As Wii Sports was to the Nintendo Wii, Wii Sports Resort is to the Wii Motion Plus, packed with a dozen mini-games to help players get the hang of some new Nintendo Hardware.
Wii Sports Resort is Nintendo's first-party showcase for the Wii Motion Plus, the controller add-on that adds 1:1 movement sensing to the Wii remote. Some consider the peripheral to be a fix for the Wii remote, adding in functionality that should have been there in the first place, but that's neither here nor there. The important thing here is that up until now, we've really only had a couple of third-party sports titles we could use to test out the new device, and now we've got a dozen tiny doses of Nintendo-created goodness.
But how good is this Nintendo-created goodness? Should players immediately go out and buy three more Motion Plus adapters, or should they wait until something better comes along? The assembled game critics take a stab, shoot an arrow, and otherwise swing their Wii remote in a dramatic fashion at the question.
The Onion A.V. Club
The sequel to arguably the best freebie pack-in game in 20 years arrives bearing a $50 price tag, 12 tropical-themed mini-games, and one Wii MotionPlus, an inch-long attachment for the Wii remote that purports to vanquish the pesky lag between player movement and onscreen movement. Cynics will say that the game features only 10 mini-games, since two of the games-Golf and Bowling-are do-overs from the original. Cynics will also say that this game is a Trojan horse designed to sell Wii MotionPlus attachments. Those cynics wouldn't be wrong on either front.
Eurogamer
With 12 basic activity types rather than the first game's five, the first indicator that something's lacking comes when you spot a couple of familiar faces in the crowd - and not just in the form of the Mii Plaza residents you zip past while barrelling through the sky. Repeat performances from the original Wii Sports' golf and bowling games are enough to suggest that maybe even Nintendo knows it's packed the sequel with pretty distractions, but is lacking the big events to bind them all together.
CVG
We've had it for weeks. Are we bored of it yet? Absolutely not. On the contrary, we can't wait to get the game home so we can smash our mates and mums over the heads with plastic sticks in Swordplay, ace them with our now-killer top spin in Table Tennis and slaughter them with our epic Archery skills. Those are easily the three best new games in Resort, so we'll start here. Swordplay is the game we all imagined we'd be playing when we first saw the Wii Remote. It's that Lightsaber game we all wanted, only without the Lightsabers.
Nintendo Life
There's certainly no denying that Wii Motion Plus brings a much more realistic and accurate form of motion controls to the table and Wii Sports Resort makes great use of it from start to finish. Sure some of the games are better than others and you'll have to occasionally re-calibrate the Wii Remote by placing it on a flat surface for a few seconds, but as a whole, the package features plenty of playability to go around. As a single-player experience, the game is solid and will provide you with plenty of hours of fun...But if you want to see what Wii Sports Resort is really all about, you need to round up some players to come over and have some real fun. Because as much fun as the original Wii Sports release was, Wii Sports Resort absolutely blows it away in terms of overall fun factor.
Giant Bomb
By offering 12 events and covering a variety of different styles, Nintendo has almost ensured that anyone who remotely liked anything about the original Wii Sports will find Wii Sports Resort to be a lot of fun. On top of that, it's still just as accessible as the original was, making it a great choice if you're looking for games to play with people who don't play a lot of games. You know what? It doesn't even need that layer of qualification. Wii Sports Resort is great.
Kotaku
With a dozen sports and a total of two dozen ways to play them, Wii Sports Resort packs in the play with mostly fun games. You'd think that Wii Sports and Wii Play would have exhausted the minigame catalog for the Wii, but these mostly new games are a worthwhile addition to anyone's Wii. Even without the MotionPlus add-on, Wii Sports Resort is a must-have, must-play for anyone wanting to get the most out of their Nintendo console.
I like to move it, move it...