Wii Sports Resort Air Sports and Table Tennis

It’s the end of July and Wii Sports Resort has finally come out. This sequel to Wii Sports follows in the footsteps of its older brother by representing real life activities, such as canoeing and archery, in a casual sense that allows everyone, whether it be your grandpa or your younger cousin, to get in on the fun. The difference this time around is the inclusion of the Wii Motion Plus, which creates a closer 1:1 experience with the Wiimote. To give my readers a better idea of what to expect from each activity found in Wii Sports Resort, I will be discussing the pros and cons of the activities over the next week and a half. With each update I will talk about 2 of the 12 activities for a total of 6 different updates.

Today I will cover Air Sports and Table Tennis.

Air Sports
Comprised of three different activities Air Sports has you holding the Wiimote ala “The Sketch Artist” position that most Wii owners probably remember from the game Wario Ware: Smooth Moves. Basically you hold the remote like a paintbrush, pointing it towards the screen and tilt it in the direction you want to go in. Since there are three different games within Air Sports I will talk about each one individually and then discuss what Air Sports has to offer as a whole. The three activities of Air Sports are Skydiving, Island Flyover, and Dogfight.

Skydiving
Skydiving is the first game that all new owners of Wii Sports Resort must play in order to begin their vacation on Wuhu Island. To play you’ll act as though the Wiimote is the body of your skydiving Mii. Point the remote towards your T.V. and your Mii will lie flat on their stomach, point the remote towards the ground and your Mii will dive head-first towards the ground, tilt left they’ll go left, tilt right they’ll go right, pretty self explanatory.

The object of Skydiving is to fly towards other skydivers and join hands with them to create a formation, of up to five people total, and have your picture taken with the Miis in your formation to get points. Points are awarded based on how many Miis are in your formation and how many of them are actually facing the camera as you pose. The viewpoint of your television is used for most shots but a separate skydiving photographer will also accompany you as you fall. As you get closer and closer to the island, a countdown timer will begin to let you know how much time you have left before you must pose for the final formation with all the Miis you have joined with throughout the course of your dive. By diving through the circular rings associated with the group of Miis that were present during each of your formations you will increase the total number of Miis present for the final snapshot taken and increase your chance of obtaining those last necessary points needed for a new high score.

Overall Skydiving is a great way to introduce Wii owners to the Motion Plus accessory since it’s a simple game to play. It can be fun for a little while when you’re playing against your friends to see who can get the best score, but it’s very boring if you have to experience it by yourself. I haven’t had the desire to play it again after playing a few times.

Island Flyover
Not so much a game but rather an exploration mode to see all the fine attractions of Wuhu Island. It controls identically to Skydiving except this time you’re controlling an airplane. In addition to controlling the direction of your plane, you can also control how fast it goes by thrusting the Wiimote towards your T.V. to speed up and pulling back to slow down.

The main objective of Island Flyover is to visit all the information points on Wuhu Island as well as the points on the surrounding islands for a total of 80 points. Given a time limit of 5 minutes, you have to pick and choose which locations you want to visit each time you play. To obtain an information point you must look for the “i” symbols in the sky and then fly through them. Each point gives you a tidbit of information about the tourist attractions of Wuhu Island which can be interesting at times.

In addition to finding information points there are a few other things to do such as popping balloons scattered throughout the island with your included plane’s blaster, which is controlled by the A button, and following Miguel the tour guide as he gives you his own personal tour of the island. There are also three separate times of the day in which you can fly. Based on which time of day you choose to fly, you’ll be treated with time specific events that only happen during those times of the day such as fireworks being shot off at night.

Overall Island Flyover was an enjoyable experience and it was interesting to be able to see the entirety of the Wii Sports Resort world from a top-down perspective. I did have a few issues with the controls mostly with the speeding up and slowing down of the plane. Speeding up by thrusting forward worked about 80% of the time while slowing down rarely ever worked correctly for me. Despite the controller flaws Island Flyover was a fun experience that I can’t recommend enough for you to try. The only downside is that once you explore the entire island and find all the 80 points there isn’t much incentive to come back another time.

