ESPN Sports Connection

Genre: Compilation / Sports (Various)

Players: 1-5 Competitive / Team Competitive (Local Split-Screen)

Game Company Bad Behavior Profile Page: UbiSoft

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Review:

ESPN Sports Connection is a Compilation of small, family-friendly Sports games released on Wii U in 2012. This game is clearly looking to replicate the success of Nintendo’s own Wii Sports, featuring a similar look and similarly simplified versions of various Sports, with many relying on motion controls to play.

Here is what I thought of each of the games in this Compilation:

Game	Genre	# of Players	Score	tl;dr
Tennis	Sports (Tennis)	1-4 Team Competitive (Local)	C-	This plays very much like Wii Sports Tennis, except you can hold a button to move your character closer to the net. However, the motion controls here don’t feel very accurate, and the touchscreen controls are terrible.
Golf	Sports (Golf)	1-5 Competitive (Local Alternating)	C-	Once again, very similar to Wii Sports Golf, and once again, the motion controls do not feel very accurate. This one doesn’t include any sort of touchscreen option, either.
Baseball	Sports (Baseball)	1-2 Competitive (Local)	B	I was actually pleasantly surprised by the simple version of Baseball in this game. Batting uses the Wii remote much like Wii Sports (and this time, it actually seemed pretty spot-on), and pitching and outfielding uses the Wii U gamepad, having players draw their pitch and use the gyroscopic motion control to catch. A really clever way to play a simple game of Baseball.
Soccer	Sports (Soccer)	1-4 Team Competitive (Local)	D	This game doesn’t use motion controls or touchscreen controls, instead just using simple gamepad controls. However, I found the characters to be unresponsive, resulting in an extremely frustrating version of the sport.
Karting	Kart Racing	1-5 Competitive (Local Split-Screen)	C	This minigame has the foundation of a solid, if a bit bland, Mario Kart clone. Unfortunately, the dreadful lack of course variety and the horrendous framerate issues and pop-in take what would have been a fun racing game and make it at times painful to play.
Football	Sports (Football)	1-2 Competitive (Local)	C-	I actually really like the way this game tries to simplify Football, having players holding the Wii remote over their shoulder to throw it while on offense, and drawing directions for their team on the Wii U gamepad for defense. Unfortunately, the controls for both of these actions only seem to work half the time, making for some nasty frustration. On top of this, the game leans far too heavily on a “rock, paper, scissors” element that makes this game feel like far too much is left to luck.

To sum it all up, multiple games in this collection have a lot of potential, but have something broken or poorly implemented that makes it just not work quite right. Out of the entire collection, Baseball was the only one that I would say actually consistently worked in a way that I might actually consider coming back to play it. It’s a shame too, because there are some really clever ideas in this game’s version of Football, and with some work Karting could have been a great little Mario Kart-style game.

There is another issue here that needs to be addressed, and that is the terrible performance issues this game has. After some pretty bad load times to get into each of the games, you still have to contend with ugly frame rates, pop-in, chenery flickering… and this is all in a game with a simple, cartoony visual style that should not be having these sorts of severe issues. In addition, because I don’t know where else to mention it, this game’s menus repeatedly make annoying noises while you’re making selections, something that quickly became extremely aggravating.

Ultimately, I think ESPN Sports Connection could have been a great alternative to Wii Sports if the game’s issues were ironed out – there are some clever ideas in some of the included Sports here that make for a good amount of potential, and Baseball at least plays quite well. But the issues plaguing all the other Sports in this Compilation, along with the nasty performance issues, result in the sad, inevitable recommendation to anyone looking to get this game – just stick with Wii Sports.

tl;dr –ESPN Sports Connection is a Wii Sports-style Compilation of simplified cartoony Sports games, including versions of Tennis, Golf, Baseball, Soccer, Kart Racing, and Football. Unfortunately, out of all these games the only one that really works is Baseball, with all of the others having major problems. Plus, one problem bringing down this entire collection is atrocious performance issues, with nasty load times, ugly pop-in, terrible framerate issues, and distracting scenery flickering. Just stick with Wii Sports, you’ll be better off.

Grade: C-

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