Tag Archive for 'wii'

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Wii Play for Nintendo Wii – Review

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I got Wii Play from Amazon.com yesterday. The main selling point is that it comes with a wiimote and costs $50, so the game itself is worth $10. It comes with a bunch of minigames, much like Wii Sports, but they’re not all sports.

Out of the nine, I’d say 3 or 4 are actually fun to play.

The Shooting Range game is not Duck Hunt, which makes me sad. Basically you just shoot stuff. Sometimes the Duck Hunt ducks will fly by and you can shoot them, but otherwise you just hit targets.

Find Mii is lame, unless you enjoy finding people in crowds. Table Tennis is really weak, because you can only control the horizontal action of the paddle. Tennis in Wii Sports is about 100 times better, and it comes with the Wii when you buy it! Pose Mii is also pretty boring.

Laser Hockey is actually very fun. The graphics are cool, and who doesn’t like air hockey? I need to get a friend to play this one with me, since the CPU is kind of dumb. Billiards is good too. It’s not quite ready to be its own game, but I enjoyed it (and I actually played it more than once).

Fishing is worthless. This looks like a tech demo. An unfun tech demo. Charge is kind of okay, and very surreal. I like how it uses the wiimote, at least. Tanks is also very fun with the nunchuck. I imagine getting 4 players would make this very, very fun.

In the end, if you’re looking to get an extra wiimote anyway, then Wii Play isn’t a bad buy. If you already have enough controllers, I don’t think it’s worth $50 for the game. There’s some good games, and there’s some not so good games. I personally think Wii Sports is more fun. Laser Hockey might be worth $10 by itself though.

Nintendo Wii Component Cables: Impressions

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After getting my Wii, I immediately noticed that the cables that came with it were only the normal RCA crap ones. I have an HD capable TV, so I was pretty peeved. I went to Play-Asia.com and ordered the cheapest component cables. I ordered ‘em on the 23rd and they came on the 31st, so it took about a week.

So far, I’m fairly impressed. After switching the Wii from 480i to 480p, the difference is pretty noticeable. Before, I could see the picture getting blurry where the cursor was moving. It was kinda weird. With the component cables, that doesn’t happen anymore.

I tried playing Zelda: Twilight Princess. There’s a huge difference with the cables. Before it was super blurry, and now it’s somewhat jaggy. Sure, the antialiasing could use work, but it still looks 100% better.

If you have a Wii and a TV that takes component input, you MUST get cables. These ones were like $13, shipping included.

Wii Sports – Baseball

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So I was playing with my new Wii. The sports game that comes with it is really fun. One game that I suck at in real life, but can do okay in with Wii sports is Baseball. Unfortunately, I just lost my first game. I think the game gets harder as your skill level progresses.

The first game, I got like, 11 runs or something. And there’s only 3 innings! I’d say that Wii Baseball is probably the most physically challenging, since you’re either flinging the remote as fast as possible when pitching, or doing an actual bat swing when batting. Eventually I got tired of doing the whole “hey batter batter” thing and just used one hand. I still use two when I’m not sore, though.

During my first loss, I found out that there’s a mercy rule. Yep, when you have 0 runs and the opponent has 5, it’s time to just give up. This is pretty much crap, since on my first game, I won by like, 10 runs or so. I totally would’ve made a sick comeback, too. Stupid Wii baseball…

I Finally Got A Nintendo Wii! Wii First Impressions.

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That’s right! Two months after the Wii was released in America, I finally got it! Yesterday was some kind of national Wii holiday. Apparently 1/21/06 was the day for all retailers to hold the Wii. This is probably why I couldn’t find one in stock for the past two weeks since my last attempt.

I decided to head over to Circuit City around 9am. That’s an hour before they open. I was surprised to see two guys standing there. They told me that the Circuit City guys only had 2 Wiis to sell to the general public, and that the others would go to their pre-order customers. False Advertsising!!! I’m probably going to file a compaint.

Next I got to Best Buy around 9:30. I was under the impression that the store would open at 11am, since that’s what the online store checker thing said. The opening time was actually 10am. So I got there only 30 minutes early. I saw a pretty long line and counted around 38 people in front of me. Still, I figured they might have a ton; they’re Best Buy.

So once 10am rolls along, they start herding us in there like cattle. One person remarked that it was a good sign that they didn’t hand out tickets. There must be enough for everyone in line. We snaked around the store until we got to the video game section. There we waited for each person to pick up a Wii and move along. It was kind of like the Soup Nazi thing from Seinfeld. When I finally get to the Wiis, there are about 3 left after mine. My linemates and I all share some high tens.

In my daze of my accomplishment, I decided to also pick up Legend of Zelda: Twighlight Princess at full price. This is even though I know I can get it cheaper. I’m a tool like that. I didn’t even use a gamer’s gift card…

As far as the Wii goes, it’s pretty darn cool. The remote control is neat because it can give you some vibration feedback when you’re going over buttons. The IR sensor is still kind of inaccurate, but maybe I need to do some more calibration.

Wii Sports is insanely fun. I could probably play the bowling game for hours at a time. That is, if my arm wasn’t so sore right now. My mom even played it, and did really well in bowling. My dad couldn’t quite get the hang of releasing the button before throwing the ball.

Zelda is pretty cool, but the graphics seem kind of lacking. I’m gonna go get a component cable and see if that doesn’t help things. I think the Wii graphics are only slightly better than the Gamecube, which was actually the strongest console of the last generation…

Another cool thing is that the Wii has full backwards compatibility for the Gamecube. You just flip open the top and find some memory card slots and controller ports. I really wish there was an option to save to internal memory, though. It kind of blows that I need to keep using the very small Gamecube memory card.

All in all, I think the Wii is very cool. Hopefully the good games will keep rolling in. I might have to pick up Trauma Center or Wario Ware. Wii Play is coming out soon, too.

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