Deca Sports 2 (Wii) Review
Posted by Adam Larck on 10.21.2009
Deca Sports 2 is back with new sports and an online mode, but is it better than Wii Sports? Find out inside.
Title: Deca Sports 2
Publisher: Hudson Soft
Developer: Hudson Soft
Genre: Sports compilation
Players: 1-4
Rated: E for Everyone
Deca Sports 2 picks up right where the first game left off. It features 10 new sports that try to compete with Wii Sports in being a casual sports game for groups to enjoy. This time, it tries to also up the ante by including an online mode as well. Can Deca Sports 2 finally top Wii Sports, or is it still just a poor imitation? Read on to find out.
Gameplay:
As stated above, Deca Sports 2 has 10 individual sports. They are: Kendo, Tennis, Pentaque, Ice Hockey, Mogul Skiing, Dodgeball, Speed Skating, Darts, Road Racing and Synchronized Swimming. I’ll get into these in a bit more detail later.
DS 2 has three game modes at the main screen: Single Player, Multiplayer and Locker Room. Before jumping into the actual events, however, I explored the Locker Room a bit.
The Locker Room lets you make your own team, view tutorials over each sport or look at your user data. The tutorials are nice, but really unneeded. Each sport is really simple to just pick up and play. The user data keeps track of skill points you earn by winning events and medals you earn in Challenge mode, which I’ll talk about shortly.
The create a team allows you to name your team and choose a color scheme, along with a logo. After choosing this, you can choose the look of each character and their size. The size is supposed to make a difference in speed and strength, but I never found any. A small player did just as good in Kendo as a large one, and a large one did just as good in Speed Skating as a small one. It’s pretty much just a visual choice.
If you don’t feel like making your own team, there are stock teams to use. However, it was nice to be able to make a team to give it your own personal feel.
After finally making my own team, I hopped into the single player mode. There are four different types of gameplay you can select: Open Match, League, Tournament and Challenge. The first three just having you play one or multiple sports; while the last one gives you specific tasks to do for the longest time you can or try to get a high score.
Open Match allows you to play only a single sport, but lets you change any of the settings for it. It gives you a decent amount of freedom in change how a game may be played or what the score will go up to.
League is the game’s longest mode. It has three difficulties: Local, National and Global, or easy, normal and hard. You have to beat the previous level to advance ahead. In the League, you go up against three other computers in all 10 sports to get the highest number of overall points. Thankfully, you can quit and restart where you left off at.
Tournament also has three difficulties, and just has you competing in one sport against eight teams. Really not much more to say about this.
While talking about the difficulties, I want to make a quick note that the computer is too easy in the game. At the beginner level, I was blowing them away, and was still winning pretty easily against them in advanced levels.
Multiplayer has Open Match, Vs. Match and Tournament, but no League mode. This would have been a fun mode to compete against your friends, so I’m not sure why it isn’t included in the game.
Now, let me finally talk about the sports. I’m going to try not to compare them to Wii Sports, but it’s going to be hard. The games were disappointing when I started playing them. The controls ended up being either a wagglefest, with you having to try to move the Remote and Nunchuck as fast as possible or in time, or the controls were overly touchy.
Two good examples if these are Speed Skating and Pentaque. Speed Skating just has you moving both controllers in time to the shapes on the screen to move, while Pentaque is so touchy it’s difficult to even throw the ball, much less control the strength on the throw.
Other sports, such as Synchronized Swimming (move Remote in time to circle) and Ice Hockey (you just kind of go in a general direction and pray to get a decent shot off) suffer from the same control problems. Even the sport I liked, Kendo, just had you swinging the Remote hoping for a decent hit that’s not blocked.
Probably the worst control scheme came from the Darts game. The game wants you to hold the Remote with both the A and B buttons held down, aim and then flick your wrist to throw. The problem is that the Remote is not as small as a dart. When you try to do all of that and get a decent throw, your wrist gets cramped up and there’s no telling where your shot will go.
Also, one sport is actually just ripped from Wii Sports: Tennis. It’s pretty much the exact same too. You still automatically move left and right, and have to time serves and swings with when the ball comes to the racket. Also, the single player allows you to play just 1 v. 1, while multiplayer goes back to doubles.
