Dude.

After much hyping and realizing first hand how excellent the Wii Motion Plus add-on can be, I made it a point to buy Wii Sports Resort today. I've had a good part of a day to mess around with all the games and set myself up for a massive Icy-Hot moment tomorrow morning. The verdict?

If you own a Wii, you need to do yourself a favor and pickup Wii Sports Resort. STFUAJPtheG. Seriously. Everything that The Hype allowed you to think about the Wii pre-launch is pretty much realized all in that game. It is in fact the real deal, and just simply needs to be part of your collection. I'm telling you bluntly because I want you to understand that this transcends every thesaurus word and anecdote I could ever conjure. If I didn't think it was a title relevant to every Wii owner, I'd try to convince you. But that's a waste of time here. Pay your $50 and finish the fight.



Because, dude. Yeah.

Separate of that, I am satisfied and pleased by the sword fighting portion of Wii Sports Resort. In just 1/12th of what the game has to offer, you're presented with the experience of wielding a sword-like object to strike at people and things and cause object-appropriate damage. It works, its fun, and it needs application against something other than Miis. But until that day, this my friends IS your Bushido Blade Wii.

Your first available mode is Duel, wherein you are pitted against an opponent and tasked with attacking and blocking with the intent to push that opponent off the raised platform and into the water. Throughout all of swordfighting, you're relegated to a two-hander control scheme, which translates well to your armless Mii. Detection is 1:1, and there's a huge amount of control. Attacks are meant to have a little bit of weight to them, and there's only the *slightest* edge of animation assist. You'll be knocked off balance when blocking or being blocked, but everything snaps back to place once you recover.



I haven't gotten to my difficulty wall yet, as the game adjusts in tenacity as you exhibit continued skill in cleanly winning matches. Its great fun knocking a Mii off its feet with a sweeping blow and watching it tumble in a spin into the water. Unlike Bushido Blade, of course, your "blades" are blunt and there's no one-hitters here. But, you do get a good chance to slice a few things open.

In the second distinct mode, Speed Slicing, You get a silver baton to wield, which seems to mean its sharp. You're set-up next to an opponent and the referee throws in objects for you to cut through. When those objects come into view, they have an arrow laid across them. The objective is to perform a slice in the direction of the arrow before your opponent does. Slice the fastest 10 times, and you've won the match.



More satisfying than you'd expect, each of the items features the expected insides and cutting physics for that object. Acorns shatter open a bit, oranges spill a bit of juice and countdown clocks spark and fizzle. The quality of your cut is spot on, though, on rare occasion, the detection of the effect on your object is just a little off. No matter: the satisfaction of slicing open fruit, diamonds and sushi rolls as quickly and precise as possible is greater than I had imagined.

There was one more surprise which I hadn't noticed or heard about before getting the game. The third mode of swordplay is called Showdown, and I'd probably pay 5 bucks on WiiWare to play it, if they offered it as its own thing. Showdown pulls from the classic scenario of 1 swordsman versus at least 50 sword wielding enemies. THIS is where you get your one hit kills! Most Miis fall with one hard wack. The larger and more heavily armored Miis take more than one hit, depending on how massive they are. Over 10 stages, you get to run the gauntlet and leave a trail of crippled Miis in your wake (until they mysteriously vaporize/teleport out of existance). If you get hit three times, you're done. Death penalty is starting at the beginning of the level again.



Despite being Miis smacking each other around with batons, this mode manages to evoke the excitement of going sword to sword against waves of attackers. Driving and over-dramatic music pumps along to the rhythm of the battle as your guy moves ever forward into combat. The battles take place all over the island, and have so far for me included, "Bridge at High Noon", "Beach at Night" and "Mountain at Sunset". WuHu Island, I believe, stays in a perpetual Full Moon phase, and is privy to many tiny shooting star sightings. This mode has no business being this fun, but Nintendo actually struck a very good balance between being E for Everyone and taking itself a little too seriously.

The result is a well formed swordfighting game wrapped in a parent-friendly, no blood wrapper. It does lack the cheesy charm and wealth of sword stances, body damage and sneaky fighting moves from the Bushido Blade series proper. However, at the functional Kendo-style level, this is totally where its at.. And its strange, really. Instead of being overjoyed, like when I'm recounting a thing I've watched, I'm just simply satisfied by this thing that I'm able to do now. I'm not overjoyed. I haven't done a back flip. But knowing that I'm now able to play out my samurai swordfighting itch with some very solid and believable feedback is one of the more gratifying things I've experienced in my years of knowing what technology is.