Wii Sports

The Good
The most obvious right out of the box (literally) appeal of Wii Sports is that an actual game is finally included with a video game system again. It's been a LONG time in coming, not since the days of 16-Bit titles has the consumer seen a pack-in game with the first run of game systems.

Wii Sports is a lot of fun. Five different games that are designed to get the player accustomed to how the Wiimote works, and they are diverse enough to keep things interesting.

As a package, Wii Sports is very visually simple, but the graphics are crisp and clean, and the music is non-offensive. The biggest graphical highlight is the inclusion of the Mii characters as players and background. It's amusing to see your virtual friends hang out behind the scenes, and take part in the action.

All of the games work well with the Wiimote, but Bowling and Tennis provide the most fun out of the set. The Bowling game itself actually plays very well, allowing for some humorous flubs if improperly handled.

For a free game, it has a surprising amount of diversity.

The Bad
For a "next generation" game, Wii Sports is not what I would have had in mind. It comes off as more of a tech demo than the future visually.

As accurate as the games are, Baseball and Golf get tiresome easily, and Boxing, while clever using both parts of the controller feels a little hit and miss with the control. Some of tutorials are just too long. After you learn how to play, you don't want to hear another speech on how to use the Wiimote for the selected game.

Wii Sports also has the factor of being fun for only so long. There's going to come a point where the novelty of the controller is going to wear off, and on the shelf Wii Sports will likely remain once developers get more use to the control setup of the Wii.

Also, there is not a lot of depth to some of the games. Baseball is simply simulating throwing a ball or hitting it with a bat. No runs, no base stealing, nada. It's there for instant pick up and play gratification.

The Bottom Line
It's nice to see a free game with the launch of a game system again. It really is. I'm glad Nintendo decided to adopt this tradition of old again, because it's a real benefit for the cost conscious consumer (say THAT three times fast).

The games are fun, even the less appealing ones for a little while, and it's a great way to show off the uniqueness of the control setup.

At the end of the day, one has to accept that Wii Sports is little more than a tech demo to show off new hardware, but in reality, it could be worse than Wii Sports. A LOT worse. It's a fun little game that is a good warm-up for what the system can do, or until you put the new Zelda game in for the first time.

I can't recommend it, because you'll end up with this game whether you want it or not. But I can say that it is enjoyable.