Playing Sports Champions more extensively

[MaxwellGT2000]

Took a break from Red Dead, found my PS Eye and thought it was time to earn some Sports Champions trophies for the hell of it.

Finally played all the sports rather than just a couple like I did in my PS Move impressions thread. The more I play the less and less I can tell a real difference between Move and WM+ especially when I was playing table tennis.

I ended up getting 20% of the games trophies within about an hour and half of playing the game, the only reason it was that long was because of getting a hole in one at disc golf took 30 minutes of repeat throws and being off by just inches.

Anyway I want to talk about each game and my feelings on it.

Archery:  

Never have I ever wanted two Moves more than I have in this game, I actually contemplated buying a second Move just for it.  Without a second Move it doesn't have the immersion of Wii Sports Resort archery, you pull the arrow out of your quiver and aim all with one hand, but in WSR you pull back the nunchuck and have the sound of the string stretching play out of the Wii remote it just feels natural.  

Anyway other than that bit, it's a game that works, I can't knock the controls it's just precise and works well.  One of the things I wouldn't have done though was the arc projection, it makes things a bit too easy, I got bullseye after bullseye and even got a trophy for "the splits" which is splitting one arrow with another Robin Hood style, not even intentionally.

Volleyball: (going to get this one out of the way since it's gonna be painful)

It's just not fun, it is the Wii Sports Resort cycling game of the Sports Champions package, only thing is that there's 6 games in this package and 12 in the other so a throw away game hurts this package more.  Anyway it's another game you can play with two Moves, not exactly sure having the second would even improve things that much, essentially you do underhand hits, hits from the chest, and spikes.  It tells you when to hit, there's little finesse to it like you find in every other game in the package, and I had a shutout game with no effort at all.

Gladiator Duel:

The third and last of the games you can play with two Moves, again playing this one with just one REALLY makes me wish I had two, it just seems like it'd be much improved with two.  With one the game plays just like sword fighting on Wii Sports Resort, you slice at angles, go for where there's an opening, and you can block with Trigger (or B in WSR), does that make it a bad thing?  Not at all sword fighting was my favorite WSR game and it makes Gladiator Duel my favorite SC game, the biggest difference between the two is in Gladiator Duel you have a life bar.  You can also move back which is something you can't do in Sword Fighting but it defaults your distance to within striking range.  

From what I hear The Fight doesn't default within striking distance, so it seems to me anyone even remotely interested in a fighting game on the Move check this out with its 5 other games than waste money on The Fight, just pick up two controllers and you're set.

What more is there to say, it works well, it's fun, I like how your shield can break down, and it gets you really involved.  I wish there were more modes like with Sword fighting on WSR but with two moves and some mechanics Gladiator Duel differentiates itself.

Disc Golf: 

It's Disc Golf, if you've played the WSR version (which is another mode of Frisbee) or Tiger Woods on Wii you know what to expect here.  It's fun, it reads your angles, the speed of your throw, and uses the trigger to tell when you released the disc. Wind has a factor, yadda yadda, it's how every disc golf game ever has played, I'm not yet tired of it just now I have another golf course to play on.  Only issue I came across was after trying to get a hole in one for 30 minutes it eventually became off center much like WM+ does after playing for so long, not a big deal as it fixed it self just like WSR does when you point at the sensor bar.

Since this one is short I'm going to diverge just a tad since we're talking motion games, I've brought up WSR a lot in this, but the whole thing about having a trigger to release your disc is something also done in bowling.  I played Kinect Sports the other day and I was thinking how the game releases the ball for you in bowling, some sort of tactile feedback like that is needed in games like Disc Golf and Bowling cause release has as much to do with the game as spin, angle, and alignment, I really appreciate that in these motion games. Going back on topic...

Table Tennis: 

This is the third motion controlled table tennis game I've played, first being in Wii Play, second WSR, and now Sports Champions.  It's immensely better than Wii Play's Table Tennis, but overall the same as WSR, you hold your controller at angles to add spin, you hit at different angles to affect direction, different speeds to affect power, and timing is everything.  It's fun, in depth, and accurate.

The only problem I had is I don't know how to make my ball NOT have spin lol not a bad thing when playing against people or AI but when you're in challenge mode and you gotta smack servbot with the ball then the ball just curves away from him after you hit it straight at him it's frustrating, I work around it by giving it up spin but sometimes that can made the game freak out just a bit lol

Bocce: 

Yes that's right, Bocce, someone actually thought of this sport when coming up with ideas, not baseball, not a normal game of golf, but BOCCE. I love that one trophy is "I have heard of bocce", I play this game all the time at my old school, with my family, and my friends, so yeah it's a game that relates to me but even I know how niche the game is at least in the states so it's a surprise to see it. 

It's something really unique to the package and it's pretty fun, throw out the pallino ball, then try to get your bocce ball close to it, simple enough eh?  But one of the biggest differences in the real game is the size and weight difference in the pallino ball and bocce ball and they represent that well in Sports Champions, throwing the bocce ball like the pallino will end will lose you the game, so throwing the pallino ball really hard means you have to throw the bocce ball even harder, and that's the whole strategy of the game throw the pallino where you think you could throw the bocce ball with accuracy but hopefully not where your opponent can throw it to.

Kinda funny but because of it's uniqueness if you already own other motion games bocce is actually the best and most unique game to draw in those customers, if you don't Sports Champions is a solid package for those guys, but that's really the biggest knock against the game there isn't much it does other packages don't already do and with more content and often times it does the exact same controls as well with the same drawbacks if there are any, but if you're a PS3 only owner got 100 bucks for the bundle to blow, go for it, jump in on the fun lots of Wii owners have been having for a while and get some easy trophies while you're at it lol