Balls of Fury (Wii) - Review by peterf

Introduction

Balls of Fury is the story of Randy Daytona, a washed up ping-pong prodigy. Seeking revenge against the man who killed his father he joins up with an FBI agent and an old blind man who re-teaches him how to play the game. Through this training he hopes to finally fight, and defeat, Feng, the head of an underground, illegal, ping-pong tournament. More than just another ping-pong tournament the stakes in Fengs' tournament are literally life or death, costing you your life if you lose. It is hard to remain impartial when you are handed a game like Balls of Fury. The mere sight of the box is enough to make anyone shudder, but I did my best to go into the game and find the good in it. I soon realized that doing that would be one of the most challenging things I have ever done.

From the moment you turn on Balls of Fury you can't help but wonder how this made it past quality control. Someone in a coma could see that this did not merit production. The controls are simple enough- any of you that have played Wii Sports will know what to do. You choose your hero from the list of characters and throw down in one of six venues that are available. Those of you hearty enough to endure the career mode will be rewarded with four additional characters for which to do battle with.

Gameplay

Luckily, or unluckily depending on how you look at it, Balls of Fury the game has more than just this half baked story to play through. There is the Story Mode, where you will play as Randy Daytona through his youth and all the way to his fight to take down Feng, but that is only one of four modes. There is also Exhibition, Arcade and Tournament modes to be chosen from.

Exhibition is essentially a single match where you pick any available character and play them against one opponent where you set the rules to your liking, such as amount of points to a win and so on. Arcade mode is almost like playing a fighting game; you choose your character and play through a succession of nine fights to win. As you progress up through the rounds the enemies get slowly, but noticeably, harder. Lastly there is Tournament mode where either four or eight computer controlled or human players can compete to be top ping-pong player. This likely doesn't sound all that different from most other sports games, and it isn't. What is supposed to set it apart is the "wacky" ping-pong based setting and while it succeeds to a degree the game play itself isn't really all that interesting.

The only redeeming factor of this game is the slight chuckle you will get when you see just how painful it is. The career mode is a lazy intermingling of still shots from the movie with the few matches you play. The dangling paddle you use to hit the ball is amusing if you consider that every time you 'hit' the ball it will miss completely in one of the worst examples of collision detection I've ever seen. This is even more prominent in the action replays where you can watch your PEZ head of a character swipe frantically at the ball, but never come close to hitting it.

Controls

By holding the Wii remote with the d-pad and A button face upwards and swinging it side to side you basically emulate swinging a paddle. However there are a few variations on this that only help to further give you the feel of playing the game. If you swing the remote upwards you will add lift to the shot, floating it, and if you swing it downwards then you will bash the shot, sending it flying at your opponent faster. You can also hold down the B button to add spin to the ball which causes it to fly off erratically when it hits the table. By mixing the left to rights with the floater and slam moves you can control where the ball goes to try and outpace your opponent.

I ended up hitting my hand on a nearby object which just leaves you with a bruised hand.

Graphics

The graphics are terrible it jolts and it is the normal cheap horrible graphics you would expect from a game that is based on a movie. So these graphics are just absolutely terrible just like the whole entire game.

Sound

The music is not really anything special really and there is always the annoying voices from the characters that makes this game very annoying and cheesy.

Final comments

This game is absolutely annoying and I would strongly advise you to rent or borrow it.

Pro: Ok modes and can get used to the hard controls.
Con: Very boring, bad graphics terrible story.
Final score: 3.6

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