Wii Play Motion

Wii Play was a huge success for Nintendo, the game was average and wasn't something you would be playing over and over again, but it came with a free Wii Remote. Nintendo now have released Wii Play Motion which follows the same basic formula, instead of a giving you a free Wii Remote they give you a free Wii Remote Plus. The Wii Remote Plus is an updated Wii Remote that adds a level of precision and gameplay accuracy to a few select games, one being Wii Sports Resort. Wii Play Motion - again similar to Wii Play - is a game that sets out to show you what the Wii Remote Plus can do what an ordinary Wii Remote cannot.

The design is almost identical to the original, you start off with a few games available to you and the rest are locked out, to unlock the rest you must play all of the mini game's at least once. I can sort of see why Nintendo would force you to unlock the rest of the games, but really the target audience for this game are not "Gamers", it's your younger sister or your mum or your grandparents. Us as gamers have come to accept that unlocking new games by completing games that come before it is pretty standard, but your grandma will not understand why she can't play Spooky Search and will then proceed to rant on at why the game is flawed. There are even situations where this would be a huge annoyance to people to, imagine that your bringing it round your nans house for christmas. So you go over and put the game into her Wii and you discover that you haven't played it on her Wii before "Hold on Nan I just have to unlock the best games, just sit and watch me play through some of the boring ones first ok?"

There are 12 games in the package, there is an even amount of Single Player games and Multiplayer games. The games this time around feel more fleshed out than in Wii Play, there are a few bummer games like Cone Zone and Star Shuttle but primarily there pretty decent. I would even wager that there are a few games on here that could have been Wiiware games if they added more levels and modes. Each game has medals that can be unlocked and leader boards to compare against your friends and family.

Skip Skimmer is a game similar to the mechanics found in the Frisbee game in Wii Sports Resort, you pick a stone up from the ground and then skim it across the water. The aim is to see how many bounces you can get out of your stone before it sinks into the water. As you get further into the game you'll be-able to pick special stones such as Lightning stones that go really fast or rainbow stones that go slower but higher. You can also go for a ring based scoring system and see how many rings you can get your stone through. It's very well done and is the one game out of this package that you may come back to.

Spooky Search is the most interesting game out of the bunch, and it's sure to be the game that the children enjoy the most. Your in a haunted mansion and onscreen a selection of Mii's facing you and ghosts that have escaped the TV, it's your job to search around outside of your TV to find them. You move the remote around your physical space searching for the ghosts, you will have to turn around bend down, stretch up and look all around for the ghosts. The Remote will beep and it gets quicker the closer to the ghost you get, then it makes an alarm noise. You press B and then have to try and wrangle it into the TV, Luigi's Mansion style. A hole appears in your TV and you have to try and tug it into the hole, it will scamper around the edges of your TV trying to escape again so you have to constantly tug the ghost into the hole. It's a really cool game and is one of the most unique features you will ever do with a Wii Remote. It is a shame that it only has three levels as I would love to have played more of this.

Star Shuttle is the worst game in the set and is by far the most complicated. It is a rocket landing simulator, I don't know why somebody thought in Nintendo that this would be an interesting idea. It's controls are far to complicated and twitchy that even I could not really do any good at the game, so I don't see how 4 year old Billy is going to do any better. Pose Mii Plus is just Pose Mii but your able to rotate your Mii into different positions, pretty dull affair. Cone Zone doesn't do much better and is kinda alright the first time you try and stack a bunch of ice cream onto a single cone but you won't revisit it. Flutter Fly is a frustrating waggling mini game that requires you to fan some balloons through obstacles, it's as fun as it sounds.

Wind Runner is a surprising fun game, your on roller-skates with an umbrella on a windy day. It's not as fun as it sounds, but its alright, it has you racing while collecting as many gems as you can and its pretty neat. Treasure Twirl is a game that tells you to take off your Wrist Strap, yeah I know right. You have to rotate the Wii Mote round and round to lower yourself into the water to get to the bottom to get the treasure and then turn it the other way to get back to the surface, pretty cool way to use your Remote. Teeter Target is a pinball esqe game that is pretty fun but there isn't much to do once you've beaten it. Jump park is a platformer that requires you to twist the Wii Mote to choose where your going to jump to, it's quite fun but again no replay value. Rounding off the package is a target shooting mini game similar to the one in Wii Play and a whack a mole game.

Most of these games are decent, it's just that they feel often like the Lite versions of full fledged games, except that what your playing is the full fledged game. A couple of games would be fun to come back and play again, but are you really going to put in Wii Play Motion just to play that stone skipping game, hell no! But then again, the game comes with a free remote. You have to take into consideration that when you buy it, if you don't need an extra Remote then unless you see it dirt cheap you really do not need this game.

The presentation is standard Wii games like Wii Fit, Wii Music etc, bland but simple. There are Mii's everywhere you look and the Mii integration is good as always, but I assumed were past the days of 2D sprites in crowds, I suppose not. The music however is actually very well done, there are a few tracks here that are decent if not great.

Wii Play Motion is a hard game to recommend, if you don't need a remote then don't buy this game. If you are short a remote then this is a decent deal to consider.