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| From: Nintendo
Category: Video Games
List Price: £49.99
Buy New: £29.35
You Save: £20.64 (41%)
New (42) Used (7) from £18.99
Avg. Customer Rating:  86 reviews
Sales Rank: 4
Platform: Nintendo Wii
Rating: Universal, suitable for all
Media: Video Game
Batteries Included: No
Operating System: Nintendo Wii
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.2
Dimensions (in): 0 x 0 x 0
MPN: NIN383
UPC: 045496362195
EAN: 0045496890117
ASIN: B000INYT0G
Release Date: December 8, 2006
Shipping: Eligible for Super Saver Shipping
Availability: Usually dispatched within 24 hours
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| Customer Reviews:
 Wii Play - Value For Money December 29, 2006
5 out of 5 found this review helpful
Wii play, priced at around 35 should be regarded as a definite purchase purely due to its value for money. In effect you are paying 5 for a game with an additional 30 (retail value) for a wii remote.
Wii play itself is actualy rather fun, given its low price tag. I must admit my single player experience with the game has been nothing if dull. However, the mini games realy are entertaining, especialy the duck hunting.
Games worth mentioning are Shooting, Laser Hockey and Tanks, although wiiplay makes you play through all the minigames in order to progressivly unlock them.
Shooting does take a certain degree of skill (i am hopeless at it). You are given a number of stages in which to achieve high points in. You shoot at plates, targets, ducks, coke cans and even aliens. Overall, it stands out as the most entertaining minigame.
Laser hockey definitly draws inspiration from pong, and it is rumoured to have a physics engine equivelant to doom 3. However, i found the controls slightly too jerky and jittery.
Table Tennis was the major disapointment. The controls are also too sensitive and jittery. It becomes almost impossible to play shots at times, and it is worse when you are not playing the computer.
Overall, Wiiplay is the ideal accompaniment too the Wii console, especialy as it comes with a free remote. After playing wiiplay, i found using the remote on other games far easier than i might have done without, and the multiplayer is second to none. The learning curve is around 5 minutes, which is ideal for non gamers or youngsters.
Excellent party game December 28, 2006
7 out of 7 found this review helpful
This game is the most fun I've had in years. Every single game is brilliant and it introduces all the aspects of the wii. All of them are multi-player and if you can round up 3 mates who have a controller each, you have simply the best multi-player experience ever. My personal favourite is Charge! a game where you have to control a bull/cow and knock over scarecrows. All of them are tremendous fun, but some are better than others. Shooting is great, and as the name suggests it has you shooting ducks, clay pigeons, targets and UFO's. Pool is fun and always works well in 2 player, but it takes a while to get used to. Laser hockey is tedious, but is so addictive it's untrue. Ping-pong is easy but the game sometimes randomly ends and says you've won. Tanks uses the nunchuck and is one where you always come back to beat your own high scores. Fishing is so brilliant and it is the best in multi-player. Pose me is rock hard and takes ages to master. Find mii is great in single player, not quite sure about multi-player though. That is all of them. Plus you get a controller with it all for 35; only 5 more than a remote on it's own. This is a great game and it is a bargain. Not as good as wii sports mind. I want wii play 2! Just think more games and it could come with an new extension perhaps? Wait and see.
Can't complain for a fiver! December 24, 2006
5 out of 6 found this review helpful
Like the other reviewers have said, this is essentially a five-pound extended demo of what the Wii is capable of, and that works out at about 56p each. A reviewer below excellently analysed the games so there's no need for me to go over them all again.
I got this mainly out of curiosity having loved the addictive DS mini-games on the Mario titles and also because I needed a second controller, and no harm was done. Being able to play with your Mii caricatures is good, and the spotting game especially reminds me of Nintendo's knack to innovate around the simplest things.
However, I think the game itself could be a lot better if overall high scores were saved; not just personal bests.
Also, why Nintendo chose to use a scoring system at all in billiards is strange - I appreciate they never actually labelled it 'pool' and were probably using it for the sake of the personal high scores, but as a two player game especially, it would be a lot more fun using the regular 8 or 9-ball rules of pool. Oh well - I guess it was just a demo after all.
And you can't complain with the controller - five stars all the way; it even has batteries included.
Having an extra Wii controller is essential!
Wii Play December 11, 2006
7 out of 14 found this review helpful
When i got my wii i bought this first because it came with a controller, it is a very good game. It shows you how you can use the remote in many ways. Its a good buy and well worth looking into for the controller.
