Well since it is all over the front page and I happen to have the demo disk sitting in my Wii right now I figured why not a few hands on impressions of DECA Sports. In all fairness when I first heard of the game I was less than pleased. It seemed like just another quick cash in on the Wii Sports craze except now with even more sports that you'll just avoid in favor of playing bowling....sweet, sweet, Wii bowling. I mean, who really was demanding a chance to play badminton on their Wii or hates Mario Kart so much that they'd rather race in a kart or bike race game that was crammed in with a multitude of other "sports"?

Well it seems, from the demo disc, the my fears were entirely warranted...and unwarranted. The disc came with four playable "sports," figure skating, beach volleyball, badminton and supercross, and just like Wii sports some are actually fun and others are, well, not. Worthy of mention before we get into each individual game is that you can choose what team you want before each sport. Each team has different members with different qualities, some are made up of all quick and little people, some big and strong people and others are more spread out. Characters look disturbingly like Miis but they aren't which is a little sad. I only noticed a bit of a change when playing with different characters in each sport but you can tell it's there especially in steering and running. I'm assuming that in the full game you'll be able to take your team and lead them to DECA Sport glory by defeating all the other teams.

I'm not afraid to say it here, because I am perfectly comfortable in my sexuality, but figure skating is my favorite. There I've said it. I'm a grown man and I enjoy playing figure skating on my Wii...I'm going to need so much therapy. Let's save the best for last though and the worst for first. Badminton, which is a sport I would deem as one of the least in demand to be made into a video game along with curling which is also in the full game, is simply Wii tennis gone terribly, terribly wrong. You don't seem to have to time your swings with when the shuttlecock (snicker) reaches your racket but instead swing when it is high in the air thus triggering what felt like a canned animation once the shuttlecock (snicker) reached your racket. If you swing when the shuttlecock (snicker) is flashing red, which occurs long before it is anywhere near your racket, you do a power hit. It took me a while to get a grasp of this and my girlfriend just gave up because it didn't make sense to her that you wouldn't swing when the shuttlecock (snicker) was not near your racket. Once you've got this strange mechanism down the game really plays out like Wii tennis except a bit slower. There are different ways to slam the birdie and direct it but in the end all you end up doing is swinging your arms around in a far less satisfying way than with Wii tennis. All around this wasn't much fun even with a friend.



Beach volleyball on the other hand can be fun, sometimes. It's fun when the controls work and respond well and not fun when the controls don't work and your computer partner isn't being an idiot. You don't control you character but you can bump, set and spike the ball in the two-on-two games by swinging the Wii Remote in one way or another. The problem is I didn't fine the bumping and setting controls that much different and going up to spike the ball sometimes happened and sometimes didn't. If the game didn't read your swing in time or you swung slightly the wrong wall the ball would simply fall to the ground. Also it was unclear when the computer would attempt a spike or would instead go for a bump or, even worse, decide to pull a Daria and just stand there. This was made even more vexing by the fact that it seemed the computer opponents had just come from their gold winning Olympic tour and decided to pick on a game of pick up that they just saw going on. Much of this became alieviated once I had a friend playing with me as I knew what was going to happen and timing became much easier for spikes and other plays. Sadly the opposing computer players had decided that on one serve they would play like elite volleyball ninjas and then on the next forget that they were on a beach playing volleyball and instead ponder why someone was launching a round ball at their faces. The difficulty was all over the place and it got pretty annoying. Once you got the moves down though and the computer decided to go on a streak of not being insane the game was pretty fun and could definitely be a blast with four friends.

Supercross is far from super but actually isn't half bad, especially if the final game has a few more courses in it. This was also the "sport" that I most saw a difference in the character you used to play with. Bigger guys steered differently from smaller ones and much like Mario Kart I eventually found myself driving with a middle weight. You steer by holding the controller sideways (all controls are explained before each game much like in Mario Party) and tilting it left and right. 2 is go, 1 is stop and when you get some air you can pull off a trick by moving the Wii Remote. Steering is pretty easy once you start over compensating, which is something I do in almost all racing games on the Wii. The nifty part is that when you're in the air you can till the controller backward and forward in order to land better. Land at the right angle and you won't slow down as much from hitting the ground. It worked very well and actually added a layer of skill that I wasn't expecting from the game. I'm going to give Hudson the benefit of the doubt here and guess that the computer opponents will be a bit more challenging in the full game where there are more races and difficulty levels. I wouldn't for the life of me trade this for a full fledged racer, especially when Mario Kart has bikes now, but as a simple distraction it does it's job well.



I seriously can not get enough of figure skating. The game is creative, challenging, addictive and a really impressive use of the Wii Remote and nunchuck. Basically you are tasked with skating through a routine to some classical music. You control your skater with the joystiq on the nunchuck and perform tricks by flicking your Wii Remote. To complete the routine you follow yellow dots around the ice rink and you need to hit the dots in correspondence with their musical cues. If you swerve off the line you'll get out of whack with the music and if you get to far out of line then you can't complete your routine. As you follow the yellow dots bigger red, yellow or blue dots appear. These are the trick dots. When you skate into them you flick your Wii Remote and perform a different trick depending on the color. Some tricks have you stay stationary while others you must continue skating with, restricting your ease of control. Timing is important as you both have to hit the trick in time with the music and, in order to get the highest score, flick the Wii Remote and the exact center of the shrinking dot. If the dot disappears than you lost your trick. Call me whatever you want but this was actually a lot of fun to do. It's like a fun rhythm game hiding behind a boring sport. Since only one person skates at a time (I doubt there will be doubles in the final game) there isn't much multiplayer fun here other than to compete with your friends, but seeing as suggesting a rousing game of figure skating sounds about as fun as it actually sounds it might be hard to find four people to play.

If DECA Sports crams in a few more surprisingly innovative games like Ice Skating into the package, possibly with curling, archer or basketball, and avoids more generic stuff like badminton and beach volleyball, I could actually see it being a worth while purchase. Get some fun throw away racers, a few challenging games and a few others for the party people and it comes out to be a worth while purchase. Of course that is a big if seeing as Hudson could very easily go the other route and deliver a game jammed packed full of quick one offs and cliche Wii Remote controls. Only time and six more random sports will tell.