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So, I got my hands on my very own Wii yesterday (that sounded weird). I spent about 5 hours playing with it last night. So here are a few initial impressions. Just a disclaimer, as a Nintendo guy or "fan boy" if you will, this review is probably a bit biased.
As per usual, I was pretty jonesed to have a new piece of Nintendo hardware. The system is tiny, and looks slick. Think Apple. The wii remote is also very small, but feels great in your hand. The nunchuck is cool looking, but I wish it weighed a bit more. Minor complaint though. The setup was easy, and I was rolling in 5 minutes.
Turned it on and got setup to the internet quickly. Immediately it wanted to update. Not sure what the updates did, but it was pretty quick and painless. I hope Nintendo will automatically push further updates automatically via WiiConnect24.
The pointing with the wiimote is awesome. It has a learning curve of about 10 minutes, but you can fly through menus and text entry really quickly (much faster than with a traditional controller). You get some great feedback from the controller too (it rumbles slightly when you roll over buttons). It just feels so polished, and so....Nintedoish. Hard to explain really, but I think some will know what I mean.
The Mii thing is surprisingly fun. I created a couple of them and they are pretty hilarious to see running around. It is really, really "Japanese", which I like, but it may turn some off.
I didn't mess with the photo channel yet. Hopefully tonight. I went into the virtual console, but didn't purchase any games. It is tempting, but I don't know how much I would play them right now. Mario 64 is a great game, and they had some old NES games that I haven't played before (Wario's Woods). Gunstar Heroes comes out on Saturday, that should be awesome. Also I never played any of the Bonk games, so I might give that a looksy.
I played 3 games last night. Wii Sports, Call of Duty 3, and Madden 2007. I'm getting Zelda tonight, and I know that will totally pwn everything.
Wii sports is really fun. The graphics are simple, but using the controller is pretty amazing. Tennis and bowling are the best. The baseball one is cool because the bat movement is almost 1:1, but I'm not very good at it yet. Golfing has potential, there will be a great golf game for the Wii sometime in the near future. Boxing is difficult, and probably the least polished. It is actually a bit of a workout, and I think there is potential there. One thing I thought was cool was Wii Sports fitness, where you do a "fiteness Test" once a day (only allowed to do one a day) and it gives you a rating. Seems like a little thing, but I thought it was nice. There are some mini-games I'm still working my way through but they seem fun. This game is also I'm sure a lot better with more than 1 player. Great game for a pack in though.
COD3 is interesting. I haven't played any of those games for awhile, so the way they immerse you in the environments was pretty new to me. The wii-mote controls are intimidating at first. After about 10 minutes I was getting pretty good with it, but there is a pretty steep learning curve. Someone who hadn't played video games before could not just pick this up, the action is very frantic. The aiming works pretty well, although you lose sight of your reticule sometimes. You swing the nunchuck to change weapons and move it down to reload. Pretty satisfying. I'm interested to see what they do with this type of game in the future. But for a launch title with wii controls tacked on, I think it is pretty good. I played for about 90 minutes last night, and basically only switched because I hadn't played Madden yet.
Madden was fun also. They walk you through a training mode at first to get you used to the new controls. Some are easier, some are not. The juking and stiff arming are great, but the tackling is difficult. I only did it successfully once. The passing is good too, I found that I kept hitting a button to hike the ball when I just needed to pull up the wiimote! I'll have to spend some more time with it, but this is the full Madden with all the options as well. The kicking is going to take some practice, I lost the game I played because I botched a 15 yard field goal. You make extensive use of the pointer too to select plays and such which I liked. You can also select players with it before the snap and give them individual instructions. It's quite deep, and will take some practice.
A few other things. The speaker on the wii-mote is kind of cool for some things, and kind of stupid on others. In Madden the snap count comes out of it, and in wii sports its used all the time. We'll see, I wish it was a bit better quality.
The new online stuff can't come soon enough. I'm excited to see what they come up with.
Overall, even after all the hype and copius amount of reading I've done, I was still very impressed after playing. You really do have to try it out yourself to understand what Nintendo is trying to do here.
Zelda tonight = no life for the next 3 weeks.
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