Simon Bullen's Weblog

Wii

The Wii night which should have happed last Friday but was cancelled do to a colleges leaving do scheduled on the same evening happened last night. I already have had the "it rocks" phone calls from my mate so now it was time to test the console for my self.

I arrived at his house and saw the glow of the television through the front window, getting no response from the doorbell I myself in and was immediately hit by the heat and smell of electronics. I could tell that this television and console had been on for some time and my mate was too engrossed in playing legand of zelda than answering his door.

The console looks nice and tidy sitting vertically in its base, the controller sensor bar can hardly be seen sitting on top of the television, in fact it took me about an hour to notice it was there at all. The controllers look and feel well built but as has been reported the thin cord attaching the controller to the wrist looks very flimsy. The Nunchuck is an interesting gadget and in certain games gives your other hand plenty to do.

After prising my mate off the console, we went back to some simple yet entertaining games so I could learn the ropes.
Wii sports was loaded, this comprises of golf,baseball, boxing, tennis and bowling. Each player can build a caricature of them selves and use that in each game, these are called Mii's, (they can load these onto the handset and take them around there friends houses to compete against) The controller works great for all these sporting games, the most interesting was the bowling where a rotation of the wrist at the last minute can put a nice spin on the ball, tennis was fun and would be quite a laugh with 4 players, boxing was quite energetic and golf was quite true to life.

We then progressed onto Call of Duty 3, now I have never rated FPS games on consoles, these are best left to the PC and I have to admit that this is still true. The Wii console has managed to overcome some of the issues by using the controller with the Nunchuck but at points in the game I thought I was going to be sick as the screen roted wildly around and around, all in all not a good experience.

My rating of this console is good to excellent depending on the game you are playing, the Wii sports excels, Call of duty 3 sucks. Nice touches such as the Wii community (this is stuff like Wii e-mail and Wii news) will help build up the popularity of the console.All in all good clean family fun at a sensible price.

Posted at 10:06AM Dec 14, 2006 by Simon Bullen in Gaming  |  Comments[1]