The main difference is that you can rush up to the net and back with the A and B buttons. However, you can’t move left and right or swing while holding one of these buttons. Why not just let this sport use the Nunchuck? It frees up the buttons and allows you complete control of the movement.
Overall, the single player was decent, but got annoying due to the easy AI and controls. Multiplayer was a bit better by letting you play against someone, but the controls still hamper it. The game does have an online mode, but I’ll touch on the problems with it in the Lasting Appeal section.
Graphics:
Well, the game still doesn’t use the Miis. Instead, it brings back the same character design that was seen in the first Deca Sports. You are able to customize these characters quite a bit, so you can give them a personal feel if you want to. They look decent, although some parts of the body seem off at times. Also, I’m confused by the bluish-green skin color in the game. Does the game want to give you the option to make aliens as well?
Outside of the characters, the environments the events take place in are average, but really have no outstanding features to remember them by. During the events, everything looks average. The graphics get the job done, and that’s about it. One thing that I did notice was during the Road Racing game. There was an interesting blur effect that happened when it hit high speeds which was nice.
Sound:
One key word comes to my mind when I think of the sound: repetitive. There are only a handful of songs in the game, and they loop through the sports and on the menu screen. The songs also seem very bland and generic. There really wasn’t much to talk about with the music.
Actually, some of the better music in the game came during the Synchronized Swimming event. The music matches with the swimmers on screen, and actually sounds different then the other music and is entertaining.
Outside of the music, there isn’t much else to say about the sound. The game has no speaking, and each sport has various sound effects. Overall, there are a lot of games out there that has much better sound. Turn the sound down to talk to your friends, you won’t be missing anything.
Lasting Appeal:
For groups that need something new to do, this game will probably have a decent amount of replay-ability for them. The games do give a nice change from normal party games, plus they are easy for anyone to pick up and start playing against friends.
For the occasional groups and single player, though, not much is offered here to come back to. There is nothing to unlock in the game except for extra skill levels and a trophy. Once you’ve played through all the games, you’ve seen everything the game has to offer. The challenge modes do give a bit of variety, but still not much to give more lasting appeal.
However, the game does have an online multiplayer mode. This should be great fun and offer a good variety to try your skills against different people, right? It might have been, if I could have actually connected to a game. Three sports are offered in the online mode (Ice Hockey, Tennis and Dodge Ball), but the games I found I was never able to connect to. Even if this wasn’t a problem, there just were never many games to connect to. I’m not sure if this was because of the low number of copies bought or not, but online play was just nonexistent.
Overall, groups needing something new to do will have some fun playing this game for a while, but other groups and solo gamers won’t find anything to hold their interest here.
Fun Factor:
I had fun with these games the first time or two I played them. It was something different than Wii Sports, and the games offered a nice change of pace.
However, they quickly lost their fun and because just things that required repetitive motion or accuracy that could not be given. Even in groups the game lost its fun quick. It may be fun for groups that want a nice change that play the Wii constantly, but for people that just play in groups every once in a while Wii Sports is still the game to go to.
The 411:
The game has a decent collection of mini-games for groups. The problem is so does Wii Sports, the main competition for this game. Plus, Wii Sports comes bundled in with the Wii for no extra cost. Overall, this is a game that is worth a look from groups looking for something new. For everyone else, look for Wii sports fun elsewhere.
Graphics
5.0
The graphics are mediocre and have generic arenas, but are acceptable for the game. It’s not pushing the Wii’s graphic power any, though.
Gameplay
5.5
The games are a nice variety, but either have too touchy controls or are too easy. The variety of modes are nice, but really don’t differ that much.
Sound
4.5
The best music comes during synchronized swimming. Otherwise, the music was very repetitive and bland. However, the sound effects were decent.
Lasting Appeal
5.0
The game would be decent for groups and parties, but get repetitive quick for single players. It may even get repetitive for groups due to the limited number and controls.
Fun Factor
5.0
Most games were fun to play through the first time (at least the ones that didn’t rely on timing), but they all lost most of their fun after a few more playthroughs.
