Nintendo

[James S]

Hey yall, a friend just got the new Nintendo system with the cool remote control and I thought I'd let you all know that the games are a lot of fun. He had Madden, Splinter Cell, and the Sports pack that it came with.

Especially in the sports games the motions are totally intuitive and natural. It's a great control scheme for a lot of game styles.

Splinter Cell (FPS) was a little difficult because you have to keep the controller steady and pointed at the screen at all times, and we did know if there was a sensitivity option. Once you figured out to rest your wrist on your knee and stay sitting down and not get too excited when an enemy came around it was pretty easy, and very immersive.

The bowling game is so natural that we had to clear space so we could get our full body twisting action to give the ball a curve ... which I doubt had any effect, but it felt so natural doing it that we were just naturally inclined to behave as if we were actually bowling.
The golf game was a little tricky, and the power of your shot was difficult to control.
The boxing game is hilarious fun. You can just start wailing awaying on the guy and not stop laughing. I definitely got exhilarated, so I can't laugh at the idea of this system as a means of exercise. You can do any motions you want, it's again really natural. I felt just like I was beating some guy up, but in slightly slower-motion. There were only seven or eight moves your character makes, but you can swing however you want and it will extrapolate the closest motion.
Baseball also great fun, totally natural.

I'd say the controller responds pretty much right away. The baseball game was totally sensitive, maybe a 50-100 ms delay on the ocassion that it did seem delayed. The golf game seemed to have some issues with how I swing. The control doesn't seem to go by the overall force of the swinging motion, but on however you snap the control the hardest. Especially true while pitching on the baseball game. Instead of going for the full arched swing and get the ball going at like 65mph, I could just snap my wrist during the swinging motion and the ball will fly at over 90mph.

I would love to try Zelda, I hear it has actions for everything from aiming to sword play to fishing. But I am definitely convinced that the sword play will be interesting.

[sponge]

The bowling game is so natural that we had to clear space so we could get our full body twisting action to give the ball a curve ... which I doubt had any effect, but it felt so natural doing it that we were just naturally inclined to behave as if we were actually bowling.

It does make a difference.

[Brig]

I bought a Wii.

My arms are tired. I'm looking forward to a good golf game.

Zelda is alright. The Wii functionality is tacked on and it shows.

[RedruM]

Yea I've had mine for about 3 weeks so far, Wii Sports is more than I could ask for a free pack in, the games are all fun and the many training games/modes are perhaps even more fun. I like golf even though I hear most people rank it as the least liked game I think, once I got the feel for swinging it felt very rewarding to sink puts and chip ins with the wii mote. I think I really like golf because its the deepest and hardest game of the 5 (I think) sports, plus I find the motions quite accurate. Tennis and Boxing are the most all out fun though.

I have to say so far the Wii is probably the greatest system to play with a lot of buddies (I think I'm the only one I know who has two wiimotes and nunchucks, since I bought the extra set before the Wii launch thankfully), especially at parties, with 4 players, people were really getting into it last few weekends, a bunch of us get together for poker so naturally we set up the wii, gamers and non gamers were going nuts playing on it, even spectators were getting into it. I definately would say they wouldent have had that much fun had it been on any other console. For that I give Nintendo props, as they definately proven they can entertain people who normally wouldent even play games (especially girls which I find is a nice bonus).

Even currently most of the games for the Wii I would say are very raw (ehem, Red Steel), once they polish the new control interface, and squeeze out more graphic potential of the Wii, this should be a good system. Moving on to Zelda, I think some of the motion controls were tacked on, but the aiming system works perfectly, if only they added real time sword control. From what I heard this will be the last Zelda game in this form, and the next Wii version has been in the works for a year now, while TP to me is an awesome continuation of Ocarina of Time, I truly cant wait for the new built for the Wii from the ground up version of Zelda.

Anyone remember when everyone thought the name change to Wii was a horrible pr move, and many people, like mech and so forth said they would never buy one, heressomething similar except I think its a resonable excuse. No wonder the 2 people I know who have psps have sold it, sorry to beat on the horse but this is so ugly I thought it should be seen. Enjoy!

[Dan East]

heressomething similar except I think its a resonable excuse.

Viral marketing

Dan East

[Mechcommander]

I beat Zelda a couple days ago, was depressed by the ending. But definetely an awesome game.

I still think the name for the system is terrible, but I did camp out in front of Best Buy for 18 hours in 12 degree weather for one, so yes, I'll eat my words on the 'saving my money for a PS3.'

Wii Sports.. I like it, but it does a bit tech-demoy to play by yourself with, IMO. It's great fun if you get some buddies over if you've got a spare controller or two (good luck with finding a nunchuck..), but I don't usually break it out unless a friend is over.

I'm also really, really happy that the thing supports Gamecube games perfectly, I've been putting some serious hours into Metroid Prime and Paper Mario (the Cube version, I loved the 64 version), both of which I never got to play as I didn't have a Cube.

Only thing I wish is that there were more Wii titles available on the market right now, not many of them pique my interest with the exception of Trauma Center, which I'll be trying to pick up sometime soon.

[RedruM]

heressomething similar except I think its a resonable excuse.

