Basketball
Team sports can be pretty fun, offering a potentially excellent venue for multiplayer gaming opportunities. With basketball in Deca Sports, movement of your character is done with the analog stick on the nunchuk, whereas all the other actions are mapped to movements of the Wii Remote. The game is played 3-on-3.
The AI, both on your team and your opponent’s team, is far from having level of sophistication, so you shouldn’t expect anywhere near the same kind of experience you’d get from, say, NBA Live. As before, the graphics are incredibly mediocre and the actual gameplay is brought down to its absolutely simplest level.
Soccer
Much like basketball, controls in soccer are mapped both to the nunchuk and the Wii Remote. The former takes care of character movement whereas the latter does basic actions like tackling, passing, and shooting. I think it’s a little weird that you can’t exactly select who you are passing to. Instead, the ball is kicked and you just switch the player closest to it.
Instead of an outdoor arena, this 5-on-5 game of soccer is played indoors. As you’d probably suspect, UEFA Champions League this definitely is not. The experience just feels shallow, especially with the amazingly low intelligence of the computer-controlled players.
Conclusion
When considering Deca Sports by Hudson Soft, you have to realize what kind of market they are approaching with such a game. The whole idea was that Deca Sports could be the second coming of Wii Sports, getting in twice as many events and offering the same level of ultra-simplistic controls. The trouble is that they went far too simple, stripping the events of any depth whatsoever and the controls are too simple. All you need is a couple of well-timed waggles of the Wii Remote.
With an MSRP of just $30, this means that each individual event in Deca Sports is only costing you three bucks. Some of the events, like curling, can be fun for a little while, but don’t expect to come back to Deca Sports again and again like how you would with something like Super Smash Bros. Brawl or Mario Kart Wii. The lasting appeal just isn’t there and the lack of eye candy doesn’t help either.
Pros
- Decent variety of events
- Wii controls are simple enough for everyone to play
- Impulse buy pricing at just $30
- Curling is surprisingly fun… for a while
Cons
- No Mii integration, no recognizable characters
- Graphics are mediocre at best
- Events are far too simple for even beginners
- Lasting appeal is fairly minimal
- Controls not as responsive as they could be
Overall Rating: 5.0/10
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