Wacky World Of Sports

Its been quiet on the waggle front. Too quiet. Here at N-E we’ve been enjoying a sudden influx of what you could consider ‘traditional’ titles. Games such as TMNT Smash Up and Monkey Island to old school 2D platformers like Lostwinds 2. So thanks SEGA for bringing us back to earth and reminding us that sometimes Wii houses frustrating party games.

Taking a unique twist on the sport and party genre, Wacky World of Sports certainly throws out something new. We would never have imagined playing some of the sports housed on this disk. But as wacky as they are the enjoyment you will get from most of these sports (and we use the term ‘sports’ lightly) renders WWoS a disappointment.

Take some furniture and go racing, roll cheese around a scoreboard for high-scores, iron clothes whilst parachuting. Utterly bonkers for sure and it certainly evokes a Japanese-like spectator sport vibe but with wonky controls, which require specific gestures in tight time windows, you will end up pulling your hair out in frustration more often than not. It’s not all bad as some of the events (which require more nuanced motion) work well. Furniture Racing falls into this category and Wood Cutting is somewhat enjoyable too. With these events you may find yourself enjoying the title (Ice Golf anyone?) but these moments are rare in the grand scheme of things and when you invite friends around to play, most sports will quadruple the frustration. Not good.

Extreme Ironing - probably legal somewhere in the US...

On the bright side the graphics can best be described as ‘vibrant’, offering a nice mix of locales which all evoke a late 90’s arcade feeling. Bundle in the announcer calls (which sound strangely like Mario) and you’ve got a title which wouldn’t look out of place in an arcade, but one which certainly feels disjointed sat in your Wii.

In total there are ten unlockable events which you will earn as you work your way through the game’s main Tour Mode. This mode pits you against 3 other AI characters in which you must beat in order to face a final opponent which (if you defeat) will unlock the next round of the tour. Points are scored based on final standings in events with the bottom-based player being eliminated after each round. Thankfully you can replay the final opponent as much as you like rather than play through the entire section again.

But the incentive is poor. The Tour mode is over before it has began and the limited amount of wacky sports means that WWoSwill be a title you won’t return to – especially if other, more high-profile party games are in your Wii games collection.

Mario preferred this new version of Princess Peach...

With a loony, Japanese outlook on events and a cheery vibe WWoS certainly looks and acts differently from other party games on Wii and with a cast of characters that are best described as ‘insane’, you’d be hard pressed to not laugh on occasion. But the fundamental flaw with WWoSis the depth of the title and the quality of the games on parade, and it is here that you may as well render WWoSas another title that is only worth a rent.

Final scores, as always, lie below...

Comments

Agellus Says:
October 25th, 2009 at 16:26 || Total Comments: 20

Will we now see a series of reviews for sub-par minigame collections? Well I guess not many mayor interesting titles have been coming out recently, but still it seems like odd choiced of games to review. They don't exactly screamed "awesome" games on first impression to me, sides that there are enough mini game collections already..with too many simply "shovelware" trying to cash in on the whole thing.

D_prOdigy Says:
October 25th, 2009 at 16:31 || Total Comments: 1596

It would be a lovely world if we could pick and choose what we review, but we provide coverage for all the games that publishers are kind enough to send us. The order they go up is simply down to the order we complete the write-ups. But anyway, it doesn't need to be a great game to appreciate a well-written review, and Mark has produced yet another one of those with WWoS. Nice work, Tapeydeckdeck!

EEVILMURRAY Says:
October 26th, 2009 at 10:28 || Total Comments: 47

pr0 work. It's a shame these games exist.

Kurtle Says:
October 27th, 2009 at 06:22 || Total Comments: 268

Aww...that's a shame it was bad - it looked a bit racial. :(

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