Wacky World of Sports Review

Written by: Steve Martin Posted: 3rd November 2009

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Wacky eh?

Wacky World of Sports Details:

	Mini-game Compilation
	Nintendo Wii
	SEGA
	SEGA

12+

Out Now

1-4

Zany. Crazy. Weird. Unusual. Strange. Nope, don't quite work, wacky, yes that's the best way to describe Wacky World of Sports on the Wii.

This is basically a collection of mini-games that are centred on so-called “sports”, disappointingly there are only 10 events to play, so this feels very undeveloped compared to say Mario & Sonic’s Olympic effort and other mini-game compilations such as the Raving Rabbids series and like these franchises it also lacks any really humorous characters to challenge the Rabbids. Instead we are treated to stereotypes such as The Pilot and some posh British bloke! They just aren’t as endearing, and lack any sort of personality. The ten events are Furniture Racing (very,very poor Mario Kart clone), Mud Sliding, Extreme Ironing (quick-time motion sensitive actions with a rhythm gameplay mechanic), Card Boxing (very weird, part boxing, part pairs), Lawnmower Racing (as dull as mowing the lawn in real life), Ice Golf (the worst event by far), Log Chopping (does what it says on the tin), Tuna Tossing (hammer throw with a fishy twist), Cheese Rolling (curling with Swiss cheese) and finally Fierjeppen (pole vaulting over a river).

The “events” themselves lack any real spark, they’re not terrible but none are truly entertaining, unless you have three mates to play with and then it’s probably not as bad. Only the remote is used for playing so the control scheme is very simplistic with it being used as a steering wheel a la Mario Kart for driving events, and generally shakes are used to make your chosen character run, climb with swipes left to perform actions such as punching, swinging and jumping. It’s very basic and most of the events are easy to get to grips with, the exception is the truly turd-tastic Ice Golf, which crosses Wii Golf (with some terrible motion sensing controls might I add) and artic winds to make an infuriatingly rubbish mini-game. Thankfully, this one event doesn’t spoil the rest of the mediocre bunch of games. The graphics are functional, if a little basic and the character creation could have been better. The annoying amount of preset presentation cut-scenes before and after the events (as is common with these “athletics” titles) can thankfully be skipped but at the price of an irritating sound bite from the camper than Graham Norton and Alan Carr put together referee! Thankfully his vocabulary is limited to a few single words and the event names, but this is more than enough for most sane people to manage. The rest of the audio is also disappointing if I am being polite.

There is the multiplayer Party Mode that lets you play any event you want or a collection of events in turn, and then there’s the Tour Mode for up to 3 players where you take on a selection of events against a computer character and earn points, if you are top dog then you earn the chance to challenge the Tour champ, successfully beating them unlocks them as a playable character. Points are also converted into cash to allow you to buy new equipment to use in the events which can apparently improve your performance, although I have to admit I didn’t notice much benefit when using these “superior” items.

As a “budget game” it is not terrible and the events are as wacky as the title suggests and could give some short-lived enjoyment for younger players if they’re accompanied by a friend or three, but as a single player experience this is quite tedious and the lack of events means that repetition is unavoidable., this game unfortunately pales into the background when compared to other mini-games compilations out there.