Digital Kaleidoscope

Nintendo Wii — Mixed Feelings

Topic: Gaming 2 years ago Share on Facebook

On Wednesday night, I was at Westfield Parramatta shortly before midnight. There was a small number of people gathered outside the Toys ‘R’ Us waiting for the midnight launch of the Nintendo Wii.

At that point, I scoffed, wondered why somebody would pay $400 for a glorified, shrunk GameCube, and then went home.

Waiting for the Nintendo Bodily Excretion Wii

Why?!

The Good

Even though I was prepared to be underwhelmed, we visited Julian’s place last night and had a go with a Wii. It’s a cute, small console, but not as small as hyped. (And definitely bigger than “three DVD cases”).

Console pack-in Wii Sports was instantly a great laugh. Boxing was insanely intense and we were all physically exhausted after a few bouts and I can definitely imagine myself trying forever to get a perfect 300 in bowling. The graphics didn’t blow us away, but they were good enough. The Miis were extrememly cute, especially in that crazy find-lookalike mini-game in Wii Play, which you can get in a bundle with a Wii remote.

Overall, it was loads of fun and we were impressed. Sure, we wouldn’t be nearly as happy if we had to pay for Wii Sports or Wii Play, both of which really seemed like prettied-up R&D toys after all, but we definitely enjoyed ourselves.

The Ugly

Then we played Red Steel. Last decade called and they want their graphics back, still-image-and-voiceover-with-subtitles ‘cut-scenes’ and all. Serious, what the hell?! The graphics were just atrocious.

Red Steel: a relic from the past

See? I couldn’t wait to turn off the Wii and fire up my Xbox 360. Nintendo likes to think graphics don’t matter if the gameplay is good. Well, I beg to differ. If it looks craptastic and I want to eject the disc and return the game before I even get past the first 5 minutes, I’m not going to get a chance to appreciate the gameplay, no matter how amazing and innovative.

Mind you, controlling Red Steel using the Wii remote and nunchuck isn’t that brilliant… playing FPSes with a controller is bad enough — this was just not fun. Mouse and keyboard, please?

Conclusion

I can see the Wii being a great party console; lots of fun when you have friends over. But what else would I use it for? Would I pay $400 bucks for it? And will my HD panel ever forgive me for hooking up a SD console to it?

Once I have a chance to play Rayman Raving Rabbids (which had a series of cute ads BTW) and Elebits, I’ll let you know.

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