Dogfight
Controlling exactly like Island Flyover, Dogfight is the chance for you and one of your friends to take to the sky to see who the better pilot is. By using the A button to fire it’s your job to deplete your opponent’s balloon supply before they deplete yours. This is done by attacking the balloon your opponent has attached to the back of their plane. Every time you shoot this balloon the counter on it will go down by one until it eventually reaches zero. The person with the most balloons once time has run out is the winner.

If you’re getting low on balloons you can add more to your count by flying through special designated rings that appear throughout the fight in various locations. Once flown through, these rings disappear until the next one appears. Each time you fly through one of these rings you’ll add 10 balloons to your count giving you the edge over your opponent if you can beat them to the ring. Oftentimes they’ll be a race to the ring to see who gets the bonus and who is left in the dust with the same amount of balloons they started with.

Dogfight is a fun game that allows you to battle one of your relatives or friends in a showdown of speed, wits, and aim. Evading and relentlessly attacking your opponent is satisfying especially since it gives you bragging rights. The only downside is that Dogfight doesn’t have much to offer in replayability value since the course you’re on will always be the same one. Another issue, like I mentioned previously, is that the controls don’t work as well as I’d hoped they would, but they still work well enough for a fun overall experience.

My Impression of Air Sports
The three games offered in Air Sports are all fun in their own way and make great use of the 1:1 motion offered by the Wii Motion Plus. While I thoroughly enjoyed each of these games I found that my time with them was overly short before I didn’t feel like playing them anymore after the first few initial times. Skydiving is too shallow for my liking and Dogfight is boring after a few bouts. If anything Island Flyover was my favorite of the bunch and the game that I spent the most time with. Air Sports as a whole isn’t that bad of a game, just not one of my favorites.

Table Tennis
So Nintendo is trying its hand at portraying Ping Pong once again. While this game has the same name as its Wii Play counterpart, there are a few drastic differences between this and the Wii Play version that set this iteration apart from its cousin. For one thing the controls have been improved dramatically. Instead of pointing the IR cursor of the Wiimote towards the T.V. screen to control movement of your paddle you are instead swinging the remote like an actual paddle. Depending on how you hold the remote you will either be in forehand position or backhand position. To hit the ball back and forth is as simple as swinging your arm forward from each position. Spin can also be applied to the ball as you hit it by angling your Wiimote up or down.

The two modes offered for Table Tennis are Match and Return Challenge. Match has either a single player facing off against computer controlled players or two human players squaring off against each other while Return Challenge pits a single player against the server trying to return as many balls as possible without missing one.

Table Tennis is very similar to the original Tennis game offered by Wii Sports and chances are if you loved the original Tennis you’ll love Table Tennis. I do have a few complaints about it though. For one Table Tennis isn’t accurate when compared with how one would play a real game of it. Every time I tried to apply a stronger swing I ended up with the same end result as if I hit the ball gently. This is probably one of my biggest gripes as I could never generate enough power to one-up my opponent. When angling the paddle in the correct fashion however is possible to generate power and increase the speed of your hit, but doing this successfully is confusing and I could only get it to work a fraction of the time. Another gripe I have with the game is the limited amount of time given to switch from forehand to backhand and vice-versa. Oftentimes I found myself trying to switch my position when the ball was coming at me only to have the Wiimote pick up my movements as a swing. This resulted in me hitting the ball out of bounds multiple times and losing points because of it.

My Impression of Table Tennis
Table Tennis is a frustrating experience that takes a lot of patience to play effectively. Playing against a friend can be fun…for a few minutes, but mostly is just a battle between you and the remote to perform the hit you want in each situation. It does get a few points for its Return Challenge mode which I had some fun with. Almost as forgettable as Wii Play Table Tennis, you’d do better with a real game of Ping Pong.

For videos of Island Flyover go here

For videos of Table Tennis go here

If you liked this article check out my impressions of:
Wii Sports Resort Cycling and Bowling
Wii Sports Resort Basketball and Power Cruising
Wii Sports Resort Archery and Canoeing
Wii Sports Resort Swordplay and Wakeboarding
Wii Sports Resort Frisbee and Golf

Be sure to check out my next update on Wednesday for my impressions of two more activities in Wii Sports Resort.