48 Hours with the Wii
21 Nov 2006I picked up my Nintendo Wii from Gamestop at midnight on Saturday night. It went about as smoothly as possible. We walked in, they called my name, gave me my bag full of the Wii, Zelda, and an extra remote+nunchuk, and we walked out.
I made it home and took the Wii out of the box, and hooked it all up. There wasn't a whole lot to it -- video from the Wii to the TV (only composite cables ... more on that later), the sensor bar from the Wii to where I placed it below the TV, and gave it power. That's it.
The system boots up and there's a few configuration settings, but it just sort of works. You have your little remote which works like a mouse. You point it at the screen and you move it around. One of the things that's been easy for me to pick up but I could see being a tiny bit difficult for non-games/computer folks is that it's not a perfect one to one. You don't point exactly where you want the cursor to be; it's close, but you basically move the pointer around like it's a mouse cursor. Within a few minutes, your brain will be able to make the small transformation without much of a problem. After that, it's smooth sailing.
I set up my network connection in about 30 seconds. Put in my WEP key and I was connected. Easy. The system then downloaded an update which enabled me to get into the Wii Shop (where you can buy old Nintendo and Genesis games!). But, otherwise, there's just not a whole lot of online capability right now. Once they open up the web browser (hopefully soon), there will be a whole lot more to do.
At that point, the system is up and running. You can do some cool stuff like create your little Mii avatar/chariacture that will show up in some games, or look at photos/videos on an SD card. But, at this point, most folks will put in Wii Sports.
Wii Sports
Wii Sports is awesome. Awesome. In baseball, you swing the remote to hit or pitch, and basically play home run derby. In tennis, you swing the remote like a racquet, just worrying about timing and force to aim and hit lobs or smashes. In boxing, you use the remote and nunchuk and punch and dodge. In golf, you swing the remote like a club. In bowling, you motion like you're bowling a ball, complete with spin.
In other words, you just play the game. Bowling and golf are the best, at least for me. Bowling is the easiest to pick up and translate real world ability to, I think. You aim a little off-center, swing your arm, release with some spin, and watch as you rack up a strike or spare. But, unlike normal video games where you can start to head towards a perfect game just getting the timing of button presses down, in Wii Sports, you're actually moving your arm. Not enough spin? No strike. Let go too early? You might miss the head pin. It's ridiculously easy to pick up and become good at, but not so good that there's no challenge. As a party game, I think bowling is currently unparalleled.
Golf is challenging, but fantastic. Once you get the hang of how the power meter works, you take a practice swing, see how hard you'd hit it, then step up and take a real swing. It's a little simplistic: only a few clubs, not a whole lot of depth, but playing 9 holes of golf is amazingly immersive. You're actually swinging and watching as you hook/slice, or have a putt lip out. The first time I hit a chip shot that hit the pin, I think I did a little fist pump. The moment that EA Sports puts out Tiger Woods Golf using this control scheme, I think I'll be in heaven. And I don't even like golf games.
Tennis, baseball, and boxing are pretty fun as well. Tennis and boxing are the worst of the lot for me, which is to say, they're really fun, but I don't feel the control is quite as interesting. Boxing is pretty much an exercise in flailing away, as the controls don't feel as responsive as they should be. Tennis is something I suck at in real life and also seem to suck at on the Wii. I just can't get the timing down, though that doesn't seem to be a problem for anyone else. Baseball is fun, just without a whole lot of depth.
As a whole, Wii Sports is a fantastic "introduce you to the system" game with tons of fun as a multiplayer game and with a couple of games (bowling and golf) that are fun for me even single player.
Red Steel
Red Steel is a Japan/Yakuza-themed first person shooter. It was the second game I tried. It's the worst of the lot so far, as I think the control isn't quite as tight as it should be, and the graphics are a bit washed out (but that could be due to the composite cables that the Wii ships with, as the Wii component cables are nowhere to be found, as of yet).
You'd think that the control would be similar to a keyboard/mouse FPS, but I think the developers decided that having the pointer control your point-of-view might be too unstable for people, so they basically built a big dead area in the middle where you can aim without changing your viewpoint, and then as you get close to the edge of the screen, you start to turn.
It was a bad design decision that takes probably 45 minutes to get used to.
Once you get used to it, however, it's not so bad. And the atmosphere of the game, along with the interesting (if slightly disappointing) swordplay are enough to make it fun. I made it 3 chapters in, I think, which includes shooting through a car wash and a steam room, before I switched over to the 3rd game I bought.
I'll probably play through some more Red Steel soon. I like it. It's not great, but it's not bad. It's just not as good as it should be. There are some really odd decisions made by the developers that leave you scratching your head, but none have been enough, for me, to say "wow, this sucks."
I haven't tried multiplayer yet, but there's one mode that sounds really fun. I just need to find 2 more remote/nunchuks to have 4 players play.
On to the final game ...
The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess
It's Zelda. It's awesome.
I'm about 6 hours in now. I've beaten the first dungeon, saved a bunch of monkeys, ridden a horse, turned into a wolf, and done a billion other things. The game is typical Zelda, with good graphics and awesome, awesome control. The only Wii-specific controls are the "swing the remote to swing the sword" and the "aim using the pointer" control. They both work really well.
One of the big concerns people have had is that you'd get tired playing with the Wii since you have to "move". Zelda proves that wrong. I played sitting on the couch for 3 hours straight without a problem. The motions are small enough, and the cable between the nunchuk and remote allows you to find the most comfortable position you want. In fact, I think that you can actually find a more relaxing/comfortable position than you can with a normal controller. The reason is that a normal controller forces your two hands to grip a device in the same position all the time. The remote/nunchuk setup allows you to put your hands where you want, keeping them separate by 1 inch or 1 foot.
So far, the game is flat out awesome. I've had no desire to stop playing, other than the fact I need to eat and want to go back and play Wii Sports every now and then. Otherwise, I'll probably be playing Zelda for the forseeable future.
Other Stuff
As mentioned above, you can download old Nintendo games to play with the Virtual Console. So far, the selection is limited, but the plan is to roll out games every month. Just to test out the process, I bought the original Zelda for the Nintendo. You go to the store, you pick it, it downloads, and then you're done. You can jump in and play it, and it plays just like Zelda because, well, it is Zelda.
The Virtual Console is just sort of brilliant, and if they can get a bunch of folks on board (i.e. get Goldeneye for the N64, or NHL Hockey for the Genesis), it's going to be a huge hit. The moment they put Mario Kart or Contra on there, I'll be buying.
The only negative things, so far, are the lack of component cables and the lack of the online options being ready. The news and forecast channels are scheduled to go online in the next few months ... but I'm not sure why they aren't ready now. The web browser could be a huge hit ... but it's not ready now.
There's a whole lot of "it'll be great soon" going on, which reduces the awesomeness of the Wii just a bit.
But, really, it's just a bit. From the ability to create your own little Mii (avatar), to Wii Sports, to Zelda, what's already available for the Wii is fantastic and made for a great launch. The moment more games show up in the Virtual Console and the browser becomes available, the Wii will start to fulfill more of it's fantastic promise.
In other words, the Wii is good.