 Not a bad package December 5, 2006
37 out of 42 found this review helpful
I have had the luxury of playing this game a few days ahead of it's official release! Wii Play, which will retail for around 35 with a Wii remote included, is aimed squarely at the new audience. When you consider that a remote alone will cost 30, Wii Play is essentially a 5 game and it delivers nine pint sized mini-games that aim to bring fun to the whole family. Playable alone or with another player, each game utilises the remote only and boils gameplay down to the very depths of simplicity. It needn't matter whether the player is five or eighty years old, as anyone can play these games.
First on the list is Shooting Range, which plays exactly as it sounds and is very much reminiscent of light-gun games such as Duck Hunt. Using the remote to point at the screen, you shoot at a variety of targets for points and are rewarded with a medal based upon the number of points you gain. As with many of the Wii Play games it's considerably more fun when playing against someone, but there's no real depth and even complete novices will tire of it fairly quickly.
Slightly more challenging is Find Mii, which is the gaming equivalent of 'Where's Wally?'. Here, Nintendo uses the Mii character system to generate a host of challenges where you need to pick the odd one out, or pairs, or your own Mii from an ever growing crowd of other Miis. You play against the clock which starts on thirty seconds, and each time you're successful a few more seconds are added to keep you going. Once you run out of time it's 'game over' and you're given a score based on how many rounds you passed.
The third game in the compilation is Table Tennis, but surely this should be called Pong? The similarities are certainly there but it's subtlety different because, unlike its venerable forefather, the aim of the game is to keep to ball in play rather than getting it past your opponent. You simply move the remote left or right to move your paddle in toward the ball, which will automatically be returned. For a while, this can prove mildly addictive in a "don't drop the ball" kind of way, but once again the lack of depth tells very quickly. One does wonder why there couldn't have been more than one mode to this game, with one allowing for a points scoring game against the AI or a friend.
Pose Mii has to be one of the stranger concepts in Wii Play, though not quite the strangest. In this game you have to match your Mii's pose to the pose depicted in falling bubbles. There are three poses in all, and you switch between them by pressing A and B on the remote. This game actually does a better job than most of demonstrating the abilities of the remote, requiring you to twist and rotate to get the right angle to match the pose. As the pace builds up it can get quite complicated, but it's quite good fun too.
Laser Hockey, derived from the old fair ground favourite Air Hockey, is another game that actually works quite well, simply because Air Hockey is a really fun game in real life. It also makes good use of the remote, allowing players to apply angle onto their shots. It's very fast paced, sometimes manic, and is good fun when played against a friend or member of the family.
The real stand-out game, however, is Billiards, which actually has some depth and shows that snooker/pool games could find Wii to be a perfect format. The basic control requires you to swing back and then push through with the Remote, just like you do in real life, and you can also adjust direction and impart spin by changing where you strike on the cue ball. The physics involved are basic but quite realistic, and there's a real sense of achievement when you manage to drop the cue ball where you want it. If anything it's somewhat wasted on the Wii Play compilation and might have been better off as part of the Wii Sports package.
No mini-game compilation would be complete without a fishing game, and Wii Play doesn't disappoint. Control is as simple and intuitive as ever, requiring you to flick forward to cast your rod and flick back when you've got a nibble. It's fun for a about five minutes, but there's simply no depth to it whatsoever.
Much the same can be said of Charge, a truly bizarre racing game where you ride a cow around a track, jumping over barriers and running over scarecrows. The controls are quite a good introduction to the popular racing configuration of holding the remote horizontally to steer your, erm, cow around the corners, and flicking the controller upward makes it jump. What is it about cows that makes them so comical?
The final game in this little compilation is Tanks, and it's probably the worst of the bunch. On paper it seems like a good idea, with you controlling your tank on an overhead viewed map using the D-Pad (or analogue stick if you attach a nunchuck) and aiming with the remote. Unlike all the other games, however, it just doesn't have any real charm and the presentation is particularly dull, dominated as it is by khaki coloured browns and beige blocks.
Reviewing Wii Play was never going to be a simple task, and by ordinary standards there's simply nothing here - except Billiards - that offers anything worthy of more than a few minutes play. As an introduction to the Wii and its unique control scheme it just about works, but beyond that there's very little here to get excited about. Because it comes bundled with a Wii remote it's not a bad package, and certainly worth picking up if you're after a second controller.
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