Wii Sports Resort

This week, Zero Punctuation reviews Wii Sports Resort.

Transcript
Recently we received a mail from someone (whose name I forget) explaining that they were going to stop watching Zero Punctuation. I don't remember their exact wording, but it went something like: "I am an absolute cretin who can't tell a good thing from a stick up my arse. I'm obviously very passive-aggressive as well, but mainly it's because you keep ragging on my beloved Wii. So I guess I've got terrible taste and I'm probably also a pedophile." And I guess 'Whoever-he-was' had a point. I do tend to overstate that the Wii is a shiny, white spunk bubble sweating out from beneath the yellow teeth of a crack whore. So in the name of winning back my lost audience, this review of Wii Sports Resort will contain nothing but absolute praise and possibly some child pornography.

Woooo! Yay! Wii Sports Resort! Now poor people can play Wii instead of going on real holiday! Also woo yay, Wii MotionPlus! It only took three years for the fucking thing to start doing what it was always supposed to do, but living in the past is for squares, daddy-o. And when you slide the Wiimote erotically into the flexible rubber sheath and push the attachment into the moist, quivering slot, you too will sprout a big, fat hard-on for the Wii's rebirth. There's still a little response delay, so you better hope your reflexes work about a quarter of a second before you think they do, but there is now full one-to-one motion control, which I'm sure will be of great interest to all the third-party developers as they program their mandatory Wiimote waggle quicktime events.

There's really no other way to review a collection of mini-games besides going through them all. So let's take them in no particular order.

Wii Wakeboarding! You wave the Wiimote around to do tricks while you're in the air and don't get points unless it's level when you re-enter the water. And in a truly innovative bit of game design, the actual levelness of the controller only counts about fifty percent of the time. A complex and sophisticated analogy for the brutality and unfairness of everyday life.

Wii Swordplay! The Wii MotionPlus really makes a difference and the technology could be sensitive enough to be a perfect fencing simulator. It could be, but it isn't. And good thing too, because who the fuck wants to be a fencer? Bunch of hoity-toity cunts with sieves on their faces. You'll pretty much just end up randomly flailing the controller around like Jackson Pollock with a scorpion on the end of his paintbrush. And it's nice to see Nintendo keeping things accessible to victims of neurological diseases.

Wii Golf! It's the same golf that was in the first Wii Sports because why fix what isn't broke, right? And indeed, why not repackage and resell what isn't broke to add another sprinkling of pennies to the official Nintendo money pile?

Wii Basketball! Hold up the Wiimote and flick it just like flicking a real basketball. At that point, where exactly the basketball goes is left up to the inevitable machinations of fate, 'cause hey, you don't want skilled players making everyone else feel inadequate (those pricks).

Wii Frisbee! This actually unironically works pretty well and is therefore uninteresting to talk about. But it'll be good practice for when you are flinging all your other games into the nearest bin.

Wii Power Cruising! It's just jet skiing. Although it sounds like some kind of business executive euphemism for soliciting prostitutes. You hold the controllers out and rev the Wiimote to go faster. And it controls just like a real jet ski, if it had both its handlebars broken off and was sitting on a gravel driveway.

Wii Table Tennis! Or, more accurately, Wii Tennis (Again). Please refer to comments regarding Wii Golf. But I can confirm that a table has gotten involved.

Wii Air Sports! Say what you like about Nintendo, they pick a theme and then diligently stick to it. Because dogfighting in biplanes is an increasingly popular past-time at beach resorts, particularly ones in the South Pacific circa 1943.

Wii Archery! Again, this one unironically works pretty well. The motions have as much in common with archery as it does with playing an accordion sideways. But the arrows are pointy and the targets are soft and that's all you can ask really.

Wii Cycling! This one works by rotating the controllers as you would the pedals of a bike. It will come extremely naturally to anyone who has completely the wrong idea of how a bike is supposed to work. Making turns also feels very natural when you have to rotate your phantom handlebars while you're also doing the spastic hand jive.

Wii Bowling! Oh, fuck off.

Wii Canoeing! I've always felt games that challenge the player based on skill or reflexes are old news. Now it's all about games that test one's willingness to embarrass one's self. This could apply to virtually anything on this list, but canoeing probably deserves the prize for the spazziest of the spazzy flails.

In all seriousness, Wii Sports Resort is mostly functional and you could probably have a lot of fun playing it with friends or some children you intend to molest. But I oppose it because I see what it represents: a dead end. Your motion sensor could have full one-to-one control and incorporate a twenty-two function Swiss Army Knife, but that won't change the fact that without physical feedback, motion controls are unimmersive! In the long run, they can only hope to sucker in casual gamers with teaspoon-shallow mini-games like Wii Sports, the gaming equivalent of the cartoon cinemas used to play before the film. I say stop buying the Wii, fuck Project Natal up the arse and maybe this whole motion sensor trend can fuck off and make room for the next innovation. Like cyberspace! Or a controller made of fruit.

Addenda
Hasn't been down the gym lately: Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw

I have it on good authority that Project Natal would take it and love it

A fond farewell to all our Wii-owning viewers