 |
|
|
 |
14 Octombrie 2008 |
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
 |
 |
| |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Wee and the Wii
We got our hands on one of the 50 Wiis that were sent to the poor undeveloped eastern european country wee live in. But it's all good, we don't mind.
Currently there's much info and hype running arount the web like crazy about Wii's and PS3's so we're not going to pull a wiki article on the Wii.
Instead wee are going to tell you the story of our close encounter as wee felt it step by step.
What wee found in the box
Well, upon opening our package we found :
- a CD-ROM drive. - oh wait that's the Wii ! Small shizzle indeed ...
- a Wii Remote
- an addon - the so called nunchaku - for the remote - basically a little joystick-ish device.
- the power cable and adaptor
- The IR sensor bar
- the S-VHS output cable
- Wii Sports game
After that we went out and came back with a few more trinkets before we started playing, that being :
- Wii Play game + another Wii Remote
- Zelda : Twilight Princess game
- Need For Speed : Carbon game
- some rolling papers
That being done, we we're almost sure that we had everything that Nintendo could provide us at this time.
So on Wiith it
After hooking up the thing we were presented with tha Wii system screen.
We could glimpse there some stuff named :"Internet Channel", "News Channel", "Photo Channel", but then again ... who cares right now. Wee wanna play.
Wee picked up the the Wii Remote put the Wii Sports game into the drive (which briefly flashed led-blue :) we pointed the remote at the screen and clicked.
We played tennis for a while.
First, the game looked pretty cheap graphics wise but once we realy tried to swing the remote like a tennis racket, we (sorry wee) understood what it's all about.
The motion sensing capabilities of the remote are quite remarcable.
It can detect acceleration in all 3 directions with a satisfactory accuracy. We really can't tell how much of it is made by the hardware itself and how much by aproximation algorithms in the game's software, but the end result was fun and frankly unexpected.
All those TV Spots for the Wii are true. You will swing your arm like mad and stuff will happen on the screen in a predictable manner. And wee are talkin about a very large range of moves including effect applied to the ball, cut balls, reverse shots and so on. Incredible technology that's for sure.
Another nice touch is that the remotes have an integrated speaker. So when you swing your racket it goes swoosh, then you hit the ball, and then the TV goes swoosh, and so on. It creates a very nice spatial sound effect, and this feature is used in almost every game which is cool.
Well, after 40 minutes of tennis we were pretty excited (and a bit tired), and suddenly a message pops up on the screen saying : "Why not take a break ?" together with a scetch of an open window. SPOT ON ! hahaha ... i mean, how does the Wii KNOW that the room already had that specific stinky smell ?!  Sweet.
We moved on to another game.
Bowling was fun too. We could toss the ball like it was the real thing, we could even spin it while dropping it. I went to the kitchen to get a beer, and my remote still beeped that was my turn. I figure i was at aprox 6 meters away from the console (yeah it's the metric system) and beyond a concrete wall, and it still beeped. Cool ha ?...
We got bored pretty quickly though so wee wanted another game.
Golf ? ... Nah .. wee don't play golf. Golf is boring.
Boxing ? Maybe. Boxing was the first game that asked us to plug in the "nunchaku" into the Wii Remote and by that efectively booting my friend from the Wii gaming experience because we only had 1 nunchaku.
The second Wii Remote i bought was nunchaku-less, just 1 remote and 1 Wii Play game ..
Anyway, boxing was also the first game where the motion detecting capabilities of the Wii were no match for my ninja skillz. I found myself almost punching the frickin' TV set but my digital avatar was playing a more .,. tactical game. He sucked. Bad. Well, i managed to beat the game several times but the on-screen response to my pro boxing moves was faaaaaar from satisfactory.
By now the sensation was that we had some marvelous technology on our hands, and the Wii Sports game basically is more like a tech demo of what the Wii can do. We could just imagine how future games on the Wii will play by combining and expanding on the possibilities that we saw till now.
The Wii Play series of games made no exception to the aforementioned. Tech demos. Very short games, that let you accomodate to the new control scheme. They make you twist it, shake it, swing it and toss it.
Nothing worth mentioning except maybe the pool game, which left a nice impression with everybody.  It really plays like pool. Baby pool, only 9-ball but stilla fun pool game.
Need for Speed : Carbon was the shortest endeavour. And maybe it not the game itself. It was just that everybody was expecting the "next-gen baby" and this was just good old NFS ported poorly to te Wii. Ugly looking and ugly playing game. No split screen ... screw it.
