Wii Remote + Wii Play

Gamecow’s Price	RRP $79.95     Save $12.00 $67.95
Availability
Genre	Accessories
Platform	Nintendo Wii
Release Date	15/12/2006
Rated

Wii Remote + Wii Play and one of the top selling products on the Nintendo Wii.  Not only do you get the Wii Remote but you get nine addictive games for the Wii.  Some of the games are : shooting range, fishing and my favourite Charge!.  In Charge! you control a raging bull, and trust me, this is an extremely fun game.

This is great value for money and a MUST HAVE for the Wii.

Wii Remote + Wii Play Product Information

Wii Play includes nine quick and addictive games that are easy to pick up and play and hard to put away. Thanks to the intuitive controls of the Wii Remote, even the most inexperienced gamers will have no trouble mastering the controls. Every game features a multiplayer mode, so friends can compete for the high score or go head to head to see who's the best. Wii Play features nine separate minigames, including:

Shooting Range: The player shoots down targets ranging from clay pigeons to ducks to UFOs. In the final stage, the Mii a player is using appears on the screen, wandering in a field and being abducted by UFOs. If the player shoots that UFO down, the abductee returns to the field.

Find Mii: The player must find and select specific Miis from a crowd within a set amount of time. If the player has any user-created Miis, they appear in the crowd as well. The crowds grow larger and start moving as the player clears more levels.

Table Tennis: Players rally the ball back and forth, shooting for the longest sustained rally. In the multiplayer version, players compete to score points, as in traditional table tennis. Players use the pointer to move the paddle.

Pose Mii: The player moves his Mii on the screen, rotating it and changing its pose to match the silhouettes inside falling bubbles. The player must pop the bubble by matching its pose before the bubble hits the bottom of the screen.

Laser Hockey: Players move paddles on an air hockey table, trying to hit the puck past the opponent's goal. The puck's motion is affected by the angle of the paddle and the speed with which the puck is hit. The Wii Remote pointer moves the paddle, while twisting the Wii Remote rotates the paddle on the screen.

Billiards: The player must sink all nine balls in the proper order. In single player, if a player fails to hit the correct ball or sinks his cue ball, the player's score drops; in multiplayer, the other player can place the ball anywhere on the screen before taking a turn.

Fishing: Players must catch the fish indicated at the top of the screen. This game uses the Wii Remote: The pointer moves the hand holding the fishing pole. Moving forward places the hook farther out in the lake, while moving back places it hook closer. When a fish bites, the player yanks the Wii Remote back, pulling the fish out of the water.

Charge!: The player controls a charging cow, guiding it into scarecrows and knocking them over. Players control the cow by tilting the Wii Remote on its side and turning it like a steering wheel. Tilting forward speeds the cow up, and tilting back slows it down.

Tanks!: The player controls a tank and must shoot other tanks. The shots rebound once off the walls before disappearing. The player controls his tanks with the +Control Pad (Note: players can also use the Nunchuk's control stick to steer the tank) and aim the tank's cannon using the Wii Remote's pointer.

Wii Remote + Wii Play Review

Nintendo has taken a shrewd approach to marketing the Wii. It's campaign is more akin to that of Apple's iPod in conquering mass-market penetration through form and function, rather than latest and greatest hardware. One of the most effective ways of reaching this broader market, affectionately referred to in Nintendo-business-speak as Blue Ocean, has been through the carefully plotted release of Wii Play, coming bundled with a wiimote.

Like Wii Sports, the pack-in sports game compilation, Wii Play aims to demonstrate the range of functions the Wii is capable of, while teaching-through-playing, rather than reading a manual. Included are 9 games that immediately struck us as somewhat familiar. Several of these titles, in more basic forms, were how Nintendo originally introduced the press to the motion-controlled concepts behind Wii. Only makes sense that Nintendo included a couple of these, nicely reworked, in Wii Play.

Starting with the basics of pointing and clicking, the first game you'll tackle is the shooting range. Graphically simple, the gameplay is a throwback to Duck Hunt, with a little bit of Point Blank thrown in there for good measure. The idea is to shoot the targets as they pop up, one after the other. It isn't rocket science. With two players, however, vying for a sole target can be a bit of fun - particularly when the pace picks up.

Upon completing this first training game, you'll likely be awarded a medal (bronze, silver, gold) based on your performance. Herein lays the core competitive aspect to the game. By utilising your console's Mii characters, you can track high scores, personal bests and medals awarded. It isn't incredibly extensive, but it's nice to be able to compare your stats against other Miis in your Wii's memory. A little message will also pop up in your message board when you obtain a new award.

Production values are fair; each game has a distinct look to proceedings. The fishing game in particular, with its child-like paper-and-crayon setting is very striking, if not a graphical showcase of effects. The games are colourful and clean, running with clarity even at 480i. The entire game sits somewhere in line with the graphical and aural quality of Wii Sports.

Closing Comments
It's hard to be critical of a game that is effectively being sold at AU$10 on top of the cost of a wiimote. It is definitely more of a training disc for first-time Wii gamers; the fact that Nintendo have gone to this length is heartening to see. Clearly, the company understands that the Wii's controller is a unique interface and releasing Wii Play, a training disc under the guise of a fully-fledged game, is a slick move. There definitely isn't enough game-play here to threaten the multiplayer goodness of a game like Rayman Raving Rabbids, for instance, but for an extra tenner, you really can't go wrong. It's not a full-release game but then, it doesn't try to be. As a training game, it succeeds completely.

Full review IGN