My Wii MotionPlus Review

For Father's Day, my father asked my brother and I to get him Tiger Woods PGA '10 for the Wii. This particular game happens to come packaged with the Wii MotionPlus. I didn't think anything of it at first really, but when he started using it, I knew I HAD to write a review on it.

I'll start with the good parts of it.

First off, let's talk about how it's packaged. It DOES come with a longer Wii remote sleeve, and it's own instruction manual, which is just hilarious to me. Anyway, it's surprisingly easy to use and set up.

You just slide it into the bottom of the Wii remote and use the lock slide on the back of the MotionPlus to keep it in place. There's a flap on the back of the new, longer remote jacket to thread the wrist strap through, so there's no impediment there. It looks nice on the bottom of the Wii remote, and the jacket fits just as snug as the smaller one. Very nice. There's also a flap on the bottom of the new jacket to plug the nunchuck into the bottom of the MotionPlus, which fits nice.

The MotionPlus is very responsive, and gave my father nice, clean golf strokes, and his game play pretty much mirrored his normal golf game scores, which I'll take as a testament to the MotionPlus' accuracy. My only regret about this review is that I didn't get a chance to handle it myself, although my father really liked the way it handled, and he is a pretty fussy gamer, so that's a good thing coming from him.

Now, here's some criticism.

I don't really have much criticism. They pretty much thought of everything to make sure it's easy for someone to pick up and use, and it really is very accurate. I only have one or two problems with it.

When I picked up the remote with the MotionPlus attached to it, it was surprisingly heavy, believe it or not. Now, for an 18 hole golf game on the Wii, this may not be bad, but let's take another game into account. Red Steel 2 for instance, which requires a LOT of remote swinging. I can easily imagine anyone's arm tiring rather quickly while swinging that extra weight around.

The other thing that I noticed is that, in some situations, it may be too accurate. While trying to create a golfer for himself, my dad seemed to have quite a bit of trouble centering on buttons long enough to click on them. Anyone with a shaky hand or who likes to blow through selection screens might find this a bit troublesome with the MotionPlus.

I only have two questions which were left unanswered.

Can you keep the MotionPlus connected even when playing games that don't support it? My father expressed quite a bit of annoyance at the idea of having to detach it and put on the other remote jacket every time he played a game that wasn't Tiger Woods.

AND

How much battery power does the MotionPlus use up? Obviously since he only played one round of golf, I can't speak for the longevity of the battery life in this regard, but I imagine it pretty much has to use battery power, so it has to decrease the battery life to some degree. How big of a degree is really the question.

So, I hope you all found this informative, and I hope it helped you make a decision as to whether you want to pick up a game that uses the Wii MotionPlus. It works really well and I think it'd be worth it personally, especially since it's being bundled with many of the popular games that use the peripheral. The game was $60 though, so we had to pay an extra $10 for the MotionPlus in the end. Still, I don't think that's a bad price to pay for the extra accuracy it gives you in-game.

Feel free to comment on your own thoughts on this review and the Wii MotionPlus!