As you may have garnered from my previous reviews of Go Play series, I haven't really enjoyed my adventures in Majesco's family-friendly universe that much so far.  While I don't consider myself the franchise's key demographic, good intentions and safe, whimsical action weren't enough to make up for lazy production values and lack of originality.  But after playing the latest chapter, Go Play City Sports, it seems like the developers are finally starting to get a grip on what makes a good minigame compilation and may have changed the direction of the series.  While it obviously isn't going to be aggregating any fantastic scores, I certainly enjoyed my time with it more than previous titles such as Lumberjacks.

The premise is quite simple: compete with fellow children on your block in order to determine who's the best athlete, both for bragging rights and the sake of a loose plot to unify this collection of mini games - were you expecting something else? This mini game smorgasbord is really a lot more lacking than others on the Wii, however, with only six games under its belt. Since the game is titled City Sports, you can play mostly games that are considered the type that inner city children play such as street hockey, stickball, kickball, jump rope, shootout soccer, and handball. I'd say it's a rather motley assortment of activities to partake in, but few typically seen such activities in minigame compilations - I'll give it that.

Much like the previous Go Play games, City Sports allows players to create their own character, a boy or a girl, though the amount of customization is quite limited. Since this game employs a very cartoonish, whimsical style with an abundance of cel-shading and bright colors, I think we can let this one slide as as this line of games caters to families and gamers who probably couldn't care less about graphical fidelity or the latest technology. After creating their unique character players will have the chance to compete in any of the six immediately accessible games to get things started.

If you were thinking you'd be relying heavily on motion control, you'd be absolutely correct. Still, there are instances within where the motion control actually (and shockingly) is executed correctly. Stickball plays much like a standard baseball game or one that you would find in Wii Sports, and the swing of the bat works beautifully. As stickball is played within the heart of a city, small touches such as the ball's bouncing off of surrounding buildings and manholes serving as home base really make this mini game stand out from the droves of others we will inevitably see in the future. It's a very fun little game of baseball with a few rule tweaks that still allow it to be genuinely fun.

Other sports, such as jumping rope and street hockey, were nowhere near as intuitive, with jump rope requiring arbitrary timed button presses of different buttons on the Wii remote or  Nunchuk, and handball with its already-boring set of rules really can't be improved upon too much. Kickball and stickball were arguably too similar for my tastes, and it seems like pure laziness to incorporate some of the exact same types of challenges with minor changes rather than introducing different, more interactive activities.

Go Play City Sports has a great sense of humor, but the whole city aesthetic is a bit overplayed, what with the cans of spray paint decorating on-screen scores and the "funky" attitude coming off a bit too "hip" for what is essentially a throwaway game that is probably destined to be tossed into the closet after a few hours of play. It's basically unchanged from its predecessors, though there are a few shining spots within. I loved playing stickball, but the budget production values, fiddly motion controls, and overall silliness is just not worth the purchase for me. However, if you're a gamer in a family where quality is subjective and the only objective is fun, this might be suitable. But for anyone out there like me who just wants a decent Wii experience to last beyond a few hours, you can go ahead and ignore this installment too.