Well, for the rest of our little Wii party nobody wanted to try Zelda. Everyone went back to Wii Sports for the rest of the day. After everybody was pretty tired and / or has suffered at least 1 accident by carelessly swinging their Wii Remote near natural hazards we realized what was missing.
What Was Mee-sing
Some things ...
First, no swords man. I mean, goddamit, after 5 minutes of playing tennis everyone said "ok, wait till we play the game with swords". No swords. Yet.
Just imagine going sword-shield with the nunchaku set-up or double swords with 2 remotes ... Anything you want, ninjas, elves, orcs, whatever. I'm sure someone will soon make that game for the Wii.
Second, where the heck is Mortal Kombat !? And as i'm typing my question i can already see a presentation that Ed Boon made for the latest MK game using the Wii controls. Awesome!
Third thing : swords.
Ok so what about Zelda ?!
Oh, Zelda.  Right.
I played Zelda alright.
I'm sure the game qualifies to have a review of it's own so i will just drop some general considerations about it here.
It was the nicest looking of the bunch. Flawlessly animated manga shi*, and a very fun game to play.
But from the "next-gen control scheme" perspective it smells as a ported game from miles away. Even if you will use both the nunchaku and the remote in many ways throughout the game, the whole thing is a Gamecube title _adapted_ (even if very well) for the Wii.
I won't even go into any other details but point out that it had a sword, but no matter what move you make with the Wii Remote, the sword goes exactly the same way. C'mon. We are too hyped about the new shi* to pay attention to the old shi*. And that's it.
Tech nee qualities
As we said before, this gaming system is very small and to some this alone is a virtue.
It has an internet browser, but i wouldn't bet my life that site X or Y will display correctly.
Your Gamecube games work on the Wii, and you even have 4 connectors for the Gamecube controller.
You also have USB ports for multiplayer, internet, updates and stuff.
I skipped on purpouse talking about the "channels" thinggy before. The thing is that even though i wanted to get a gaming console seems that the industry knows better that what i really need is a multimedia center device. So i can download my digital pictures (by inserting the memory card into the specially designed slot) and go all the way to editing them for example. What ?! Well, maybe it's just me ...
Then sure, it's instant messaging ! Yeah, right ...
Then it's .....  tararaaaaaaam .. the "Weather Channel" ! Goddamit !
And hey ... you can BUY , NEW channels ... :))) rofl
Look man... The Wii is a great gizmo, but i think i'll wait a little to see what exactly will be this downloadable or online content for this channel thing before i go all berserk about them.
Let me tell you about a neat thing on the other hand. Your saves are kept on the Wii Remote. So if you go to your friend's house and you play Sub Zero but he has not unlocked him yet, you have your saves with you. Also the Wii seems to imply that your uniquely customized playing character (called a Mee. Really) can accumulate experience in various games, ranks, points and whatnot. Like your personal player profile that you can take with you anywhere with the Wii Remote.
The graphics on the console look a little washed out (mainly because of low resolution textures) from what wee saw until now but i'm sure that once games designed specifically for the Wii mature, we will have nice surprises. Remember Tekken 5 on the PS2, and how well it looked and how you never imagined that the PS2 was capable of such graphics.
And again the Wii is NOT ABOUT GRAPHICS. End of story. Everyone having played at least 1 hour with some games designed specifically for the Wii will surely agree to that. And to go back to the sword issue, i can bet that nobody will care that the goblin was not specular mapped and anisotropically filtered as long as you can chop his head off from 10 different angles ...
All een all
This Wii stuff is "DA SHI*" - TM.
Tons of fun. And it was almost equally fun speculating what games will do in the future with the Wii,
It's buyable for 250 Euro's - 250 $ which is a great price for what you are getting.
Basically, if you see one, you got to own one.
Game developers show great support for Nintendo's latest console and wee will see many game titles designed for it.  Also given the posibilities, i'm almost sure a whole new genre of software will arise, from aerobic lessons to kung fu to God knows what.
Really, praises don't do justice to the Wii. Just go play. Nuff' said.
The only negative aspect is that at present time there aren't a lot of games out there for it, but that is simply bound to change during the course of this year.
Weeeeeeeeeeeee !!!!11..... ^_^
|
|
| |
| Posted by sara [Luni, 29 Ianuarie 2007 - 17:02] |
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
|
PixelRage.org v2.0 © 2008
 |
|
|
|
|
|
