Saturday, March 03, 2007

I got nothing against him, but I'm definitely gonna make orphans of his children.

I'm closing out the main portion of Wii Sports today, and it's going to be full of shocking twists and delightful Simpsons references. Well, if you've made it this far you've already missed the Simpsons reference, but feel free to scroll up.

Wii Sports: Boxing is the only segment of the game to utilize the Nunchuck attachment. You won't need to hit any buttons, and everything is controlled with different tilting motions. The nunchuck is your left hand, and the Wiimote is your right. To punch, you thrust the controllers toward the television. To protect yourself, you hold them up towards your face. If you lean your body (and, as an extension, the controllers) to either side, your Mii will lean too, dodging the directional punches.

Boxing is, without a doubt, my least favorite portion of the game. And let's get this straight: I love the rest of the sports in the package. I just plain don't like this. At all. The controls are not intuitive in the least. When you actually punch your arm, your character doesn't punch. You have to flick your wrist instead, almost like you're snapping a bullwhip. Also, I've had a lot of accuracy problems. While I've been able to remedy most of my bigger problems in the rest of the sports, Boxing seems to have some serious flaw. Then again, I've never read about said flaws in any other reviews, so maybe it's just personal preference.

It's not without its merits. The leaning mechanism plays with your natural movement in order to move the player. Motions you don't even know you make tilt your wrists and subsequently your player. Also, there's the novelty of squaring off against the spitting-images of your friends, family, and favorite fictional characters. You decide why I included the previous sentence: was I just trying to find another positive about Wii Sports: Boxing, or was I merely thrilled with the alliteration.

It's awkward. It's easy (even working yourself up to near-pro levels, you'll have no problem knocking out the computerized challengers). It's generally not fun. I think there may be some novelty in the multiplayer, where you can face each other and throw punches, but the tournament mode leaves an awful lot to be desired. It's a sour way to close out such a wonderful game. Thankfully, that's not how Nintendo did it. There are several extra features related to these sports, and they're all addictive and fairly genius. But that's for later.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

thanks for all of the frequent posts/reviews - i visit about once a day.. - it's become one of my personal favorites..