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Nintendo Wii: First Impressions

I've been able to put in about 4 hours with the Wii since it arrived Monday morning.  The quick verdict is the Wii lives up to lofty expectations.  There are definietly some minor issues with the controller sensitivity at times, but it's nothing that really distracts from the overall enjoyment. The initial system update also took far too long (Upwards of 30 minutes) but i'll attribute that to Nintendo Server overload. I was completely unable to find the Nunchuck controller for my additional Wii-motes, so all my multiplayer experiences were with Wii-Mote only. Now i'll give a very quick rundown of the games I was able to play yesterday. I will post full reviews once I get to put some more time into the games.

 Wii Sports

Wii


This was the first game I threw in, and it's not that great as a single player experience.  Tennis is ok, but not controlling your character will cause some confusion as to which way to swing the controller (Forehand or backhand). Baseball is what everyone expects, simple batting, simple pitching and no fielding or baserunning.  Bowling is by far the best on the disk, especially in practice mode where you'll eventually try to bowl down 100 pins at a time.  Golf is suprisingly realistic in the control scheme and will probably not work well for non-golfers.  Boxing is alright, but it turns into a "who can shake the controllers faster" experience.

Wii Sports as a Multi Player experience is a completely different, and much better, experience.  Tennis instantly becomes tons of fun when playing doubles side by side.  Baseball is also boosted when one player is pitching to the other.  Bowling gets better the more people you have at the lanes. Golf is still golf, single player or no. I wasn't able to try Boxing due to lack of extra nunchuck.

 

Madden 07

Madden

I've only put in about 20 minutes with Madden as I only went through practice mode and a couple mini games. I can say with confidence that this is the best Madden to date and should prove entertaining to a much wider audience than any other football game to date.  The controls are simple and will come naturally to almost everyone. Passing is a bit easier, but the real improvements come in the Running game. Jukes are done with a quick shake of the nunchuck, stiff arms with a flick of the Wii-mote. Lack of a second nunchuck prevented me from playing this multiplayer.

 

Super Monkey Ball: Banana Blitz

Monkeyball


I have not played the single player game yet. I have tried about 10 of the 50 or so mini-games. I am dissapointed to say that i'm unimpressed thus far. Out of the games I've played, only about 2 made me want to play them again.  The control on some of the mini games is not explained well enough and seems broken at first. After a couple plays, the control schemes come, but more than half of the games I played didn't deserve a second shot.  I have to put more time into this as Monkey Ball was my favorite multi-player experience on the Gamecube. For now though, i'm a bit disappointed. 

 

Rayman Raving Rabbids 

rayman

This is an absolute MUST BUY game for anyone with a Nintendo Wii.  You will not laugh harder at a video game. Ever. I've only played through about 10 of the 70+ mini games, and 9 of them were Amazing! (The 10th was just a bit too hard for me. How do you throw a cow 60 feet?) If you own a Nintendo Wii, please do yourself a favor and at least rent Rayman.  I doubt i'll have more fun with a mult-player game this year.

That's all i've got for now.

Mahalo 

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Published Nov 21 2006, 02:58 PM by Raul Duke
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Comments

 

e. said:

I got my wii sunday morning and can say it lived up to my expectations. We have had a lot of fun playing multiplayer tennis and mostly bowling. Its a lot of fun. boxing is crappy, golf is pretty good, baseball is ok.

Zelda - of course. ive playe donly about 30 minutes so no real comment yet.  I love playing with the nunchuk control though as its nice and comfortable.

excite truck. Awesome, a lot of fun but not worth 50. but awesome, a must buy for 20.

rayman - very, very fun, but we had trouble finding additional nunchuks too so we couldnt play multiplayer.

love my wii. ive stayed off the online stuff  temporarily as they work out bugs. my initial update took less then 10 minutes so it sounds like you had some high traffic issues.

November 21, 2006 1:00 PM
 

Raul Duke said:

Excite Truck is tops on my Gamefly list, i'll be sending back Madden and Trauma Center pretty soon to pick that and Tony Hawk up.

November 21, 2006 2:49 PM
 

e. said:

Im very interested in trauma center, how is it?

November 21, 2006 3:22 PM
 

Raul Duke said:

It's alot like the DS version. So if you've played that, it's OK. If you haven't played it, the WII version is excellent.  

November 21, 2006 4:18 PM
 

sauer said:

Yeah, I'm back!! and I have my Wii! Aimee and I played through all of Wii Sports and had a blast. I think Tennis and Bowling are my favorite, but don't knock boxing. We had a lot of fun. The only Wii Sports game I don't care for is Baseball, it's just boring, much like the real thing.

On another note, I wish I would have known you guys were having problems finding nunchucks, when I went to the Nintendo World Store in NYC they had hundreds of them everywhere. I was able to snag some componet cables as well. 480p makes a difference.

I played Zelda for about an hour, so I really can't say much except it felt like I was playing Zelda.

Looking forward to playing Rayman, it's on the top of my list, Excite Truck is second. Of course when Wario comes out in Jan. i'll be all over it.

Yeah Wii is finally here!

November 22, 2006 9:39 AM
 

Raul Duke said:

Sweet! Boxing is nothing but "Shake Shake Shake" one player, but it may be better 2 player. I just got my shipment of Nunchucks from Amazon.com, so i'll be able to report on the multi player much better this weekend.  

So how was NY?

November 22, 2006 11:36 AM

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