Most will wind up owning this as it is bundled with a Wii-mote, it is a fun diversion but with limited replayability.
There are 9 games in total on this disc, each of them designed to hone a different skill with the Wiimote. For example, the first game is 'Shooting Range', kind of a Wii update of the old "Duck Hunt". Using the Wiimote as your gun, and the B-button as a trigger, 5 levels of increasing difficulty are played out . The other games - or levels, as you cannot proceed to the next game without having played the previous one through - refine different skills needed to master the various functions of the Wiimote. 'Find Mii' is like a 'Where's Wally' (or Waldo for the Americans) that asks you to find similar Miis, or different ones. 'Table Tennis' is a fairly straightforward game, not too dissimilar to the Tennis game on "Wii Sports". 'Pose Mii' is a discrimination game that asks you to press buttons to change the position of your Mii (or character) so that they fit inside various bubbles. This is actually more challenging than it sounds! 'Laser Hockey' is perhaps the most fun on the compilation, appeal to both fans of table hockey and "Pong". 'Billiards' and 'Fishing' are fairly self-explanatory, utilising the 3D movement functions of the Wiimote. 'Charge' is a cow-riding racing game (don't ask) that asks you to turn your remote on its side and steer the cows. Finally, the odd 'Tanks' sees you control...err...tanks through a maze while attempting to destroy enemy tanks and avoid others. Think those Micro Machine games from the mid-1990s.
Unlike "Wii Sports", "Wii Play" doesn't allow you to select any of these games immediately. You must start with the shooting, and each subsequent level will be 'unlocked' as you progress. This is fine if you are using the games for their designed intent - that is, learning to master the Wiimote - although, given that the superior "Wii Sports" comes in the console box, chances are that users will already be well and truly familiar with the functions of the controls. Also, given that this is only bundled with the Wiimote and not the Nunchuck attachment (sold separately at an additional cost), new users will only be getting half of their Wii-experience if using this as a learning tool. However, most of these games only take about 3 minutes to complete, so it won't take long to whizz through the levels.
Perhaps the greatest strength of "Wii Play" is as a multi-player party game. In this sense, it does work as a teaching tool. Through the various games, my partner - a complete non-gamer - was able to pick up most of the functions of the Wiimote almost immediately. Not helping things, however, were a few silly control issues in the game. The 'Billiards', for example, requires you to push the remote towards the screen, as though thrusting a pool cue. However, this isn't always as responsive as it could possibly be, requiring you to really hammer home the ball just to get some response. This never seemed like a great teaching tool to me. However, other games such as 'Shooting Gallery' and 'Laser Hockey' really engender a fun dueling atmosphere, and we stayed up well past our bedtimes challenging each other to "one more game". Graphically, this isn't exactly inspiring, using the same 'stick and ball' characters that can be found in "Wii Sports" and scattered throughout your Wii Channels. If you have created a Mii in the Mii Channel, you will be able to use that Mii in the game. While I couldn't recommend purchasing this as a standalone game, bundled in with the Wiimote it is quite a fun introductory package. The games do largely teach the various functions of the remote, although with the exception of the very addictive 'Laser Hockey' I doubt whether you will want to return to them after you have mastered the basics. 'Shooting Gallery', for example, would have been much more worthwhile if you were subsequently able to go back and progress to higher and more challenging levels. As said above, it doesn't take long to get through all the levels, so you will probably be left with an expensive coaster by the end of the week. Even so, try to think of it as a 'free game bundled in with a remote', rather than a 'remote bundled in with a game'. It seems like much better value that way!