|
Dec 19
|
Like all good stories mine starts off happy, turns sad, gets happier and points towards a brighter future. Like all good stories turned into Hollywood movies my story is also overly-dramatic and probably not worth watching, but watch anyway – you always do.
I pre-ordered my Wii back months ago, from the moment the new controller was unveiled I knew I had to have one. When it got closer to launch day I booked the day off of work and confirmed with Gamestation that my order would be fulfilled, it would – all things set for happiness. Unfortunately something came up at work so I had to work on Friday but I still collected it at midnight and played Wii Sports for about an hour. Then, that weekend and the following week I was working / sleeping / Christmas shopping / socialising and didn’t really get the chance to play it (see this is the sad bit). This weekend just gone though, I got to play a little Red Steel, a little Zelda and a bit of Wii Sports and some Virtual Console games and I’m very pleased with the outcome. In brief…
Wii Sports
Very fun, quite tiring but pretty hilarious in two-player. My flatmate (a girl) an I played it for a while and the split screen mode is great fun, we got a few volleys going in Tennis and once you get the hang of it you can really control what’s going on.
Red Steel
It’s OK, because it’s not cartooney the low-res graphics on the Wii really show themselves up and I did for a few seconds think “what have I done?”, but I persevered and, well – it’s OK. I’ve not got to the sword-fighting bit yet but I do like the novelties, such as that to reload you just shake the Nun-Chuk downwards and to open a door you shake it upwards. Overall though it didn’t feel that responsive and the general sentiment of 6/10 – 7/10 is pretty justified.
Zelda Twilight Princess
My name is thirtyfootscrew, and I have never played a Zelda game before. Phew, that was hard to admit but now I’ve done it I feel like a weight has been lifted from my shoulders. It’s also a lie because now I have played Twilight Princess (though it really is the first Zelda I’ve ever played) and it seems quite good. I won’t judge the game on half-an-hour’s play as it’s not fair for such a big game but first impressions are good, I shall report back sometime in the future.
Virtual Console
I like it, though I have no real concept of what these Wii points are worth so I can’t comment on the value for money – I just went on a mini-spending spree. I loved playing Golden Axe and Columns, Mario Bros is rubbish (remember – this isn’t Super Mario Bros) and I’ve not really played Mario 64 enough to comment. The system all in all is easy to use though no better ordered than Xbox Live Arcade so will be a nightmare when it has lots of content, even though I don’t have kids I was pleased that it has ratings info for each game as it’ll help parents (something I think is good for the industry even though I’m generally anti-censorship).
General ‘ness’
I love it, I think it’s fantastic – tonight I was more excited than I have been in years about a console – I came home and it was glowing blue. I opened up the Wii Menu (basically the Wii’s OS) and found that I’d received a message from Nintendo telling me that the Forecast Channel was available. I downloaded the update and launched the channel, a brief setup tells it where you live (or nearest large town) and got stuck in, at a basic level it gives you current, 6-hour, next day and 5-day weather forecasts which seems like all you’d need. Of course, Nintendo didn’t stop there – you can zoom in and out, check other towns in the country by ‘grabbing’ the earth (zoom out enough and it is a globe), or towns in other countries.
I spent about half an hour checking weather in places like Cape Town, Baghdad, Sidney, Sri-Lanka, New York – it was great. I know this sounds trivial but the user-experience of just ‘grabbing’ the world and shifting it around really made me see what could be possible with the Wii – I believe that this is the first mass-market step in a new model of human-computer interaction and it really works. I have friends who would never consider playing on the Xbox 360 that say “that sounds fun, I’ll have to come round and try it”, my female (non-gaming) flat-mate bought herself a controller and spent an hour playing Wii Sports with one of her female non-gaming friends. Stuff like that just doesn’t happen, at least it didn’t used to – things are changing.
The one last thing I like is that whatever you’re doing it always plays soothing music to you and makes nice comforting noises when you click on things, it reminds me of the Heart of Gold from the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy – except less irritating, I think that might might make both Xbox360 and PS3 the Paranoid Androids.
MicroSony 0 – 1 Nintendo
An away win is always so much sweeter.