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Product summary
This collection of short-lived minigames marks an unfortunate victory for quantity over quality.
Specifications: ESRB: Everyone; Genre: Sports; Elements: Sports - skiing, Sports - snowboarding, Sports - curling, Sports - basketball simulation, Sports - football simulation, Sports - biking, Racing / driving - kart, Sports - volleyball, Sports - tennis; See full specs
Price range: $28.99 - $29.99
Gamespot editors' review
- Reviewed on: 05/19/2008
- Released on: 05/13/2008
Like Wii Sports, Deca Sports is a collection of sports games with simple controls and equally straightforward presentation. Unlike Wii Sports, it's not free, some of the games control poorly, and only a few of them are really any fun when played with a group, much less alone. There's soccer, basketball, badminton, beach volleyball, motocross, archery, curling, snowboarding, figure skating, and kart racing. By trying to please everyone with variety, Hudson has come up with an eclectic mix of activities that don't fit well together and aren't much fun.
Looking at this screenshot of badminton is as much fun as playing badminton in the game.
Deca Sports is extremely shallow. If you can move the remote up and down, you'll be able to perform most actions in the game. In sports like badminton and beach volleyball you don't move your player, you just flick the remote once in a while to swing your racket or hit the ball. You'll need the Nunchuk to move your players when playing soccer and you'll have to press the A button to change players, but passing, shooting, and even slide-tackling are all done by waving the remote. This means you'll occasionally pass when you mean to shoot and vice versa. Sometimes, controller inputs simply aren't recognized quickly, or at all. This makes snowboarding and motocross particularly frustrating because crashing into a barrier often brings you to a screeching halt. The controls for curling are imprecise--particularly with regards to determining power. To be fair, a few sports control fairly well. To drive a kart you hold the remote sideways, hit one button for gas, and tilt left or right to steer. Basketball also controls fine; it's the fact that your players constantly pepper the bottom of the backboard and rim with their layups that makes it awful.
Another problem with Deca is that each sport is broken down into its simplest form. Kart racing has just three tracks with six total participants; badminton is one-on-one; and archery is just you shooting at the same target repeatedly with only slight variations in wind and distance to mix things up. Figure skating has only three programs, which never change; all you do is follow a path and flip the remote upward when you come across a red, blue, green, or gray circle. Simple? Yes. Fun? Maybe for a couple of minutes.
You'll have to overcome one last obstacle before you find any enjoyment with any of the sports: the game's terrible AI, which is poor on all three available difficulties. CPU-controlled soccer players pass the ball back toward the midfield on breakaways; figure-skating judges award higher scores to the skater who falls the most; supercross riders and snowboarders will make no effort to avoid you; and the only time points seem to end in badminton and volleyball is when the AI just gives up and doesn't try to return a shot.
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