Big Beach Sports Review

There seems to be a Wii game for every sport these days. Whether it is Madden, Tiger Woods, Tony Hawk or Winter Sports, you can pretty much find any sport imaginable to play on the Wii. Of course Nintendo started it all with Wii Sports. The follow-up, Wii Sports Resort, will resemble more like Big Beach Sports than anything else. So, for an early taste of what you are in store for, read on in my review of THQ’s latest Wii title.

There are six different sports that you can play in Big Beach Sports. These include Bocce, Disc Golf, Football, Soccer, Cricket and Volleyball. Oddly enough, I have never heard of anyone play a game of soccer or cricket on a beach, but I guess they figured there are not a ton of sports for them to choose from and had to pick some that might fit in. Unfortunately, cricket is not that game. No one in America has any idea of how to play this British pastime. The same can be said with Bocce, which at least you can get the hang of pretty quickly. It involves throwing a small ball and then two people throwing a set of balls to attempt to get closest to it.

I would say that the best ones are the more familiar sports of football and soccer. Football goes by quarters and you don’t get first downs. If you fail to score a touchdown, the opposing team gets the ball. There also aren’t any field goals or extra points. Instead, if you intercept a ball you get points for that. There is only a quarterback and a receiver on each team. The soccer is more simple as well. They have you playing in almost a hockey rink sized area as opposed to the large soccer field. Nonetheless, it works, at least compared to the other games. I found that Disc Golf was particularly bad and unresponsive. Volleyball was just boring, seemingly involving more luck than skill.

Like almost all games on the system, the “advantage” of Big Beach Sports on the Wii over other sports games on more traditional consoles is in the controls. Gestures range from pretending to hit in cricket or serving a volleyball to flicking your wrist with a frisbee. These, of course, can be hit and miss. Some are better than others. Add to the fact that you do not control the computer AI on your team and the luck factor that I previously mentioned is amplified in whether your computer ally feels like cooperating with you or not. One wrong step in volleyball can easily cost a point.

The Wii has become a playground for crappy games. THQ’s Big Beach Sports is no exception. I could not, in good conscience, recommend this game to anyone. There are far too many flaws, far too few entertaining events and a whole lot of mediocrity. The controls will have you wincing more than once and the graphics will give you nightmares. In fact, if you are crazy enough to get your friends to play this game with you, they probably won’t be calling you “friend” for very long.