“Wii Sports Resort”
Genre: Sports
Developer: Nintendo
Publisher: Nintendo
Platform: Wii
ESRB rating: “E” for everyone
Release date: Sunday, July 26
Price: $49.99
Grade: B+

Ever since Nintendo unveiled “Wii Sports” to show off the Wii’s motion-sensing capabilities, questions arose whether a follow-up title would be as good or better.

Because Wii isn’t a high-power device like Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3, high-definition video and intricate AI in the next game were unlikely. But people so readily warmed to “Sports” and its simulations of tennis, bowling, boxing, golf and baseball that sales of the 3-year-old title continue to outpace most other Wii games and made widespread interest in a sequel inevitable.

However, “Wii Sports Resort” isn’t the big leap forward one might have expected. It’s fun, it’s engaging, it’s a great title for house parties — the dozen general challenges and their associated mini-games are more enjoyable when played by at least two people — yet “Sports Resort” won’t encourage anyone to set aside “Sports” for good.

That’s because aside from slightly improved graphics, “Sports Resort” is rather like “Sports,” with a little “Wii Play” and “Wii Fit” — minus the balance board — mixed in.

What separates “Sports Resort” from those other games however is the addition of a Wii MotionPlus plug-in expansion device for the Wii’s controller wand, allowing complex movements so one can throw a frisbee, shoot a bow and arrow or a basketball, and line up a golf shot with more precision.

The inventory of 12 games — archery, aviation sports, basketball, bowling, canoeing, cycling, frisbee, golf, power-boat cruising, swordplay, table tennis, and wakeboarding — are twice as many as in “Sports” and include nuanced features that give players a good feel for MotionPlus’s capabilities. With the device installed, a slight twist of the wrist now factors into overall control, making the target games more challenging than they first appear.

Take the main frisbee challenge, for example. The object of simply tossing a disc into a balloon or over a target for a dog to catch looks like a breeze; we’ve all done that at picnics with a beer or hot dog in the other hand. Having the wrist angled just so helps the disc fly flat and true. Same thing with the virtual frisbee, though it’ll take a few practice shots holding the Wii wand to achieve the desired effect.

Otherwise, the game environment in “Sports Resort,” has an “I’ve been here before” feel. The bowling and golf challenges are similar the ones in the original “Sports” but now with improved ball control, and table tennis is just a smaller, faster version of tennis in “Sports.” Archery harks back to the target challenges in “Wii Play,” and the cycling challenge, in which players rapidly rotate their forearms while holding the wand and nunchuk attachment, reminded Game Guy of the repetitive-motion contests throughout “Wii Fit.”

To really enjoy “Sports Resort” then, one has to look past all that and understand that there is just one star of this title, the MotionPlus attachment. Much as the original “Sports” helped acquaint people with the idea of untethered gaming, so “Sports Resort” shows how MotionPlus could help Nintendo create new titles in which proper, precise movements take precedence.

And that raises all kinds of new questions about what comes next after “Sports Resort.”