Amidst the chaos of Nintendo's booth, I've had the opportunity to play just about every Wii game Nintendo has to offer. While Mario and Samus' latest outings are obviously the stars of the show, there's a consistently massive crowd huddled around the Wii Sports titles (games with fairly crude graphics and simplistic gameplay). Why is that? Stick around -- I'll be updating throughout the day to tell you why.



Wii Golf

The basic fundamentals of golf are here: it's all about trying to line up a meter and get your ball down the fairway (or in the hole) in as few strokes as possible. The two modes of play available -- short and simple: One-on Challenge, and 1-3 Hole Putt -- are easy to grasp and extremely minimal. This is a good thing, as Wii Sports titles are shamelessly aimed at the non-gamer crowd.

Step one, as with any demo at Nintendo's booth, was to put the wrist-strap on. After that, this demo had me choose whether I was right or left handed. A simple point and click with the controller, and I was off to the course.

The meter in this game is a little tricky. I had 3 practice swings before attempting my drive, each of which consisted of just holding the pointer like a golf club (no Wii Sports games use the nunchaku attachment, at this point). It took a couple of tries before I could even budge the blue energy bar inside the meter, but once I had it, things felt pretty smooth.

I was shocked at just how physical you have to be with this game -- I was swinging pretty hard at one point; hard enough to smack the casing on the Wii stand in front of me. "Might wanna' scoot back a little", the Nintendo rep said. Oops. Then again, I guess that's why they're called Wii sports. No harm done to the controller, though -- in true Nintendo fashion, the thing is made to take a beating.

Once I had a feeling for it, I pressed the "A" button to ready my character -- this made all on-screen prompts, maps, etc vanish. Swing one: hole-in-one! Not kidding. A little cheer from the crowd around me (the real people; not the game) and I was whisked to the next challenge: 1-3 Hole Putt. This basically put me on a green with a single stroke to sink the ball. Fair enough.

Finally, I played another putt round. Situated about 40 feet from the hole on an unlevel green, I was able to adjust the direction of my putt by pressing the d-pad near the top of the controller. This one took me 3 strokes -- getting both the aim and power down were a bit tricky. Then, just like that, the demo was over. And guess what? All in all, the game is seriously fun.

It's worth noting that Wii Sports: Golf doesn't use rotational functionality, as of yet. If at some point the feature were added in, it would likely extend the shot variety to slice and hook, rather than just straight-up, forward swing.