OUR RATING: 6.9 GOOD About our ratings

TANGIBLES: Gameplay: 7 Visuals: 7 Audio: 8 Value: 6 Quality: 7

Why you should buy it: Wii Remotes are scarce; Wii Sports-like game that’s fun for the whole family. Shooting Range and most of the other mini-games are fun in single player and/or multiplayer. Why you should rent it: You have enough Wii Remotes; Wii Sports got old quickly for you; Pose Mii sucks.

UNIQUE RATING: 6.9 SUGGESTION: Buy It

Wii Play is an odd title for a few reasons. As a launch title in Europe and Japan, it served its purpose as an introductory title for the Wii and its odd new controller. However, Wii Play is arriving in North America three months after the launch, where most Wii owners have a pretty good grasp of how the Wii Remote works by now. Including both the game and a shiny new Wii Remote, does Wii Play stand on its own as a great game or does the scarcity of Wii Remotes take the focus away from the game?

Wii Play features nine simple mini-games that take advantage of the Wii Remote’s capabilities, from simple point-and-shoot mechanics to using its tilt for steering while racing. At first, the game will treat you like you haven’t touched the Wii Remote while you play through mini-games to unlock them. Each game rewards good performances with medals, ranging from bronze to platinum, though it’s unfortunate that nothing is unlocked as a result. Your top scores are kept in leaderboards for each game, but it’s disappointing that these scores only apply to your Mii and aren’t compared to friends or family on a universal leaderboard. That tends to be theme here: there’s potential for much more, but the game stops just short of greatness.

Shooting Range is the first mini-game, a spiritual successor to the NES classic Duck Hunt, and it does a good job of living up to its predecessor. Accuracy is rewarded here, with multipliers being added for keeping a streak going for as long as possible across five stages. Multiplayer gets very competitive as you battle a friend to get each target, duck, and UFO for the high score.

Find Mii is the next mini-game, which finally gives life to those Miis that you’ve been playing sports with since launch. You are essentially playing “Where’s Waldo?” here, as each stage contains groups of Miis, from your Mii Plaza or Parade, with the instructions to find the look-a-likes or the Miis that just can’t follow the crowd. This game definitely works better in single player, as multiplayer can degenerate into a game of “click every Mii until you find the right ones.”

Table Tennis comes up next and it really doesn’t go much further than you’d expect. It’s essentially Pong with a new perspective in single player, challenging you to keep the rally alive as long as possible. Multiplayer turns it into more of a real game, which is where the Pong feeling really becomes apparent.

Pose Mii is probably the worst mini-game of the group, with an unattractive interface and tilting that’s too sensitive for its own good. Just quickly say hello and good bye to the black sheep of Wii Play, as nothing really changes when two players fire it up.

Laser Hockey also suffers from the overly sensitive control problems that plague a few of the mini-games. While the game boils down to being a neon version of the air hockey game that embarrasses people across the globe, it really prefers small motions while it seems to lock up when you want to use those big motions that real air hockey benefits from. Stay away from single player and stick with multiplayer when you feel like scoring on yourself by knocking the puck into your own goal repeatedly.

Billiards brings some much needed depth to the package with its 9 ball-based rules. Single player challenges you to knock all nine pool balls into any of the pockets in the least amount of shots and fouls as possible. The depth comes in the ability to get a variety of shots by simply choosing the appropriate spot on your cue ball to produce the needed effect. Unfortunately, the motion of pulling the stick back and then hitting the cue ball is sometimes finicky, as it requires a constant aim at the screen at all times. Multiplayer pits both players to the same single player goal, but instead gives out points for each ball you knock into a pocket. Billiards is a hit, regardless of whether you play single or multiplayer.

Fishing does manage to be much simpler than Link’s fishing adventures in Twilight Princess, but it’s still not quite good enough to warrant much playback out of this one with one player or two. It’s not a bad mini-game by any means; it’s just not nearly as attractive as the other games.

Charged! is an oddity amongst the Wii Play offerings. You’re tasked with riding a cow along a path, hitting scarecrows along the way while avoiding obstacles. This game requires the remote to be sideways, with tilting forward and back for acceleration and left or right to steer. It works well, but acceleration can act oddly at times when it seems like you somehow tilted it forward a little too much. Regardless of the control issues, it works well enough in both single and multiplayer.

Tanks! teeters on the edge of challenge and frustration and occasionally straddles between the two quite often. Think Combat for the Atari 2600 and you’ll have a good idea of what to expect with Tanks! Multiplayer changes things, as you can now work with your friend to double team enemy tanks. Tanks! has probably the best lasting appeal amongst any of these games with up to 100 stages to conquer if you can even make it that far. Tanks! strays from the pack by offering support for the Nunchuck to outsource movement to the analog stick.

Each game does offer a clean, distinctive style that does a good job of presenting what it has to offer. Miis now have a much more flexible movement system here, with full bodies, facial expressions, and actual movements that bring them to life in a way that Wii Sports failed to do. As long as you don’t expect graphics that’ll push the Wii to its limits, there’s not much to really complain about here.

If you really enjoyed the music that you’ve been able to listen to in Wii Sports the Wii Channels, you should have a good idea of what to expect here. It’s all upbeat, pleasant music that doesn’t do anything to hamper the experience you’ll have. Billiards, Tanks!, Table Tennis, and Shooting Range feature really good sound effects that bring you into the games and shows how polished the presentation here is.

The big question that everyone will have when it comes to Wii Play is if it’s worth it as a $10 game and a $40 remote or as a $50 game. If you’ve been looking to get a Wii Remote and have struck out with the rare appearances that these things make, Wii Play is a worthy purchase at the $10 price tag. It’s very much like Wii Sports in that it presents a lot of solid concepts that will make for enjoyable games once they’re expanded into their own titles. If you have no need for a Wii Remote at this time, it may be more feasible to find a friend who’s in need of the Wii Remote to split the cost or just hit up your local used game shop for cheaper, used versions of the game.