionPlus, a waggle-enhancing dongle which plugs directly into the bottom of your Remote, these sports are physically more accurate than has ever been achieved by previous motion-controlled attempts on the Wii. It sounds good on paper, but how do you go about convincing sceptical gamers that this new-fangled witchcraft actually works?

By chucking you out of a plane at an altitude of around 13,000 feet. This is your induction to Wuhu Island, a grand, expansive resort paradise brimming with things to do and places to see – a well-deserved holiday from the monotony of low-quality shovelware and effortless sports games which unfortunately dominate the Wii market.

It is indeed during freefall after jumping out of a plane that you realise that Wii MotionPlus actually works. As an on-screen overlay demonstrates, prompting you to test it out for yourself, your freefalling Mii is your Wii Remote. Flip it over, twist it, turn it, shake it, keep it still; no matter what you do with it, your Mii will replicate the motions. There are no glitchy movements or unrecognised motion inputs, as movement constantly remains wonderfully fluid.

Allowing you to fiddle around with and push the capabilities of MotionPlus right off the bat is an indicator for what the rest of the game will be like. By god, are you in for a treat.

Harmonious teamwork, how beautiful. Try that at home, it'll never work. It's only a matter of time until someone ends up with a Wii Remote through their eye.

Once you've parachuted into Wuhu Island having experimented with your new toy, the full range of sports are available to you instantly. The rather clinical feeling we got from the mash-up of games and exercises in Wii Fit, which partially took place on this island, is gone; everything (bar the golf courses) takes place on the island. Going for a leisurely (or not so leisurely) ride on your bicycle or embarking on a flight around the island will reveal each and every one of the locations you visited to play various sports to be “real”. The whole island is pretty unified, and the experience of dipping out of one sport and into another is very fluent. This coupled with extremely accurate controls for sports equates to quite an immersive experience, more so than possibly any other game we've played in the past.

In opening up the resort and all of its activities to all players automatically, there may understandably be some worry from players looking for more of a challenge than they found in the original Wii Sports. Whilst “casual” players can have a perfectly enjoyable experience with what is already on offer, the more seasoned gamer can dig a little deeper into the various sports and unlock more advanced difficulty levels, extra options such as playing a certain sport during the evening or by moonlight, and even dabbling in what looks to be Nintendo's take on the Xbox 360's achievement system: Stamps.

Each sport has a selection of Stamps waiting to be unlocked, some of which are fairly easy to achieve, and some which will take a fair bit of time, skill and patience. Things such as snapping a bird during freefall in Skydiving and hitting several consecutive bullseyes in Archery will take a great level of determination to crack, but it is indeed a great way to extend the life of the game in single-player without cheapening the experience.

Multiplayer is to Wii Sports Resort what Cookie Crisp is to the hungry wolf in the cereal adverts.

However, let's not kid ourselves. The real life juice in Wii Sports Resort is harvested in multiplayer, the main attraction of both Resort and its predecessor. Considering Wii Sports was the game that convinced millions of people to buy a Wii and served as an introduction not only to motion controls, but to multiplayer gaming for many people, it goes without saying that the quality of the multiplayer is responsible for whether or not the game sinks or swims.

Wii Sports Resort not only swims, it rockets through the ocean like a marlin on speed. Despite the financial issues that may arise from being able to actually afford four Wii Remotes and MotionPlus accessories for a complete multiplayer experience, the end result is more than worth it. Seeing your family, children and adults alike, laughing and playing games together, a vision that would have most likely been preposterous around five years ago, is a wonderful image. It's hard to describe the fun and joy of Wii Sports Resort's multiplayer mode, but that image of a family playing and enjoying the game should be self-explanatory.

Now, because we love you all so dearly, we have reviewed each and every sport in Wii Sports Resort separately. In-depth coverage and star ratings can be found over the following pages, along with the final scores on the very last page.