We also found it incredibly frustrating how much of a delay there was at times between our swings and the actually onscreen swing, especially during our serves. While appropriate Wiimote twisting applies topspin and backspin, drop and lob shots require respective button presses that shatter any other illusions we might've had about MotionPlus turning this game into some sort of true tennis simulator. As demonstrated in the video, at one point we resorted to a mere one dimensional "waggle," which resulted in wild skips and jumps of our Nadal avatar, who managed to pick up tennis balls on either side of him, jumping as far as six feet or so away from just a tiny flick of ours. What the MotionPlus adds is better sense of the exact hitting angle, which makes for better ball placement in advance modes, but provides quite a considerable learning curve. On occasion the system seemed to pick up our random Wiimote stylings and reflect them in our onscreen character when the ball wasn't on his side of the court, but when it comes to hitting the tennis ball the game is just picking up predefined strokes. We'd say the big problem - and not a small problem for game developers, to be sure - is the fact that true 1-to-1 tennis gameplay would be a major undertaking to simulate. So a player who invests 10 hours or so in practice and actually likes the deep strategy and complexity of tennis will probably find MotionPlus a definite addition to the existing Wiimote setup, but most people who just pick up and play won't even be able to tell the difference. See, while MotionPlus does seem to do some work with helping the controller stay oriented and perform precisely measured skill shots, its implementation in the game is pretty much limited to that. That is to say, we don't get why this really needs MotionPlus, at least for relatively casual players like us. The first game we tried was Grand Slam Tennis, and we'll just say it: we don't get it. The additional weight of the MotionPlus and the hugemongous protective cover (we never sent away for ones for our original collection of Wiimotes) really wore on us after a while, at least in the rapid back and forth motions of tennis. Not as much could be said for our muscles, however, which were sorer than usual from the relatively mundane movements. One thing it mentioned was placing the Wiimote face down to reorient the controller in case it got out of step, but we never had occasion to do so - it worked flawlessly through our testing.
A few screens mentioned added features with use of the MotionPlus, but seemed unaware that ours was plugged in, and Grand Slam Tennis didn't blink an eye when we unplugged MotionPlus and went without.ĭespite all this simplicity, there's a three minute instructional video included with the games for helping figure out how to plug in the MotionPlus, which taught us absolutely nothing and yet proved unskippable once started. The games didn't offer much info as to whether we were using a MotionPlus-enhanced control setup or not.
Outside automatic system software updates included with both games (to add the MotionPlus support, presumably) there was nothing we had to do on the software side to activate or implement the add-on, which in a way was almost disconcerting. Major thanks to The Golf Club at Chelsea Piers for letting us test this out at their facilities, and to golf pros Herb and Marj for letting us waste some of their valuable time.
Check out our full impressions after the break, along with enthralling videos of both games in action. What could possibly be inside this particular block of white plastic that's not inside those other countless slabs of white plastic that Nintendo has already slathered on the Wii? Sure, we know in theory that the gyroscopes that MotionPlus provides allows the controller to truly orient itself in 3D space, instead of just sensing acceleration in various directions, and breaks some of that reliance on the sensor bar, but do those theoretical advances result in a true leap in gameplay? We tested it out with EA's new MotionPlus-enabled Tiger Woods PGA Tour 10 and Grand Slam Tennis - the first such titles on the market while we wait for Nintendo to get its own Wii Sports Resort in order - and we'd say the results are pretty inconclusive so far. At first glance it's a little difficult to understand the necessity of another motion-sensing add-on.