Wii will rock you
2007-05-03
So, I have it, and it's great. Here come some first impressions.
For me, personally, and my stupid-shaped living room (and the fact that on the shelf beneath my TV lives a PC, a PS2, a Freeview box, a SCART switch box, a small ethernet switch and now a Wii [which takes the place of the newly-retired Gamecube]) it's an inconvenient shape. I realise that it was an achievement to fit that many input ports and things on such a small device, but would it have killed them to make space for some USB on the front?
So anyway, that's my small misgiving out of the way. Oh, and that the Opera browser on the Internet Channel can't change the text size without either zooming toward the page itself (so that I need to scroll sideways) or switching to a 'single column view' that mashes layout. But it's better than not being able to browse the web on the TV, so that's good.
Two small misgivings out of the way. Although this is starting to sound negative, I've finished with the bad stuff.
It's been said so often before, but the controls are genius. I'm very much in Nintendo's camp on this one: to increment generation by simply being the same as the previous consoles only more so is a bit dull. To increment generation by changing the way the device is used - a real paradigm shift - is far more exciting. For some idea of why, let me walk you through which games I got.
Wii Sports came with the machine. Tennis seemed annoyingly random; I stuck at it for three or four games, getting soundly thrashed, before I decided on a policy of trying each sport only once, for now. Baseball seemed even more random, and even if you hit the ball you're almost guaranteed to be caught out or run out. Pitching seems to be exactly the same no matter what motion you use to trigger the animation.
OK, so I'm sounding negative again, but remember, I essentially didn't by choice pay anything for Wii Sports, and nor will you if you get it.
Golf was good fun, until I got on the green. Through some quirk of the swing mechanic I found it very hard to hit the ball lightly. I eventually worked out that the point of contact is some way up the follow-through. With that sussed, I could quite comfortably get par...
The boxing is good fun, and an excellent use of both types of controller. I'm not going to explain it, except to say that it's the first game I've seen that instructs you to try and lean out of the way of blows. Those of you who used to play Operation Wolf from behind the sofa may be vindicated yet!
On second thoughts, people who played Operation Wolf from behind the sofa were fools. Everyone knows the sofa was no help until Time Crisis.
And then the bowling is quite nice, although it's surprisingly difficult to let go of the ball at the right time when it's so abstract. Although I know people who let go of the concrete (so to speak) balls at the wrong time too. It would come with time, but I doubt I'll give it much more of that.
Anyway, on with the parade. I have Wii Play. You might wonder why, since it's clearly a brief waste of time with little that should interest me in the medium term, let alone the long. And you're right, but I wanted a second remote, and the option was to get one on its own, or spend an extra fiver on the one that comes with Play. And as it happened, since it counted as a game the store included it in their console bundle and I got it for the same price as a bare remote. Most of it is fun enough for the first run through, but although I've yet to play anything with a second player, some of the Play games look like they'd have much more replayability with two.
So, Rampage: Total Destruction. It's a more traditional console game, as the controls go, although it does have a couple of moves that are movement-triggered (Going from the pointer-driven menus in Sports, Play and the console's native menus to the old 'plink, plink, plink' menu selection was like that scene from Star Trek: The Voyage Home: "A D-pad. How quaint..."). I got it because it was pretty cheap on play.com, and because I have fond memories of the arcade game. And it's a lot like the arcade game, and has a surprising amount of content. Thumbs up from me, but don't pay too much for it.
Excite Truck is great fun. Seriously, it's easy to pick up, the controls feel right, and it's very fast. I'm likely to be picking it up again for ages (like I do with Burnout 3). Two player should be a laugh.
And finally, the Zelda offering. Although I'm sure it's brilliant, so far I'm stuck, frustrated, and frankly a little bored with it. I'm hoping that I'm missing something really obvious, but I fear that I need to master the incredibly annoying fishing subgame before I can continue. Giving me the horse straight away was nice, now give me a weapon, please?
I may have to look it up, or let Matt tell me. I used to be good at this sort of thing - Link to the Past, Ocarina of Time, Majora's Mask and the Windwaker were no problem at all - but I suck at this one.
On the whole, the console and its controls seem excellent, and I'm happy with my choice of games. Now to tidy my house, then get someone round to thrash at boxing.
