E365 -- Sports Island is a sports compilation game for the Wii, in much the same vein as the Wii Sports title that comes free with your purchase of the Wii console. Wii Sports has proven a major success and a big part of why the Wii is flying off the shelves in record numbers. It stands to reason, then, that other game companies would try and cash in on it's success. Unfortunately, Sports Island isn't nearly as much fun or as easily accessible as Wii Sports and, while one or two of the sports offer some fun gameplay, the title as a whole is a disappointment.
There are ten different sports to choose from, and each sport tries to make use of the Wii Nunchuk and Remote's unique properties. You can take on each sport seperately, playing either against another human opponent or the computer, or you can also choose to play a type of Challenge mode, playing each sport in succession in one big competition.
The developers have clearly tried to mimic Wii Sports' simple and cartoony presentation, but perhaps they would have benefitted more from mimicking the gameplay instead.
Only two sports in Sports Island are really any fun to play - Curling and Archery. It's odd that these two sports should emerge as the fun ones, but there you are. It might take you a while to get to grips with the rules of Curling, but after a bit of practice you should get the hang of what's required. The weight and feel of the Curling controls system all feels very natural, and makes for some fun gameplay.
Archery is pretty straightforward, similar to what you might have seen in other sporting games, but it's still well executed and provides a nice challenge.
The rest of the sports are, unfortunately, either very boring to play, or just terribly translated. The games that require racing in one form or another, like snowboarding, go karts and motocross, are easily the worst ones in the pack. They look terrible, and handle even worse. Wonky controls also make badminton and volleyball a chore to play, while soccer and basketball are slow and boring - not even the use of the Nunchuk can rescue the dull gameplay. The final sport is figure skating, but the less said about that, the better.
The tutorial system is pretty shocking as well. Each sport is explained on an in-game tutorial text page, but it falls way short of being sufficient. You're going to have figure out most of how to play Sports Island on your own. The developers have copied so much from Wii Sports, they could really have copied their tutorial system as well.
In short, Sports Island only really succeeds with two of the ten sports it offers, and with a success rate like that it might not be such a great purchase. Best to stick with Wii Sports for now.
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