I got a chance to play the Wii, first two weeks ago and then again last weekend. Below are some of my thoughts, in no particular order.

• This console is just plain fun. We must have played Wii Sports for four or five hours, and Super Monkey Ball for the rest of that time.
• My favorite parts of Wii Sports are, in this order: bowling, tennis, golf, baseball. I haven’t yet played boxing, so i can’t intelligently comment on it. Bowling is awesome, simply put. It’s easier than actual bowling, but a lot of your technique will carry over. Tennis is probably–and I’m not really speaking from personal experience here–nothing like actual tennis. You can do a forehand swing, a backhand swing, and you can serve; your characters move toward the ball automatically. That said, it’s lots of fun, in a sort of twitchy, reflex-game kind of way, especially when you’re playing doubles.
• Monkey Ball is sort of hit-or-miss when it comes to the multiplayer minigames. Some of them (Hovercraft Battle, Monkey Race, Spaceship Landing, Monkey Battle) are a lot of fun. Others (Monkey Darts, Ring Toss, the one where you put together a jigsaw puzzle for God’s sake) are not, for the most part. There are about fifty of them, though, so there’s a good chance you’ll find a few you like to play with your friends.
• The Wiimote rocks. I love the motion sensitivity, the pointing capability, and all that, but there are all these great little touches, too. There’s a row of four LEDs on the Wiimote that tells you whether you’re player 1, 2, 3, or 4 in a simple, visual way. The pointer in the main screen rotates when you rotate the Wiimote. When it’s your turn to play in a game like bowling, it’ll vibrate and make a little noise to let you know. It’s just awesome.
• The Wii is not necessarily friendly to those who have bone and joint problems. My wife has a lot of wrist problems, and two or three minutes of playing tennis was enough to make that flare up.
• The graphics, while not spectacular, are still pretty good. I was pretty impressed by the few minutes of Zelda that I saw, and even Monkey Ball and Wii Sports are visually appealing.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 5th, 2006 at 7:37 pm and is filed under Musings. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.