My First Taste Of Wii

posted by Jaitu at 12:45

Kahoona7 filled my house with the wonder of his Wii last night.
The first thing I was surprised by was size. Not of the console unit, it perfectly fits the 'three DVD cases' description and is no bigger than my external DVD writer. The Wiimote controllers however are much smaller than either printed or TV ads would have you expect. Imagine something about the size of a cheap Nokia handset. Now halve the width and make it a little thicker. That's the Wiimote. It sits very comfortably in the hand and I can imagine the A button and B trigger being placed about right for most users no matter what their age. The poorly named Sensor Bar (it emits but does not sense) is also only about half the size I expected and sat unobtrusively on top of the TV. Naomi, who joined us later in the evening, didn't even realise it was there until Kahoona7 was packing it away again.
We worked our way through the Wii Sports pack (Bowling, Boxing, Baseball, Tennis and Golf) which all proved to be very entertaining. I suspect the fun factor ramps up when you have a live competitor but can also see these games being a suitable distraction for anyone with some time to kill. Each of the five games is a simple implementation of their real world counterpart. And each acts as an effective tech demo of the motion sensing capabilities of the Wiimote. None of them actually make use of the pointing mode during game play, it is only evident when clicking buttons to make selections on screen. The tilt sensing seems pretty accurate and it doesn't take long for use of the Wiimote to become quite natural feeling. The additional WiiPlay game collection adds further tech demo titles including a number of pointer based games which further illustrate the potential for this console to shine. The pointing is very easy and because of the sensor bar requires none of the calibration that older 'light guns' necessitated. Instead all the calibration takes places subconsciously in your own head. The on-screen cursor isn't exactly where you're pointing the end of the Wiimote at but it's close enough and moves with you such that you don't question it.

As TechMaster said before this feels more like a machine to have fun with the family or friends whenever they come over and not so much a "Gamer" system. Based on these titles I would have to agree but I believe it could hold it's own in the current market if the software is right. The potential for the control system (with the nun chuck attached) to bridge the gap between the traditional console gamepad and the PC style keyboard-and-mouse control schemes is obvious. The real test will be how more traditional games titles fare on this format as I don't see it surviving on party titles. I would be very interested in trying out an FPS or Need For Speed style game. We already know that graphically the system is at a perceived disadvantage but there are other qualities on offer here that, at present, cannot be found elsewhere. As the DS has proven against the PSP, it's not all about horsepower.

I will certainly still buy one. Naomi demands it.