Viral marketing

Dan East

I know it was Viral, but that was some pretty bad marketing as the website at the end of the video now changed their minds. I think of the 100+ comments when I saw it all of it was pretty much Sony bashing, funny how I dident see anyone defend it as most people would expect some idiot would. Coincedently the video was taken down, fortunately for those sony fans that missed it. Or not heh just watched it, its acctually a pretty funny spoof of sonys "ad".

I beat Zelda a couple days ago, was depressed by the ending. But definetely an awesome game.

I still think the name for the system is terrible, but I did camp out in front of Best Buy for 18 hours in 12 degree weather for one, so yes, I'll eat my words on the 'saving my money for a PS3.'

Wii Sports.. I like it, but it does a bit tech-demoy to play by yourself with, IMO. It's great fun if you get some buddies over if you've got a spare controller or two (good luck with finding a nunchuck..), but I don't usually break it out unless a friend is over.

I'm also really, really happy that the thing supports Gamecube games perfectly, I've been putting some serious hours into Metroid Prime and Paper Mario (the Cube version, I loved the 64 version), both of which I never got to play as I didn't have a Cube.

Only thing I wish is that there were more Wii titles available on the market right now, not many of them pique my interest with the exception of Trauma Center, which I'll be trying to pick up sometime soon.

Heh Mech, its ok I have forseen this all, j/k. The only reason I remembered you said that was because I was waiting for someone to say that. Even James said something similar too

Like the name of the system implies, Wii sports is all about playing with friends, but I find the training is really challanging and fun to play by yourself too though, without them I would easily call sports a tech demo. Trauma Center is pretty good from what I hear, my buddies who also have wii's both bought Trauma Center, no doubt because I let them play it on my DS. I havent bought it myself though because I still have yet to finish it on the DS. I think I'm on the last surgury, I last about 10 hectic minutes before death ensues.

I'm thinking of getting Rayman though, I was tempted to get it at launch but resisted, but I convinced my buddies to, and man is it a fun game, never been a rayman fan either, but this is looking like the next game I will get unless something else comes out.

Sounds like you blasted through Zelda pretty fast though, how many hours you accumulate?

[Caesar]

Has any played Call of Duty for Wii?

[Mechcommander]

I'm thinking of getting Rayman though, I was tempted to get it at launch but resisted, but I convinced my buddies to, and man is it a fun game, never been a rayman fan either, but this is looking like the next game I will get unless something else comes out.

Sounds like you blasted through Zelda pretty fast though, how many hours you accumulate?

I hear Rayman is good, but pretty short, so I'll probably be renting it, along with Red Steel.

And I put in about 51 hours into Zelda, without doing too many of the side quests, either. So yeah, it's a long game.

[Dan East]

I know it was Viral, but that was some pretty bad marketing as the website at the end of the video now changed their minds. I think of the 100+ comments when I saw it all of it was pretty much Sony bashing, funny how I dident see anyone defend it as most people would expect some idiot would. Coincedently the video was taken down, fortunately for those sony fans that missed it.

The whole site is down now. Sony definitely pulled the plug on that marketing. A fan would've kept it up. Who would buy a domain name and server space, create all the pages, install the blog software, etc, and then just take it down? That makes it even more obvious it really was Sony.

Or not heh just watched it, its acctually a pretty funny spoof of sonys "ad".

lol, I liked the part about the exploding batteries.

Dan East

[James S]

Red Steel could have been a 9/10 game with one simple control addition: flick the remote twice to turn 90 degrees in the direction of flicking very rapidly. Like a spin jump in place. It would have made the game much more fast paced and playable. Having to turn with the remote at the edge of the screen is ridiculously slow. This is a simple oversight. I hope they make a second FPS with this addition.

[sponge]

What happens when you're just trying to turn and you start spinning in 90 degree increments?

Having had played around with several of those control styles on the PC with my Wiimote, I can safely say that the idea that CoD3/Red Steel have is going to be the best way to aim for quite some time.

[RedruM]

What happens when you're just trying to turn and you start spinning in 90 degree increments?

Having had played around with several of those control styles on the PC with my Wiimote, I can safely say that the idea that CoD3/Red Steel have is going to be the best way to aim for quite some time.

No.. I'm 200% sure there are much better ways. Simplist one I've thought of, take the classic Goldeneye's controls, where you hold a button to aim in place, and replace that with the wiimote aim, while you move, turn and strafe using standard controls. Second, use the gyros in the nunchuck to look around, stick to move, and the pointer on the wiimote to aim. Third and most radical, have the thumbstick mapped as a pov (perhaps through a held down button), so you have direct 360 access to looking forward, backward, left, and right, that combined with the wiimote for aiming should be pretty much as good as it gets.

I could get quite in depth with my ideas but doing so gets quite time consuming. If they wanted to update Red Steels current controls they could simply add a speed modifier, that you can hold to speed up turning and reduce the bounding box, or a direct/centered mouse style control button, when held centers the crosshairs and moves the whole screen like a standard PC FPS.

I need to get a bluetooth connector for my pc, thats the only thing keeping me from playing around with my wiimote on pc, hopefully they have, or will have a lot of emulation/control options available to play with.

[sponge]

Trying to use the tilt and the pointer at the same time with any reasonable sense of accuracy is horrible. It won't work, and I've played with the pointer/tilt/nunchuk/gesture functionality all at once.