Soapbox features allow our writers and individual contributors to voice their opinions on hot topics and random stuff they’ve researched. Today, on its 15th anniversary, Jim begs the case for a forgotten vintage Wii…
If there’s one thing you can always rely on the Wii to achieve, it’s family-friendly multiplayer. Gone are the days of explaining to an elderly relative what different triggers and button combinations work, instead it’s a case of swapping out your grandma’s sherry with a white plastic rectangle. , stood in front of the screen and watched her beat seven shades of hoo-ha out of a cartoon opponent in the boxing ring.
The console’s simplicity is its biggest selling point, and boy did it have games to match. For the most part, first-party headers like Wii Sports, Wii Play, Music Wiiand WarioWare Smooth moves, always dominated these conversations, and rightly so – they were, and still are, incredible fun. This is by no means a piece that says, “hmm, actually, Wii Sports isn’t everything,“because that would be a straight lie – never be that person. However, there is one title that almost never makes it into discussions about family-friendly Wii titles, especially in the sports category: Playground EA.
it’s all about benevolent fun with your dead eyes, always staring avatar friends
Let’s start off by saying that I don’t believe that the Playground is necessarily better than Wii Sports. The playable avatars have cold dead eyes, the motion controls are a bit convoluted, and the single player mode is all about collecting stickers or marbles or whatever else the board of those The 40-year-old man thought was a fashionable currency with children at the time.
But what I believe is that this title has been dormant and real for the past 15 years, and it’s about time someone put that right.
The Wii has enough sports games to fill its memory bank threefold. Beyond the ports of NBA Live, FIFA, Tennis Virtuaand Tiger Woods’ PGA Tour (always feels very out of place on the dashboard), sports collections – yours Wii . Sports ResortS, Mario Sports Mixes – is where the motion controls can really shine. These are titles where the whole idea is to bring a lot of sports together, safe in the knowledge that, some sports are better than others, that’s fine because you can always switch to something different.
However, for EA Playground, the game collection has no weak link. Sure, it’s difficult to really call any of the game modes ‘sports’ in the same way we would use boxing or baseball, but are they competitive and challenging? If you can see the sweat I made while playing this game when I was younger, then you will no doubt.
Playground’s main game contains seven different ‘sports’ – yes, that’s right seven – ranging from uber sports (Wallball, Dodgeball, a weird volleyball-soccer hybrid called Kicks) to playground-only types of games (paper airplanes and RC racing). With it, the range offers a certain low-stakes charm that cannot be found in other sports collections. You’re not playing in a big baseball stadium or against a team of dragons and mushrooms, it’s all about benevolent fun with your deadly-eyed avatar friends.
While Wii Sports is all about bringing the thrill of big gaming to Nintendo’s newest console, Playground is the one for the little guy.
To the game’s credit, each Playground sport feels different despite effectively reusing the same controls over and over again. What are the controls for Dodgeball? You move with the d-pad then rotate the remote to throw the ball. What about Kicks? You move with the d-pad then rotate the remote to shoot the ball. Tetherball? This is a little different: there’s no movement, so forget about the d-pad, just rotate the remote to hit the ball. But these are not the same games over and over again. There are different techniques you have to learn to use for each that the game requires some keen skill and practice. Don’t expect to bring your d-pad remote moving, swinging game from Dodgeball to Wallball. Those AI kids will eat you alive.
The difference of each mode has been aided by a series of game-specific soundtracks to distinguish between the relaxation of Paper Racers and the fierce battlefields of Dart Shootout – a foam dart FPS has nothing to do with Nerf™. While no part of the soundtrack comes close to the great mastery of the Wii Sports – delivering some of my all time favorite gaming tunes – it helped make Playground feel like you weren’t doing the same. from this time to that time.
Except you, of course. This game has great replayability. Imagine how attacked you feel every time Matt of Wii Sports beats you in Tennis, now put that into story mode and you can imagine how fierce the competition is any. Yes, there’s an odd amount of single-player ‘campaign’ that involves collecting stickers to improve your athletic performance (it looks like this elementary school for doping slips), but providing An opponent in each sport means you don’t just go against the CPU. That is personal.
Simply put, the reviews for Playground at the time were Mix, to say the least. They would have slightly improved the game’s DS release, but in the end the title was thrown in the margins. And why? Because it’s not Wii Sports.
But just because of one game and not another, is that reason enough to forget it? It’s true, EA Playground isn’t Wii Sports – avatars with legs for one thing – but neither are they necessarily trying to be. While Wii Sports is all about bringing the thrill of big gaming to Nintendo’s newest console, Playground is a place for the little guy, thanks to the backing of that little indie label, Electronic Arts .
Yes, it may not reach the pinnacle of some of the console’s other releases, but it deserves the right to be cherished and remembered alongside them.
Any fond memories of EA Playground? Assuming it’s a shovel and never giving it a chance? Let us know below.
