PixlBit

Sports Champion also has ping pong. Find out what a casual ping pong player thinks of the game.

So, again, much like Wii Sports Resort, Sports Champions has a ping pong mode. To be brief, the mode feels quite a bit better than archery felt in my hands, but still has a few hang-ups in control.

In this case, ping pong only uses one Move controller. Before playing, once more, calibration was necessary. From what I perceived, playing one 11 point game on the easiest setting, then promptly losing a 3 point one on the hardest difficulty, control over the ball's path and direction could potentially be very accurate.

Spin felt pretty accurate while distance and power felt scaled back, perhaps for ease of use, so players don't knock the ball clear off the table every time. Power shots were present, and actually made the ball light up yellow. They were activated by strong, solid movements, but there were times I did want to smash the ball and did not succeed. Likewise, there were times I was just trying to add some topspin, and wound up with a perceived smash, so little errors do appear in movement registry.

As a demo, however, the game doesn't work very well for one reason: It's very difficult to determine the depth of your swing. At some points, I'd simply try to adjust from backhand to forehand to better hit the ball, but even as I did this before the ball crossed over the edge of the table, I found the simple switch in positioning would hit the ball, knock it off the table, and lose the point for me. Since there didn't seem to be a method to back a little away from the table, reactions to backhand shots and forehand shots have to be quick, or else you'll tap the ball away repositioning. This happened several times. In fact, most of the time I lost the point, it was the result of this error.

As it turned out, but I didn't realize at first, the default, easiest mode relegated the CPU opponent to only send me forehand shots. Believe it or not, I favor my backhand in ping pong, so it is easy to perceive how I had a lot of trouble initially, since the player's position at the table can't be controlled. While this does help to excuse my impressions of the performance of the game in the easier mode, in the hard mode it might wind up being a problem that needs some more work. The more I think about it, considering how well the opponent could control the ball's spin on the higher difficulty, the more I realize that on-the-fly adjustments to stance and swing can't be performed here.

In the end, though, I must conclude that I don't believe five minutes in the demo was enough time to render a judgment. Clearly I had problems, but it's not clear how much of those problems were the game and how many were me. I think as the game's release approaches, we'll get some more hands-on time with it, and we might be able to figure out whether the swing-timing is an actual issue that hinders the game or not, but everything else about the game felt great, probably a little better than Wii Sports Resort's ping pong mode, in all honesty.