Celebrity Sports Showdown First Look

Though video games are often criticized as being a passive form of recreation, they can often serve as invaluable educational tools. Celebrity Sports Showdown is one example. This collection of minigames seeks to answer such questions as, "Who would win in a curling match between Keith Urban and Paul Pierce?" or "Just how good is Avril Lavigne at full-contact inner tube racing?" To help answer questions like these, we recently took our first look at this Wii title due for release this holiday season.

Celebrity Sports Showdown is being developed by the same studio who brought you EA Playground. It falls in the same category as Playground, being a collection of brief and accessible sports games. The big twist, of course, is your ability to select from a variety of celebrities. The theme of the roster is musicians against athletes--or, if you prefer rhyming, rocks versus jocks. On the musical side, you've got names like Fergie, Keith Urban, Nelly Furtado, and Avril Lavigne. The list of athlete characters includes stars such as Paul Pierce, Reggie Bush, Sugar Ray Leonard, and Kristi Yamaguchi. In addition to these, you can choose from a few faces you might recognize from other EA games, such as SSX's Elise and FaceBreaker's Steve.

The events themselves are just as diverse as the list of names. Out of the dozen games, there's a little something for everybody. There are cold-weather sports like curling and slalom skiing, summer sports like inner tube racing and beach volleyball, summer camp activities like archery and canoeing, and a random assortment of miscellaneous sports ranging from rock climbing to stunt plane driving. You've got the option to play these events one at a time, or add a bit more organization to your fun with tournaments. The three types of tournaments you can choose from are Big Points, Super Dash, and Team Rivals.

This being a casual Wii game, there's a heavy emphasis on the motion controls. The first game we tried was the slalom ski event. Controlling our character (in this case, a shirtless Sugar Ray Leonard) was simply a matter of tilting the Wii Remote to steer, holding B to crouch for speed, and lifting upward to pull off sweet tricks on the jumps. The other event we tried, inner-tube racing, had a little more strategy involved but was definitely on the accessible side. Here, you hold the remote sideways and steer by moving left and right, jerking it up to jump, and jerking it down to land a savage bop on an opponent. The latter comes in handy when you want to knock stars away from your competitors, as the inner tube event isn't an actual race (you're all pulled by the same boat) but rather a competition to capture the most stars scattered throughout the track.

Those of you looking for a lighthearted compilation of celebrity-filled minigames need no longer play Wii sports with Miis made to look like your favorite stars. Celebrity Sports Showdown will soon be here to deliver legitimate names engaged in a fresh batch of leisurely pursuits. You can expect it to arrive this holiday season for the Wii.