For me, personally, and my stupid-shaped living room (and the fact that on the shelf beneath my TV lives a PC, a PS2, a Freeview box, a SCART switch box, a small ethernet switch and now a Wii [which takes the place of the newly-retired Gamecube]) it's an inconvenient shape. I realise that it was an achievement to fit that many input ports and things on such a small device, but would it have killed them to make space for some USB on the front?
So anyway, that's my small misgiving out of the way. Oh, and that the Opera browser on the Internet Channel can't change the text size without either zooming toward the page itself (so that I need to scroll sideways) or switching to a 'single column view' that mashes layout. But it's better than not being able to browse the web on the TV, so that's good.
Two small misgivings out of the way. Although this is starting to sound negative, I've finished with the bad stuff.
It's been said so often before, but the controls are genius. I'm very much in Nintendo's camp on this one: to increment generation by simply being the same as the previous consoles only more so is a bit dull. To increment generation by changing the way the device is used - a real paradigm shift - is far more exciting. For some idea of why, let me walk you through which games I got.
Wii Sports came with the machine. Tennis seemed annoyingly random; I stuck at it for three or four games, getting soundly thrashed, before I decided on a policy of trying each sport only once, for now. Baseball seemed even more random, and even if you hit the ball you're almost guaranteed to be caught out or run out. Pitching seems to be exactly the same no matter what motion you use to trigger the animation.
OK, so I'm sounding negative again, but remember, I essentially didn't by choice pay anything for Wii Sports, and nor will you if you get it.
Golf was good fun, until I got on the green. Through some quirk of the swing mechanic I found it very hard to hit the ball lightly. I eventually worked out that the point of contact is some way up the follow-through. With that sussed, I could quite comfortably get par...
The boxing is good fun, and an excellent use of both types of controller. I'm not going to explain it, except to say that it's the first game I've seen that instructs you to try and lean out of the way of blows. Those of you who used to play Operation Wolf from behind the sofa may be vindicated yet!
On second thoughts, people who played Operation Wolf from behind the sofa were fools. Everyone knows the sofa was no help until Time Crisis.
And then the bowling is quite nice, although it's surprisingly difficult to let go of the ball at the right time when it's so abstract. Although I know people who let go of the concrete (so to speak) balls at the wrong time too. It would come with time, but I doubt I'll give it much more of that.
Anyway, on with the parade. I have Wii Play. You might wonder why, since it's clearly a brief waste of time with little that should interest me in the medium term, let alone the long. And you're right, but I wanted a second remote, and the option was to get one on its own, or spend an extra fiver on the one that comes with Play. And as it happened, since it counted as a game the store included it in their console bundle and I got it for the same price as a bare remote. Most of it is fun enough for the first run through, but although I've yet to play anything with a second player, some of the Play games look like they'd have much more replayability with two.
So, Rampage: Total Destruction. It's a more traditional console game, as the controls go, although it does have a couple of moves that are movement-triggered (Going from the pointer-driven menus in Sports, Play and the console's native menus to the old 'plink, plink, plink' menu selection was like that scene from Star Trek: The Voyage Home: "A D-pad. How quaint..."). I got it because it was pretty cheap on play.com, and because I have fond memories of the arcade game. And it's a lot like the arcade game, and has a surprising amount of content. Thumbs up from me, but don't pay too much for it.
Excite Truck is great fun. Seriously, it's easy to pick up, the controls feel right, and it's very fast. I'm likely to be picking it up again for ages (like I do with Burnout 3). Two player should be a laugh.
And finally, the Zelda offering. Although I'm sure it's brilliant, so far I'm stuck, frustrated, and frankly a little bored with it. I'm hoping that I'm missing something really obvious, but I fear that I need to master the incredibly annoying fishing subgame before I can continue. Giving me the horse straight away was nice, now give me a weapon, please?
I may have to look it up, or let Matt tell me. I used to be good at this sort of thing - Link to the Past, Ocarina of Time, Majora's Mask and the Windwaker were no problem at all - but I suck at this one.
On the whole, the console and its controls seem excellent, and I'm happy with my choice of games. Now to tidy my house, then get someone round to thrash at boxing.
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