First impressions of the Wii

[Image: zelda]I know this is hardly an original topic for a blog post, and as unlikely as it is that anything I say will convince someone as to whether or not they’re going to buy a Wii (I doubt many people are sitting on the fence), I still feel like gushing a little.

I spent way, way too much time playing this thing today. My roommate walked in with the package around 9am this morning, and after grumbling a bit and taking a shower I wandered out to watch him play Zelda for a while. It’s awesome. I’ll get to that.

Then I got the chance to try out all of the Wii Sports games, and my skills apparently sit with bowling. I bowled a 186 with five strikes in a row. I’d be far more impressed with myself if it wasn’t a video game.

The packaged Wii Sports games are designed to show off the versatility and coolness of the new controllers—and they work splendidly, with the exception of boxing. But it’s great to see a tennis ball fly in different directions based on how you swing the remote, or watch the bowling ball reflect the unconscious annoying left spin that always sends your ball into the gutter.

The interface is clean, simple, and easy to get around. The load times are thankfully fast, and the console itself is quiet as can be.

We have a projector set up at my place, so we ended up taping the Wiimote receiver to the wall below the screen and putting the Wii itself at the front of the room, opposite the rest of our gaming and theater equipment, but a simple trip to Fry’s and a $20 RCA cable was all it took to run the connection around and make everything look pretty again.

But the real gem is Twilight Princess. I played a little over three hours of the game today, and when Ethan goes home tomorrow evening and takes his Wii with him for five days, I may be forced to go looking for another console to buy just so I can play this game. It has everything that made me happy about Zelda in the past, plus a really really cool control scheme.

I also hear that Super Monkey Ball is amazing, although I haven’t played it myself. Red Steel I did play, but didn’t pick up. As best as I can put it, the game “wasn’t quite there.” Whatever that means - the controls just…don’t quite add up yet. There might be settings and other tweaks that can be played with, but it the 10 minutes I had to play with it didn’t convince me to drop another $50 on it right now.