Lacks the Wii Sports magic
In practice, I imagine few people will play this collection as much as Wii Sports. The problem is that these games are more like very polished demos than true games. Take the shooting range which is an ideal application of the IR pointer. You aim at targets by simple wrist movements. Playing the game a few times through feels pretty good. But then the repetition becomes overwhelmingly obvious. The target sequence is identical each time through. Dedicated players have taken advantage of this to shoot down every item (including ducks that flash across the screen). While this might be a fun challenge for some, I'd prefer a bit more variety. For instance, it would be fun to have a "training mode" focusing on just skeet or ducks or UFOs or cans rather than playing through all the targets each time. Also, random target placing would have been a nice option.
Oddly Find Mii, a simplistic Where's Waldo type puzzle, works for me. A group of Miis walk by and you need to pick our a specific face in the crowd. When you pick the correct Mii, a new level appears with some new location (street, escalators, nighttime, space, underwater, and so on). Somehow the variation is just enough to keep the game interesting time after time. But it can't sustain the entire package by itself. Pose Mii does not appeal despite a similar concept-it just doesn't have enough variety.
It would seem natural for table tennis to play much like Wii Sports tennis, but instead it plays more like Pong. It isn't even a real game since you play until you break the rally. The CPU player never fails to return the ball. Laser Hockey manages to be an actual game, but doesn't have much depth. Classics like Shufflepuck Café offered a variety of computerized opponents to play through, but Wii Play has one CPU setting and it isn't terribly difficult to beat either. Pool steps up the game with a decent simulation of 9-ball. Unfortunately, the controls are a bit wonky as the pushing the cue is not always recognized. When the controls work, the game is fun and engaging, however. (But it would be nice to have the option of playing cutthroat and 8-ball.)
Lack of variety kill the fishing, cow race and tank games as well. They play alright the first few times through, but there's no real reward for repeated play. I really think the crux of my problem with this package is that the games never seem different when you play them a second or third time. My son and I have played through the games and while I find the games fairly shallow, he has trouble controlling the action. Nether of these issue exist for Wii Sports, so something is definitely off here.
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