Big Beach Sports - take your WII on the beach (be_careful not_to_get sand in_it...)
Written: Sep 11 '08
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Product Rating:
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Pros: 3 good games...
Cons: ... 3 bad games...
The Bottom Line: 6 games, half of them good, half of them not. Worth getting if you see it cheap - or as a rental if you have people to play against.
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| captaind's Full Review: Big Beach Sports for Nintendo Wii |
Big Beach Sports is a set of six games that can all be played... well, on a beach. Or maybe a big beach. If you don't have a beach handy, you could always try using your WII...
After setting up your character(s) - you can't use your Mii(s) - you can enter a number of competitions for 1-4 players. The menu system is nicely laid out and very clear, easy to use and unfussy. There are quick play modes for each games and tournament modes for those who want a game with a little more depth. In general we used the Quick Play mode, but the tournament option is a good feature, particularly if you have four players.
The graphics are pretty good - not amazing (I'm not sure any WII game is ever going to be described as that graphically), but quite detailed, well animated and just generally good. The sound effects are okay, but the calypso music track gives you a definite feeling of "being there". With the non-stop rain we've been getting in the UK recently, this alone makes it worth having! Each game is controlled entirely with the Wiimote, which wasn't necessarily a great move since some of the games could definitely have benefiting from being able to move your characters where you wanted with the nunchuck.
The six games are:
Volleyball - this is one of the weaker games of the set. You use the Wiimote to serve and keep the ball in play. The trouble is that this game is basically just boring - there's little or no fun involves. The fact that your players move automatically and the shots you can actually play seem to come up more or less at random hardly help. Even having other people playing doesn't add much to the enjoyment factor.
Disc Golf - this one is quite another matter, much better than Volleyball. Though it can be a little fiddly trying to "throw" your disc properly, this is a fun and challenging game. Basically you have to get a disc into a basket in the same way you try to get a golf ball in a hole - minus the clubs, of course. This one is a really nice game.
Cricket - the game of cricket transfers quite well to the WII. Using the Wiimote to bat and bowl feels quite natural, and you don't have to worry about anything else. Being on the beach, naturally the rules are a little different to ordinary cricket - though you can still get boundaries etc, instead of having ten wickets to fall you lose points whenever you are bowled, caught or run out. Even though the beach cricket game does get a little repetitive, it remains fun, and you will definitely be shouting at your fielders to make that catch or stop that boundary!
Boules - the classic French game transfers beautifully to the WII, though quite how my wife beats me so soundly every time we play this is beyond me!! The basic concept is like the English game of Bowls - you put out a jack and try to get as close as possible to it with your balls, possibly knocking your opponent's efforts out of the scoring zone, with the scores being tallied up at the end of each round. The difference is that in Boules you throw rather than roll the balls. This is a challenging game that did sometimes puzzle me with its scoring, but again that's mainly because I kept losing!!
Football - or, as the Americans call it, "Soccer". I'm not quite sure what possessed the developers to try this, but a footie game played exclusively on the Wiimote was just never going to work. The results is a rather catastrophic mess of a game (though as a multiplayer game it is actually still quite funny). I'm not saying that it's impossible to work out how to use the game controls, but it's not really any fun to do so and constantly feels awkward, and never feels gratifying.
American Football - hut hut, etc. Well, this one's okay - it seemed a little pointless to me and very repetitive, but I think the fact that I don't really understand the American corruption of the beautiful game (ahem... sorry, got a bit carried away there) probably didn't help. I guess it's what rugby would be like if you could throw forwards as well. It was kinda fun, but I didn't really get into it at all. Perhaps those that have more affection for the sport would enjoy it more.
All in all, Big Beach Sports is a decent game for sports sim fans looking for something different. The games that worked well - Disc Golf, Cricket and Boules - were very enjoyable and worked well with the Wiimote. Of the games that weren't so good, Football was bad because the control mechanism was awful, while Volleyball and American Football were okay as far as the controls went, but those games just bored me. Overall it's worth three stars, but I don't especially recommend it. Still, half the games are good and it's a nice multiplayer game, so if you're likely to have friends round a lot and you see Big Beach Sports going cheap somewhere, it's worth picking up.
Released by THQ
PEGI age rating: 3+
(For the record, I'll be reviewing WII Sports very soon - I would recommend that much more than Big Beach Sports... though I guess every WII owner has WII Sports already!)
Other WII Reviews: WII Play
Recommended:
No
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