Deca Sports
Score: 68% ESRB: Everyone Publisher: Hudson Soft Developer: Hudson Soft Media: DVD/1 Players: 1 - 4 Genre: Sports
Graphics & Sound: Deca Sports is a cute and colorful sports game. The first thing you'd probably compare it to is Wii Sports, but it doesn't seem to have the charm of that game. The level designs do have little details like large video screen scoreboards, but for the most part, there's not a lot of really intricate detail or charming little background details. Oh, since the game is sponsored by Adidas, you'll see some logos and branded clothing every now and then. It's not slapped on absolutely everything though, so there's no need to worry about logo oversaturation. The music is pretty happy, with a fast beat and techno flavors. The sound effects are decent, but the characters don't have any voice effects. This is probably a good thing considering how annoying it could be if it tried to match the cute style of the game. But then, that fact does nothing to take away from the general yawn-factor here.
Gameplay: The sports in Deca Sports are a bit out of the ordinary for a sports game. Curling, Archery, and even Kart Racing make it here (though I have my doubts about the sport status of the last one.) You can compete in several modes of play, though you will still be playing the same 10 games for the most part. You can compete in Tournament play, where only the teams that win get to advance and go on. Tournament style play means you choose only one sport to compete in, so if you want to bank on your overall skills in other sports, you can choose Deca League. In this mode, you'll compete in all 10 sports, gaining points for each sport, until one team wins in the end. You can also choose to bypass structured competition and just play a match in your favorite sport, or try the mini-game style challenges in Deca Challenge mode. There's no customization really available in Deca sports. Both the look of your team and the stats are set for each team. The stats didn't seem to matter too much in actual gameplay. It was hard to tell the difference between the "large" or "L" physique and the "medium" or "small." After a while, I stopped paying attention to who I chose to play or bench on my teams. All sports give you the option to play with a second player, and some, like Volleyball for example, allow 4 players to play at once. Unfortunately, it was hard to get friends to sit through a full match of any sport. The graphics are a bit underwhelming, and the controls are a bit too frustrating. There's just something missing from Deca Sports - something that compels you to continue playing. It does tend to feel repetitive and dull, even with the variety of sports available.
Difficulty: Deca Sports is a breeze at lower difficulty levels. The computer sits back and rarely does anything special. Higher difficulty settings are frustrating and tend to reveal the control issues. This review will touch on this subject again, but it seems like the best way to explain the controls in a motion-controlled game is to show a quick animation. Deca Sports, however, doesn't really have much of a tutorial mode, and you'll have to look in the book, or under the controls menu for each game to figure out what you have to do. But to touch on the higher difficulty levels again, Deca Sports often feels unfair. Especially with games such as Badminton, it feels like the computer can just dish out special attack after special attack. Because the timing is a bit off, it's hard to react in time to counter a quick "smash" shot from the opponent. Maybe because it doesn't rely on real-time reactions as much, Curling actually turned out to be one of the more enjoyable events. It's easier to use the complicated controls when you only have to use them in the set up of your shots.
Game Mechanics: Deca Sports has a few general problems, and a few sports in particular stand out in this list. Controls generally feel slippery and delayed. In particular, this is bad in the Kart Racing game. It feels like the track is turning around you rather than your cart turning on the track. And cornering feels so tricky with the tilting of the Wii-mote, that I just wanted to forget about this game and never have to come back to it. Supercross is very similar to Kart Racing for these problems. Badminton probably shows off the control delay more than the other games. It feels like there's a disconnect between your swing and the character's action. Of course, you can learn to anticpate and adjust your timing, but that's a lot less enjoyable than just being able to pick up the game and play. Badminton also has some of the most complicated controls in the game, and it doesn't help that control instructions are tucked away under a menu. Figure Skating was another game with a complicated control scheme. Of course, it can be mastered with practice, but try getting your non-gaming parents to pick up "moving the character with the analog stick and flicking up with the Wii-mote when you are in the center of the large circles." Wii Sports, this is not. Not everything was as bad as that, of course. I found Archery to be one of my favorite games, and it made good use of motion controls to get you into the experience. Curling, as mentioned before, gets around the control problems by giving you time to set up your shot. The only thing you have to worry about after throwing a stone (shooting) is sweeping, which only requires you to remember how to shake the Wii-mote. Basketball was also pretty intuitive, and could get pretty exciting when the ball gets shifted back and forth between teams. Again, something is missing here to make this a great game. The controls needed to be more responsive in the more active sports. The game is also missing charm, despite the cute and cartoony character design. It's worth a rental, but it probably won't see much play beyond a weekend.
-Fights with Fire, GameVortex Communications AKA Christin Deville
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