As I mentioned a few weeks ago, I got a Nintendo Wii. If I haven't been posting lately, it's because I've been playing it so much. Besides the included game, Wii Sports, I also purchased Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess. And yesterday, I got Super Mario Bros for the Wii's Virtual Console.
The good is that the system is fairly brilliant. Using the "wiimote" to control things is very intuitive. I love how the wiimote twitches as you pass over the border to a button, as it you are really feeling a raised button. I like how it feels natural for so many games, whether swinging it in tennis, or using it to bowl. It has just the right heft and feel. The concept of Miis, generating little characters that look however you want them to is fairly brilliant. I'm unsure how they can be worked into that many games, but it is fun and social, especially when you can send your Miis to your friends.
The bad is that the UI can be inconsistent. How do you return to the Wii's main menu? The button, if it exists, seems to be in a different place at each time. Another problem is that sharing your Miis requires at least four or five steps. You have to send a 12 digit number to your friend, they have to send a 12 digit number back, you have to enable sharing of your miis, and then enable wii sharing again in another menu. Oh, and you have to enable WiiConnect24. The sharing of numbers is OK, obviously a guard against friend spam and undesirable intrusions. But once you have established the two way friendship, your Miis should be able to wander back and forth between consoles. I imagine it like the paintings in Harry Potter. I just feel it would be so cool is some of my Miis would just wander off the screen and really be somewhere else for a while, then wander back, etc. All this is possible. The Wii is updatable, so anything can change.
The Legend of Zelda: Twlilight Princes is a very good game. The graphics are excellent, the play is innovative, but what is really great is the graphic design. The new monsters look like they are out of Tron, it is a wonderful new look. What I'd like to have seen is more variety in gameplay, though. Playing the game is a sequence of going to a dungeon, finding the boss key, fighting and beating the boss, then going to some new area and then that dungeon, etc. One notable exception is the Snowpeak area, which is different and memorable. The dungeon doesn't seem like a dungeon, it seems like a castle, which is what it is. And it doesn't seem like some strange quest to merely get keys and get to some boss, it has more of a story in it. And to get to the castle you have to snowboard on your shield, which is very fun. If the whole game was like this, I think it would be consirably better. Not that there aren't many cool little parts to the game. There are. In fact, probably the best part for me was the spaghetti-western inspired assault on a little town with just a bow and arrow. Even the music is very Morricone-inspired at that part. Very cool.
Posted by ahyatt at December 26, 2006 11:58 AM