Hands on with the Wii and PS3!
Yesterday i had the privilege of trying out both new next gen consoles. I played about 10 minutes of Ps3 and about 20 minutes of the Wii. To be fair when i was playing the Ps3 it was at a display unit at target so i didnt get a chance to feel the controller's full weight or to even use any motion sensor since they had it turned off. First impression about the new controller is the buttons feel and look the exact same except the L2 and R2 buttons are bigger and are now more like an actual trigger which i really liked. The game i was playing was NBA 07 which had good graphics and pretty much identical looking to the 360 version. I hate most sports game so i cant really say much more about it than that.
Next i went over to a local video game shop and they opened up a Wii to test out. They didn't have a nun chuck attachment yet so i didn't get to feel that. The only game that was available to play that was worth a damn was Excite Truck. Well my first impression of the Wii? Damn the machine is pretty sweet. It was basically everything i was hoping it to be. The controller felt perfect. It was balanced with the perfect weight and button layout felt just right. To navigate through the menus you pointed the wiimote directly at the tv and you could choose the different channels. The sensor bar was set up below the tv and it read all my movements perfectly and accurately. Even when there was a second controller attached, both wiimotes never interfered with each other and worked perfect. When you moved your cursor over the different menu sections it also vibrated when it was on a button. Since it wasn't hooked up online the only channels that were available were the Mii channel and the picture channel. I just browsed those for a second before i got impatient and started the game. For excite truck in order for you to navigate and play the game the wiimote had to be turned sideways. All the steering was done by moving the wiimote in rotating steering wheel motions. It took about 5 minutes to get used to the controller and how to use it without crashing all over the place. One of the buttons on the right side was the gas and the d-pad on the left was used as a turbo button. In the case of this game very little actual movement needed to be made to register turning. Nothing about the motion felt gimmicky but was balanced just right. Now the games graphics itself were not great in fact it didnt even look up to Gamecube quality. Despite that the game was a blast. With the controller you could lean back on a jump to get more airtime. It you caught good air and went through the rings there was a sound that emitted from the controller which surprised me but was pretty cool. Its definitely gonna be a great rental and get lots of game play from me. First impression is it looks like Nintendo accomplished what they wanted and possibly are going to hit it out of the park with this machine. I had a huge smile the whole time and I was only playing a B title game and didn't even get to use the nun chuck attachment. This machine has huge potential and I'm gonna wait out overnight to get a system , but no way will I camp out for 40+ hours like these ps3 freaks are currently doing.