Format: Wii | Genre: Sports | Publisher: Nintendo | Developer: Nintendo | Release date: 24/07/09 | RRP: £49.99

By Graham Jones

Despite having irritated many of its hardcore following, you can’t fault Nintendo for coming up with a plan, sticking to it and reaping the rewards.

Its efforts towards the expansion of the videogames market in the last few years has been an incredible turn around for a company who had struggled so much in the home console race for almost a decade. But most Wii owners didn’t rush out to buy the console in order to play Super Mario Galaxy, Metroid Prime 3 or Zelda. This is a gaming machine that has sold by the bucket load due to what is essentially a tech demo.

Five mini-games bundled together on one disc, Wii Sports could well be the most carefully planned and successful pack-in game of all time. Its simple and intuitive design made it accessible to all, and even the hardcore faithful were won over by the motion control, previously been considered by many to be nothing more than a short-lived gimmick. So what does Nintendo do when launching their next iteration of motion control? They launch it alongside their next iteration of Wii Sports, of course.

//Setting it in motion
While the creators of Wii Motion Plus aren’t the first developer to release a game to utilise the new peripheral (EA already have two compatible titles under their belt), it’s Nintendo’s sporting sequel that we’ve all been waiting for as the true showcase for the new technology and, for the most part, neither fails to impress.

Unlike its predecessor, this is a full-priced game, and so really did need to expand on the number of events on offer. Nintendo has delivered. In Wii Sports Resort, the player is treated to twelve different sporting activities, although each one of these in turn has a number of different game modes, which can offer huge variety in their play experiences. Sadly, as is so often the case in these compilations, there is also a huge amount of variety in the quality of gameplay experiences on display throughout the package.

Let’s start with the good – and, to be honest, most of what’s here is good. Very good, in fact. Swordplay, Archery, Frisbee and Table Tennis all do a marvelous job of displaying the added levels of precision delivered via Wii Motion Plus, and manage to slowly reveal their hidden depths as players develop their skills. Unlike the random limb-flailing-a-thon that was the original Wii Sports Boxing, Swordplay requires a calmer and more considered approach; the anticipation of your opponent’s next move is central to claiming victory, and the responsiveness of Nintendo’s new Wii Remote attachment means that when you lose, you know why, and can’t just blame the dodgy interface. At the other end of the scale, Table Tennis is a much more frantic affair when compared to the classic Wii Sports Tennis. The heightened level of control, however, allows for shots to be placed much more accurately, and for ridiculous amounts of spin to be added. It’s all very satisfying.

[Continues...]

By Greg Giddens

Another year, another golf title from EA, a yearly ritual played out by all titles from the EA Sports catalogue. Seldom does one of these titles redefine the way we play the real sport’s videogame alternative, and Tiger Woods 10 is no exception. The improvements are, on the surface, rather standard, but below the superficiality you’ll find that these minor improvement do in fact shape a slightly new experience.

//Annual service
Almost everything in Tiger Woods 10 has been tweaked, from the menus and ambient music, to the more substantial sound effects, graphics and game mechanics. From the menu screen, players from the previous version will feel right at home – but this year, EA have acquired the licence to the US Open, so your journey through the PGA Tour is already more eventful and interesting. Linked to that is the inclusion of the USGA rules and etiquette for the tournament – a minor addition in theory, but one that does add to the realism.

Still on the menu screen, the new Live Tournaments should catch your eye. These allow you to play either a single round of golf or several, where your score is then submitted to an online leaderboard for the tournament in question. Your tournament choices span ‘daily’, ‘weekly’, ‘play the pros’, and other unique tournaments which are constantly updated. Their dynamic nature adds a much-needed competitive nature to the game that simple online rounds couldn’t provide.

The online rounds are still present, though, allowing friendlier online play to take place. This aspect hasn’t changed since last year’s release – in fact, the entire game initially feels very much like the previous version. It’s not until you begin to really delve into Tiger Woods 10 that the new additions begin to shine.

Perhaps “shine” isn’t the word. The most notable new addition is that of rain. A wet course changes everything, from the bounce of the ball on the fairway and the roll of the ball on the green; and a putt you found simple before suddenly becomes challenging. The physics imitate reality perfectly, providing you with the feel of playing out in the rain. The addition of dynamic live weather really adds to the realism too, and is epically critical to the Live Tournaments. You have 24 hours to submit a score in a daily tournament before the next one begins. So you go to start a round and the live weather reports that currently, in Scotland at St Andrews Links, it’s raining. Do you play a round anyway, knowing that the rain will have an affect on your game, or do you wait a few hours to see if the rain will pass?

//If it aint broke…
Another improvement that helps with realism is the new putting mechanic. Similar to the driving controls, you pull the left analogue stick back to determine the strength of your putt. This new mechanic is certainly superior to the previous one, and takes very little time to get to grips with. And if you’re opposed to change, you do have the option of reverting to the old version, so accessibility is never compromised.

Although the tweaked controls and real-time weather provide a realistic experience, the visual presentation remains less convincing, though not necessarily in a bad way. Tiger Woods 10 looks almost identical to Tiger Woods 09, albeit with slightly deeper colours. It’s the same engine as before but, like the majority of the game, it’s been improved slightly. But the lack of a photorealistic ambiance means the game manages to maintain a unique visual style throughout.

Everything else remains the same – a few new courses and bigger crowds, but that’s about it. But it’s the seemingly minor improvements, particularly the real-time live weather, that add most to the game. You can’t reinvent the wheel, it is what it is, and every year we’ll continue to see a new Tiger Woods games with slight improvements.

