Petanque? Petanque? What the hell is petanque? It was the first question I asked as a preview copy of Hudson's Deca Sports 2 made its way into my hands. The first Deca Sports wasn't a bad little assortment of sports themed minigames, but what do you do for the sequel when you've already covered most of the better-known sports out there? As it turns out, you find a few gems by way of sports you might never had heard of before or either never considered a sport to begin with.

The preview disc I received came with four games: Ice Hockey, Dodge Ball, Darts, and Petanque. The game includes a total of ten different games, which are finished off by Kendo, Downhill Skiing, Motorcycle Racing, Synchronized Swimming, Tennis, and Speed Skating. Overall, if the four preview games are any indicator, Deca Sports 2 might have a few more quality sports being represented when the game comes out later this fall.

Dodge Ball

First up is darts, which is a pretty good representation of the bar game of choice for many an inebriated folks. In darts you use the Wii remote only, turning it sideways so that you can hold the A-button and B-button in as if you were pinching a real dart between your fingers. It's a little difficult to hold the remote in such a way at first, but it doesn't feel bad after a couple of games. The most difficult thing about darts is the throwing motion, which is hard to do and still get it close to where you were pointing; I ultimately ended up pulling my hand back and then trying to quickly press forward instead of doing a real throw. In the game each player is trying to reach zero, deducting points from their total depending on how many points they made with their three rows per round.

Ice hockey was next on my radar, which plays like a more arcade version of the sport than an accurate simulation. Players use both the Wii remote and nunchuk with ice hockey, using the control stick to skate and direct where you want shots and passes to head, while you flick the remote to perform hits when you're trying to get the puck back or either passing it to someone if you're on the offensive. In order to shoot you hold a button so that it builds up a little strength, and then you flick the remote to take a shot. Ice hockey games were over way too quickly, but that might've been for demo purposes only. It was the game I had the hardest time initially understanding the controls of as I constantly tried to shoot but ended up passing. The first two games I played there was never a score at all. You start getting the hand of things then, however, and it's suddenly a little less difficult. One annoying thing I found, however, is that you can make shots from almost the mid-line with a powerful enough hit; they aren't frequent, but I lost once to them and have been furious since. Khaaaaaaan!

Dodge ball was always one of my favorite games to play in school and I was a pro. In dodge ball you use the Wii remote and nunchuk, using the control stick to run around the court and point in the direction you want to throw, while pressing the A-button will pass to one of your teammates, and a flick of the remote will throw the ball. You can also flick the remote to perform a dodge when being thrown at, plus you can attempt to manually catch a throw by pressing two buttons at the correct moment. I really had a lot of fun with dodge ball…mainly because I was good at it and schooled everyone who played me. One nice aspect of the game that I never experienced before was the idea of out teammates being able to join in as passable teammates when you're throwing the ball. Besides just throwing a ball at someone, you can easily hold a direction, and press the A-button to pass back and forth, getting your opponent off balance, and then nailing them with a shot when they least expect it.

Petanque

And finally there's petanque, which I saved for last, because I'd never heard of the game before, and after hitting up Wikipedia it seemed like something only old men played over in France. It was wrong for me to prematurely judge it, however, as it ended up being the best of the four games. Petanque is actually a lot like curling (I secretly love it) though with giant metal balls you throw and no sweeping to be seen. After the starting player throws a jack, each player then takes turns throwing their balls towards it, trying to get as close as possible so that they can receive a point. The opening player only gets one shot to begin with since they're automatically the closest, but then the second player keeps throwing until they surpass the starting player and are now the closest. The game continues in this fashion until no balls are left and scores are tallied up for that set; you get a point for every ball closer to the jack than the other player's best shot. Besides angling your shot with the directional pad, you can squat down to perform a more powerful roll instead of a lob (each of which are registered by the strength of your underhand throwing motion). While the game has the easiest controls to master, the game was surprisingly deep, and made for some very tough fights that came down to intelligence more than anything.

Deca Sports 2 is shaping up to be a pretty nice sports package when it's released later this year. I'm a little hesitant about some of the games like synchronized swimming, but if they can make me interested in petanque, perhaps they can get me excited for watching two people swim in unison…maybe.