Family-Friendly Game Review: Big League Sports for Wii

By Eric Tiansay

My young boys have never seen snow. So during the holidays, they usually dream about a white Christmas. Since we live in tropical Florida, snow is merely a pipe dream for Alex, 7, and Andrew, 6.

Instead, they were blessed in December not with a white Christmas, but with a Wii Christmas. Ever since they received since super popular Nintendo Wii game system for Christmas, every night has the potential to be a family game night in our home.

The Wii console features a wireless controller, the Wii Remote, which can be used as a handheld pointing device and detect movement in three dimensions. Showing off the capabilities of the Wii Remote, the Wii console comes with a surprisingly fun game—Wii Sports, which includes Bowling, Tennis, Baseball and Golf.

So my boys were eager to try out Big League Sports (BLS), developed by Koolhaus Games and distributed by Activision. BLS is touted as “all about putting players right into the action in the most thrilling situation in their favorite sports.”

As with Wii Sports, BLS allows up to four players to compete in a variety of modes, including single game and tournament modes. Players can also view their statistics and overall progress as well as the trophies they have won. Additionally, a character creation feature allows players to craft a character to their liking with dozens of customization options.

However, BLS is somewhat misleading. Although the game features six types of sports— Tennis, Basketball, Football, Soccer, Lacrosse and Hockey—players don’t play a full game of any of those, and the focus is not on the team. Instead players compete in a series of three to four mini-game challenges for each of the six sports.

For example, there are four offshoot activities in tennis. In Bullseye Blast, players must hit the ball into the bulls eye to earn points and bonuses. Players have to knock down as many milk bottles as they can with a limited number of balls in Milk Bottles. In Serving Aces, players must serve the ball in four different ways to hit cards and earn points. Players compete a giant game of pinball where they are the paddles and the court is their table in Pinball.

“Pinball is the most fun of the games because it’s the easiest to figure out,” Alex observed.

Andrew agreed, noting that: “Pinball is fun because you can get a lot of points.”

Other mini-game challenges include tossing free throws or slam dunking in Basketball, kicking goals or blocking balls in Soccer or making touchdown runs in Football. On the down side, the motion remote controls for BLS are not very responsive, and only a few of its games such as Tennis Pinball and Soccer Goalie are any fun. There are picture cues to illustrate how to use the remote for, but even the pictures are somewhat vague, which makes playing the game a little frustrating at times.

On the plus side, BLS is rated “E” for everyone, and it only features mild cartoon violence, so it’s very kid-friendly. Children who may only have a short attention span may also enjoy the mini-game challenges in BLS, rather than playing a full sports game.

Overall, Wii Sports is the better sports game for the system, so it’s advisable to rent rather than buy Big League Sports, which could be described as generating minor league excitement.

By Eric Tiansay, who has been unsuccessful in slam dunking in Big League Sports  Basketball.