Despite them, Tiger Woods 10 feels a bit like a full price expansion pack, and with the ludicrously expensive DLC it’s an expensive upgrade to have.  A strong golf game, but an update that’s only really essential for the enthusiast.

7/10

What does this score mean?

By Barry White

If you’re getting the whiff of shovelware here, rest assured you’re not the only one. Like other lines of sports games with a different year tacked on to the end of each title, this is another typically so-so effort made purely for a quick buck and relying heavily on a famous face to push the product.

In this case, it’s Phil “The Power” Taylor on the front of the box, doing his best to hold a Wiimote like a dart and not look like a fool. This is the follow-up to the 2008 edition, which might well have been the best darts game in the world, but this is a depressingly uninspired effort.

//Shovelware
There’s the standard career, exhibition and practice modes setup you’d expect in any other sports game, and a roster of personalities from the world of darts from which you can pick your avatar. The game also has a basic and bare-bones character creation system with too few options if you want to create your own player, and even a section to customise your own set of darts that actually provides more visually interesting options than the character creator. It’s not a pretty game, even going by what you’d normally expect from the Wii, and the sound and animation work is functional but very cheap and nasty.

Technically the game seems to function as it claims to. You hold the Wiimote as you would a dart, holding the A button at the start of the throwing movement to lock the cursor at a point on the board and releasing it when you want to chuck the dart. A little power meter on the screen will give you some impression as to how much force the game thinks you’re putting into the throw, and to get an accurate throw you need to push the meter into a sweet spot marked on the target cursor. There’s two levels of assist which compensate for  sideways wobble and other movement during your throw, making it easier to make an accurate shot. And that’s about all there is to it.

//Bland, boring, uninspired
Unfortunately the difficulty curve is utterly ruined by this system, as anyone paying attention will easily be able to shoot a perfect game on either level of assist, while those opting not to use it will find themselves seriously frustrated by the spotty sensitivity of the wiimote, specifically with lateral movement. Couple that to the fact that the wiimote just isn’t as easy or as comfortable to hold as a dart and you have a system that is just too difficult for the casual player with assist turned off, and so easy as to be boring with the assist turned on. And that’s the biggest problem – the game is ultimately neither a good nor interesting approximation of the sport it’s based on.

Admittedly, there’s not a lot you can do with darts. Beyond the career and practice modes, the handful of bland mini-games belie this fact. They’re rubbish. Fundamentally, darts is just about two mildly inebriated men taking turns throwing pointy things at cork board while a referee periodically shouts “One hundred and eighty!” If that sounds dull or tedious to you, this title will not convince you otherwise. If you’re a darts fan, then, as my girlfriend thoughtfully pointed out when we tested the multiplayer together, you will probably have more fun playing actual darts. In fact, chances are if you like darts you already own the necessaries, saving yourself from the need to buy this for the frankly outrageous price of forty British pounds.

4/10

What does this score mean?

Format: PC / Wii | Genre: Sports | Publisher: Playlogic | Developer: Icon Games | Out now: £29.99

By Andy Johnson

A rather worryingly large proportion of my time and money is spent on the noble pursuit of pool. Many games and sports have been turned into videogames before, and pool is no exception, normally tackled alongside snooker and its variants. In fact, I think I got into the 2D obscurity Cue Club long before I even played the real game – which probably reflects on me quite badly, now I think about it.

Pool Hall Pro is another effort in the long cue-to-controller tradition, but the question is: should it be our go-to game for when we can’t be bothered to attend a real bricks-and-mortar baize establishment?

//Foul shot
The blunt answer is no. Pool Hall Pro largely fails because it is unable to complete its most fundamental objective: to create an entertainingly realistic simulation of the game it depicts. The crucial underlying reason for this is that Pool Hall Pro’s physics are extremely rudimentary. Pool and snooker are games almost totally about mastery over physics, about conducting a shot from its conception in the mind, through the body, through the cue, through the balls, and hopefully into the pockets. But the interactions between the cue, the balls and the table in this game bear only a passing resemblance to real life, and it’s not enough to make this genuinely enjoyable. It’s a passable, perfunctory experience, not the finessed pleasure it ought to be. Most crippling is the interaction between balls and pockets – the latter often seem to be mini black holes, oddly sucking in any balls unfortunate enough to move into their radius.

In fairness, Pool Hall Pro does at least show a plethora of options to the player. A wide variety of game variants are available, each playable in about a dozen different environments, including the rather risky idea of playing on a rooftop in Chinatown. That kind of stuff is just what pool games need – their potential for daft escapism and being able to fantasise about living such a snazzy pro pool lifestyle is one of the few genuine trump cards they have over the real thing. Unfortunately, Pool Hall Pro’s presentation is so bad that the escapism is thoroughly shattered on a regular basis. Dumbly applauding NPCs standing around in venues, wholly unnecessary in the first place, are horrific cardboard-cutout-esque excuses for models, and a distraction from the play. Textures are bafflingly flat given that this is 2009, and the music is just the usual sports game guff. The PC version is woefully optimised, menus accessible only via keyboard control, and features like the ability to customise your pool “crib” are naïve fig leaves designed to cover Pool Hall Pro’s core inadequacies.

This game offers quantity over quality. Had the developers chosen to dump some of the wholly needless parts of the game and focused on crafting a genuinely engaging pool experience, we might have had something deserving of our time here. As it is, what we have is a game which often appears far more concerned with giving us several different low-res costumes for Jimmy “The Rocket” Peters than it is with accurately simulating, or even abstractly representing, the games it’s meant to be about.

3/10

What does this score mean?

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