Celebrity+Sports+Minigames+Wii=Failure
The latest must-have party game for the Wii brings the thrill of your favourite recreational sports activities right into your living room. Compete head-to-head with celebrity musicians and athletes to see who has got the goods. With intuitive Wii Remote controls and a variety of multiplayer tournaments, this fun-filled competition separates the celebrities from the wannabes!
Celebrity Sports Showdown features 12 amazing games. Each game has been specifically designed with the Wii Remote in mind creating an intuitive and effortless feel for controls. Use your Wii Remote to paddle down the rapids in Wild Water Canoeing, scale a wall in Cliff Hangers, and even slam a red-hot dodgeball into your opponent in Arena Dodgeball. Also included in the mix are Smash Badminton, Beach Volleyball, Curling, Inner Tubing, Slalom Showdown, Air Racers, Rapid-Fire Archery, and Joust Duel.
What are you waiting for? Get off the couch and into the action with the ultimate party game. Face off with the likes of Paul Pierce, Fergie, Avril Lavigne, and more to prove that you have what it takes to become a superstar!
Play as (or Against) Your Favourite Celebrity: Throw a dodgeball at Reggie Bush, or play as him and scale a mountain – the possibilities are limitless. Celebrities include Fergie, Avril Lavigne, Mia Hamm, Nelly Furtado, Keith Urban, LeAnn Rimes, Kristi Yamaguchi, Reggie Bush, Paul Pierce, and Sugar Ray Leonard.
Multiplayer Fun for Everyone: Fun for everyone at the whole party. Enjoy hours of entertainment while you play through a variety of tournaments together in versus or co-op play. Up to 4 players at once.
Intuitive Wii Controls: Each game is specifically designed to take advantage of the Wii’s unique controls. Row, throw, steer, climb, thrust, and smash your way to the championships effortlessly with your Wii Remote and Nunchuk.
Become a Superstar: Reach for the stars in a single-player mode filled with glitz and glamour. Play as a wannabe and win your way all the way to the red carpet as you break records and unlock secret characters.
Create and Customise Tournaments: Create your own customised tournament and battle it out with your family and friends.
Putting celebrities into videogames can be a risk, especially if some of them aren’t so well known in other regions of the world. I personally have no idea who Kristi Yamaguchi, Reggie Bush and Paul Pierce are. That isn’t the main problem of the game, what is however is that EA have spent more time on putting celebrities into the game instead of making it fun to play.
There are a total of 12 events to play and each one is diabolical. Why the game is labelled as Sports Showdown is clear, although a bit misplaced when one of the events is flying a plane through checkpoints. You can play all the events with the Wii Remote on its own and only a few uses the nunchuk only to move your character around, as for the actual controls…they are horrible.
One of the events is canoeing and instead of using both the remote and nunchuck to control the canoe, instead you hold the remote upwards and move it up and down while tapping A to switch between the oars, its just ridiculous. Flying is awful too, you’d expect it to be handled by holding the remote sideways, wrong! Instead you hold it upwards and move in the direction you want to go, its just plain bad.
Out of all the events, Curling seems to be the only one that has decent control. Although I personally find the sport boring. There is a Gladiators-style duel but it’s a case of simply moving your controller forward, there’s no skill involved. All the events lack any fun factor, even racing as a jockey can be a total pain due to bad controls. Having to move the controller up and down when it’s sideways and keeping it in the right direction so you don’t hit a wall, then tapping 2 to jump is a pain.
The game just isn’t fun and seems to be another opportunity at cashing in on people who don’t know better, it’s not as bad as say…More Game Party, but it’s pretty close to being so. The game doesn’t even realistic models of the celebrities; they look closer to Xbox 360 avatars than proper character models. I can see the direction they were going with, but I can’t see any appeal to any of it, the games are awful to play and the celebrities aren’t that well known. It’s hardly an A+ list of stars, I mean…Keith Urban? Fergie? Avril? Come on, they could have at least chosen celebrities that aren’t desperate for work.
The Verdict
Celebrity Sports Showdown is without a doubt, the worst game that EA’s made this year. It’s almost as bad as More Game Party with its bad controls and lack of enjoyment; it’s a bit better but not much. Still I would suggest that everyone avoid this one like the plague.
