Deca Sports is a short-lived collection of mini-games that will keep the kids entertained for an hour or so on a rainy afternoon, but don't expect it to be a party favor for adults on a boring Thursday evening. Shallow game play, a bad AI, and average graphics mean this game is well below average.
| The Good Parts | Rating  |
Deca Sports is a Wii video game that's definitely fun and entertaining for casual gamers and kids, and has a nice variety of sports and modes included in the single player experience. Hudson incuded ten different sports for you to try, including soccer, baseball, badminton, curling, figure skating, and five others. They four different modes included have a nice variety in game play and include Deca League, Tournament Mode, Deca Challenge, and Open Match.
| The Bad Parts | Rating  |
Hudson appears to have developed Deca Sports using quantity-before-quality as their guiding principle. The quantity of sports and modes included is impressive, but the execution of the production values is below average. Basketball was the only sport that had any entertainment value during play - all the other sports have control and depth of game play issues that were very frustrating to deal with.
The computer controlled athletes made bad decisions at times and the control setup caused problems when playing soccer, racing super cross, or riding a snowboard. All the actions you need to execute while playing soccer; shooting, passing, and tackling are executed using the same waving motion of the Wii remote. This confuses the control recognition of the controller and results in you occasionally passing when you want to shoot and tackling when you want to pass. Also, taking part in the super cross or snowboarding sports is frustrating because coming into contact with an object or barrier causes you to crash. The other sports didn't suffer from these problems, but they still weren't much fun to play.
| The Graphical Look | Rating |
Deca Sports has a below average graphical presentation with an intriguing look that suffers from poor details and textures in the arenas, characters, and many of the backgrounds. The included sports arenas have a blurry look and very basic appearance that's just good enough to tell things apart while playing. The characters look blocky at times and have very little detail, but the kids probably won't notice. The backgrounds on the screen while playing the included sports are jagged looking at times on the edges of the screen and the bright colors diminish near the edges on many screens.
The animation of the athletes was average at best, at times basketball players would shoot or pass at weird body angles, figure skaters would jump from impossible positions, and volleyball players can spike without jumping. The animations for the other sports was passable, but nothing to brag about.
| The Sounds of the Game | Rating |
Deca Sports has a sound track that starts out entertaining, with nice pop and soft-rock tunes that kept me energized while playing the various sports, but it loops repeatedly, so it become tiresome almost immediately. The sound effects weren't included; I couldn't hear any grunts or sound effects of any kind, while playing this game.