Celebrity Sports Showdown for Wii Reviews by Gamers

I get the feeling that Celebrity Sports Showdown was a concept hatched not at a design meeting, but at a marketing one. A dozen shallow mini-games and 10 pseudo-trendy celebrities. Does it matter that Avril Lavigne has no business paddling down a river in a canoe or that Nelly Furtado will never be remembered for her outstanding marksmanship? Nah. What matters is that Carnival Games sold ridiculously well, and this game's got Reggie Bush and Leann Rimes, too. What Celebrity Sports Showdown disappointingly lacks, though, is a gameplay experience that feels like it really belongs on Wii. While all of the titles make use of Nintendo's controller in some fashion, none use it well. There's mindless waggle and gestures poorly substituted for buttons, yet not a single featured mini feels exactly right in the same way that Wii Sports bowling did when it debuted more than two years ago. Indeed, the control schemes in place would all play better with a standard pad, which lends some credence to the theory that very little thought went into this quick-cash, commercialized compilation.

I know. Wii is all about blue oceans, market expansion, yadda and more yadda, and I'm sure there will be more than a few 12-year-old girls who find the prospect of spiking a volleyball as Fergie appealing. But I've been unable to sidestep two fundamental issues with this project. The first is that, as previously mentioned, none of the included mini-games are particularly well-made. At best, they're passable and at worst offensive. And second, the inclusion of the celebrities, several of whom experienced their career peaks years ago, seems tacked-on. Thus, if you're hoping to find real personality attached to these Mii-ized avatar versions of Mia Hamm or Kristi Yamaguchi, put that hope to bed for these cartoony likenesses stand idly mute, add zero character to the presentation and seem there only in name. You won't hear a single one-liner from the real stars. Even stylistically, the characters only faintly resemble their real-life counterparts; to me, they look like creations from an EA Playground sequel.

Meanwhile, the mini-games come up very short because they underuse or misuse the Wii remote whenever possible. In archery, you press the B-trigger to pull the bow back, point with the Wii remote and release the button. it happens to be one of the better implementations of the controller and it still ignores motion. We've already seen Wii games that challenge you to pull the remote backward to draw your bow, for example. That kind of extra immersion is severely lacking and sorely missed from EA's mini-game-fest. Volleyball serves and spikes feel unresponsive because all waggles are merely replicating button presses. The mechanics powering Dodgeball really were ripped from or directly inspired by those in EA Playground and remain equally mechanical. And in Joust Duel, you just waggle the Wii remote around to beat on your opponent. Forget about faked one-to-one controls. And then there are the poor ones. Take, for example, Air Racers, in which you must steer a jet through a canyon not by holding the controller classically, but by pivoting the Wii remote left and right as though turning a key-in-lock.

If you're a seasoned Wii player who expects more from the library, you will find Celebrity Sports Showdown to fall well short of any standards, even low ones. That said, this is obviously a game designed for a different crowd -- let's call it the Wii Music generation; the audience easily and simply entertained with the prospect of a few fun gestures and games that more or less play themselves -- and I'm sure that these mainstreamers will find something to like. As a multiplayer experience (the game supports four players), the 10 minis in place are slightly more enjoyable, bordering on passable. I'm therefore certain that some unsuspecting newbies with no concept of better software will be satisfied by the ho-hum presentation and dated experience. Those that venture to compare this project to something like Rayman Raving Rabbids TV Party, which arrives complete with 60 something minis, Balance Board support and crazy Rabbid characters that are actually interesting and funny, though will easily spot a great, black-hole divide of quality that separates one from the other.

©2008-11-11, IGN Entertainment, Inc. All Rights Reserved