Wii Sports Resort
MotionPlus gets an A+.
It's fast. That's what really strikes you, almost more than the increased accuracy: with the Wii MotionPlus dongle attached to the base of the Wii remote, there is absolutely zero perceptible lag translating your movements to the screen. No woolliness, no wobble either. It is fluid, smooth, instantaneous, natural.
Wii MotionPlus is what we were promised, what we expected, what we wanted all along. It's what the Wii remote was always supposed to be - and just in time, as all that enthusiastic novelty was starting to wear off, and frustration setting in at its shortcomings. Whatever magic Nintendo has packed into this mysterious little plastic cube - we have absolutely no idea, and can't get an answer - it works.
It isn't perfect, not quite. There are some slight hitches in the animation still, a few barely noticeable flickers of uncertainty. It's hard to be sure from a half-hour play test, but Nintendo's claim of 1:1 fidelity may be mildly - only mildly - exaggerated. Still, we've gone from an experience that was maybe 60 per cent convincing and satisfactory to an easy 90 per cent plus. It's a huge leap forward.
Nintendo can be forgiven for not making a similar leap in the software. Wii Sports Resort - which will have a MotionPlus dongle packed in with it when it launches next spring - is, in two of the three games we tried, a case of "look: this is what we meant the first time".
The motions involved in Disc Dog - in which you throw a frisbee at a target for your gambolling puppy (puppii, probably) to catch - are strongly reminiscent of Wii Sports' Bowling. But this time there's no lining up to be done, not even a button to release to let go of the frisbee. The direction, attitude and timing of your throw are dictated by your positioning, movement, aim and wrist action, and nothing else. It's far less cumbersome and fiddly, a very liberating feeling.
The game is extremely simple - you get seven or eight throws, the target shifts position each time, your puppy will catch the frisbee within a fairly wide area, but precise throws win cuter animations and more points that are totted up at the end. There's a perfectly relaxing soundscape of breaking waves and little flute riffs.