Nintendo Wii time!

Well i braved the cold in line at a local Circuit City starting at 10pm Saturday night till 7:30 am Sunday morning to get my hands on a Wii. Yes it is Wii and not a W2 like i hear people keep referring to it as. They seem to think the two i's are Roman numerals. Was it worth the wait? Well do dogs like to lick themselves? Yes, it is the bomb! I had high expectations but i think it even exceeded them in most ways. Yes the system was only 250 but i also had to buy a another controller, two games: Zelda and Rayman, two gamecube games: Super Mario Strikers and Super Smash Bros Melee and two gamecube wavebirds. Final tally was around 460 bucks! That's still a lot cheaper then it would have been for the 700+ for a ps3 ,game and accessories.

First off the system is super small and very easy to set up. The default setting for the sensor bar was perfect for me but it could be recalibrated if you needed it. The interface and all the Wii channels were easy to navigate. One huge negative that i didnt know about was that the system comes wifi only and no broadband connection out of the box. The broadband connector is 35 dollars but doesnt even come out until January. For those like myself who play a lot of online games like Xbox Live prefer to have things hardwired to minimize lag that is inherit with a Wi-fi connection. So unfortunately i wasnt able to download any virtual console games at launch. The other two negatives ill get out of the way, is it does not have any component cables with it and since there is only 512mb of internal memory, you have to buy sd memory cards separate for larger downloads. At least two of the 3 problems can be fixed. I would have paid extra if they would have had at least a 10 gig hard drive ship with it. But if you play gamecube games on it luckily those memory cards can still be used on the system. There are also 4 controller ports for gamecube and up to 4 Wii controllers can be used.

Now on to the positives. First word that comes to my mind. Fun. Not only is it a blast to play but its a totally new and unique fun. Ill answer a few questions right away. Yes you do look extremely goofy playing most of the games and yes some of the games and gameplay are tiring. For 90% of the games like Zelda and others where you can sit down and move the controller its no big deal. But the other 10% , like some of the Rayman mini games and the boxing on Wii Sports its plain tiring. Your arms get tired of moving, your heart rate races and its a legitimate workout.

Now lets get to the games. Wii Sports comes packaged in with the system and its a pretty good showcase of the different type of things the Wii is capable of. There are 5 games which are Baseball, Bowling, Tennis, Golf and Boxing. 3 of the 5 are fun and the other two are worth playing occasionally. Bowling is probably overall the best of the bunch. Its the deepest of all of them and you can control the motion, spin, and the release time of the ball. Its harder then it would seem which makes it more realistic and a good thing. I guess you could play it sitting down but its much more fun to do a real bowling approach. Tennis is a close second. It is doubles tennis with the computer controlling the movement of the players and you control the swinging motion of both players on your side. You can lob, slice and do a variety of shots. It sounds too simple but there is definitely a strategy and skill to it. I played that for hours. The last real fun one was baseball. The only thing you control on that is the batting and the pitching. If you hit it in the infield its an immediate out and if you knock it in the outfield you get a single or double or of course a homerun. Very fun but not very deep gameplay strategy. Boxing was semi fun and a definite workout but it was not optimized like the others to recognize every punch and boxing motion. Most punches were recognized but not all of them. You can duck side to side and block which was cool though. I could just imagine if the game was made by a legitimate company into a full fledged game it could be a huge hit. But in this current stage on the game its just flawed fun. The last game was golf which was extremely hard. The mechanics were too simple and basically you just tried to hit it at the perfect strength without hitting it too hard or too soft. That like boxing if done right could be a blast. Overall Wii Sports was a solid package to come packed in with the game.

Next up is Rayman Raving Rabbids. This is multiplayer bliss. You basically play the single player story to unlock all the mini games which there are around 70 of them total. This game is a blast. Its fun with two players and could be phenomenal if you could get 4 together. The mini games range from something as simple as tracing food items as fast and accurate as you can (which is a blast) all the way to twirling your controller around over your head and doing a hammer throw/cow toss. There are FPS games where the players battle on getting the most points and a lot of stamina games where you move the controllers up and down as fast as you can to see who's the fastest/most endurance player. A great launch title and a must have for multiplayer parties.

The last Wii game to review needs no introduction, Zelda: Twilight Princess. Unfortunately i haven't got to play it much and the first few hours are just training exercises. Of course it seems to have potential but the graphics were kinda disappointing. I know the system is suppose to be more powerful than an Xbox 1 but it doesnt look like it with this game or the others, that they have reached the potential of the console. That doesnt really matter that much to me as long as the games remain fun. By the way Super Mario Strikers for the Gamecube which is playable on the Wii is a great fun game. Probably the most fun arcade style sports game ive ever played including all the nba jams and blitz games.

So far i give the Wii a huge big thumbs up. The unique gameplay, the backwards compatibility with Gamecube and downloadable Nintendo games make this a must buy system. It will be pretty much near perfect once i buy a few more controllers, memory cards and that damn broadband adaptor once its released.