Got Wii?

[The Amstor Computer]

Thanks to Amazon, my console arrived today & I'm now the proud owner of Wii - plus Wii Sports, Wii Play, Monkey Ball, Red Steel, Zelda & Call of Duty 3!

Just got everything hooked up, downloaded a few Virtual Console games & am creating some Mii & then I'm going to have a pop at Wii Sports.

My Wii number is: 1185 1841 9282 7323, so if anyone else out there wants to add me to their address book feel free. If you were lucky enough to grab a console, pop your number up here as well.

The interface is fucking great so far, and after the initial period of getting used to a new controller I'm whizzing round the menus & typing away on the onscreen keyboard with no hassle at all. Can't wait to see how the games play!

[ukdane]

How much did hat lot set you back?

[The Amstor Computer]

A fair bit - but I'd been putting cash aside for a while & threw my last overtime cheque in there as well. Something like:

£180 - console plus Wii Sports
£150 - the five games (incl. second remote)
£30 - second nunchuk + classic controller
£30 - 4000 Wii Points for spending in the online shop

Slightly embarassing amount of money to spend, but it's my big gaming buy of the year & a bit of a treat. Still, the whole lot came in at about the same price - or cheaper - than a new PS3!

Just got off playing Wii Sports & Red Steel. Wii Sports is great fun, though I'm not having a great deal of success with Tennis. Bowling & Boxing are the dog's nuts, and Baseball is quite fun as well. Definitely going to have to grab my brother at some point and haul him in for a game.

Red Steel is a real mixed bag. The controls work brilliantly in some parts & really roughly in others, there are some sections which look stunning & others which are basic GameCube level etc... but the game is surprisingly immersive & once you get over the initial impulse to wave the controller around like an idiot & start making more controlled motions it really clicks. Swordfighting is a bit basic, but still good fun.

Very impressed with the system so far.

[The Amstor Computer]

mbanners - just added your friend code to my address book. If you add mine you might have the pleasure of meeting a Mii version of Nikolai Dante (along with Gi-Ant, the freakish ant-faced Mii I spent 10 minutes creating earlier...)

;-)

[James]

My wife won't let ma have a Wii. Probably for the best really-i'll give it a while and see what I can do.

[Bico]

It wasn't until I was playing the baseball game that it occurred to me that the whole thing is just an extension of the DS stylus.  I suppose emulating the biggest-selling console of all time is probably the smartest move when Sony and Microsoft are pissing up the wall with the run of the mill stuff.
The graphics aren't fantastic, with Zelda being nothing that couldn't be done on the Gamecube (and there's a GC version coming out), but the kids went crazy for the whole swinging thing - don't leave them with it unsupervised, that's all I'm saying.  I kept my distance, which probably saved me a few knocks.  The sports games look poor, but then they are just tech demos.


How does the internet setup compare to the Xbox in terms of how easy it's set up?  I gave up trying to get XB Live working and left the modem back to the shop, and I was told I wasn't the only one with the same problem.

[The Amstor Computer]

Yeah, this is basically a home console version of the DS - lower-powered than the competitors, but with a brand-new interface and an approach that tries to include people beyond your trad gamers.

Graphics are a mixed bag, and as I haven't been able to try the system hooked up with SCART or component cables yet - not shipping until next week - I'd hesitate to be too critical of certain things I know are being caused by the composite cables the system shipped with. It is a step up from GameCube, but if you're going in there expecting anything close to what the 360 or PS3 can do you'll be disappointed.

There aren't too many launch titles that really show off what the system should be capable of - Zelda is a GameCube game, essentially, and it's not been reworked to take advantage of the extra horsepower the Wii has. Red Steel is fairly decent looking shooter, but it has some rather painful shortcomings that a more talented dev team with a bit more grasp of the hardware would have been able to improve upon. That said, there are some very pretty sections that are beyond what the 'Cube could do. Monkey Ball is gorgeous, but in a very stylised way that may not appeal to everyone. CoD 3 is quite obviously a quick port - its visuals are basically the sort of level you'd expect from a multi-platform GameCube title. Surprisingly, Wii Sports is actually quite something - the very basic style is deliberate & will certainly not be to everyone's taste, but there are some very neat graphical effects in there that the GameCube simply couldn't do.  

If you want to see what this machine can really do, you're going to have to wait for the second generation of games - stuff like Metroid Prime 3, Super Mario Galaxy or Resident Evil: Umbrella Chronicles will probably be the games that demonstrate what the modest increase in power will mean in terms of visuals.

Internet setup is a piece of piss - 30 seconds and it had detected my Belkin wireless router and created a connection. Two minutes later I was online and downloading Bonk's Adventure & F-Zero. Sending emails from the system is a doddle, and the firmware updates shifted quickly & smoothly. The real test of the network is going to come when the first games go online - sometime early next year, I think - but until then what net functionality is there works perfectly well. Can't wait to see what Opera & the News & Weather channels are like when they launch in a few weeks.

[ukdane]

Nothing you've said there encourages me to buy it.

I own a PS2. I have to ask, if the brought out a similar style wireless controller, and the games to match- wouldn't it be just as good, but at ½ the price?

How much life is there left in my PS2?

[The Amstor Computer]

Problem is that - even assuming that someone did bring out a Wii-style PS2 controller - you would end up with barely a handful of games that supported it, simply because developers couldn't guarantee that PS2 owners would have access to it. With the Wii the remote & nunchuk are packed in with every single console sold so game developers can implement control schemes based around that setup with no worries.

As for how much life there is in your PS2? I'd guess at least until 2008, but I'd expect major support from developer & publishers to tail off then. It'll likely hang on for a while longer as a budget system with a great library of games, but as a vital platform with interesting new releases... it's time is likely to be up in the next 12 months.

[ukdane]

But isn't the controller problem that you mention, similar to what is currently acutally happening with both the Eye-toy, and Buzz controllers?

[The Amstor Computer]

Well, both Eyetoy & Buzz have dedicated games released that use the peripherals but they are fairly limited & they form a tiny fraction of the PS2 library.

The beauty of having the Wii controllers packed-in to every console sold is that any developer working on the system can implement the motion sensing, or the speaker, or the pointer in their game. You won't get developers working on the PS2 implementing Eyetoy functionality into their latest FPS or adventure game, because it's a waste of resources to add content like that without a guarantee that your audience will all have access to the necessary peripheral - or will be willing to buy it for your game.

With Wii, developers wanting to make games that use motion-sensing or direct-pointing have a guarantee that 100% of Wii owners have the necessary equipment so they have the freedom to make games that use the unique aspects of the controller in whatever way they choose. If the controller had simply been a GameCube peripheral, you might have had Nintendo producing a handful of games for it but no other party would touch it with a bargepole.  

[TordelBack]

"My wife won't let ma have a Wii. "

No, sorry, still sniggering.  Try all you like marketing folk, it's Pavlov's Dogs all over again.

[monty--]

I'm interested. But I'll have to make do with Gamecube Zelda this Chrimbo. As for the Virtual Console...*ahem*. That's been available on the net for ages.

[Banners]

Added!

M@

[The Amstor Computer]

Cool - I'll boot the system up in an hour or two to have a crack at Red Steel so I'll see if you've popped up in my address book.