I get to play the Wii on Monday night!
 

I'm so excited! I'm not generally into console games, but I'm surprisingly excited about this! Anyone else here played the Wii, yet? Any specific games I should have a go at?

Be sure to try out Super Mario Galaxy. It's being made by Nintendo's relatively new Tokyo studio, who are masters of platformer control. Judging by the quality of their last game, I can guarantee that you will be in awe.

Mario Galaxy definately looks pretty cool, but I'm not sure if they will have that there for us. I'm under the impression they'll only have launch titles for us to play, but I really do wanna see the new Mario!

I'm so jealous. Play everything they let you get your paws on. Then come back and tell us how great it was. (If it sucks, dont tell me. I'll be crushed.)

:D Have a great big dish of awesomeness with the Wii, Toefsie! Make sure to tell us what it's like.

I'm gonna do the same thing next week on monday. I don't think they'll have Mario Galaxy or Metroid however, which is a huge shame. They'll have Twilight Princess, but for some reason I'm not that excited about that. Maybe because I already know it'll be good and what it'll be like, whereas Mario and Metroid are more of a mystery and thus more exciting to me at this point.

So, how was the Wii to play?

crap?

Lets see what I can remember.

We didn't get that long on the games, probably a couple of minutes on each. And they didn't have many games. They had: Wii Sports, Wario, Zelda, Excite Truck, and Wii Play.

The first one I got to play was Excite Truck. I don't know that steering the Wiimote left and right takes full advantage of its abilities, but it was really fun nonetheless and the first thing that I really noticed was how 'smooth' it feels controlling the trucks with the Wiimote. It was really good to control with.

That said, and Excite Truck being fun, I don't think this sort of game should be sold as a full priced game. It's good fun, but there's not much depth to it, and not much else to do. (Though I did only play it for a few moments).

Wii Tennis was awesome fun. I played a couple of rounds against some random guys I hadn't met before, and we got right on into it, swinging the racket and having a good old laugh. I don't know to what degree the machine detects our movements, but once you get into it... you end up swinging all over the place, jumping and lunging for the ball. It's really a bit of fun.

I didn't get a chance at Wario, but the next game I played was Bowling, and again it was really fun. Got a strike on my first shot! Zelda, at only a few minutes, I can't really say, I'd need more time with it.

Next is where my concerns start to kick in. It was a shooting game, not sure what it was, two players and we were just shooting at things going through the air on the one screen. Duck Hunt or something maybe? A minigame all the same. Granted I was standing up, but my hand and wrist were hurting after only playing it for a few minutes.

It may be different sitting down, but I can see there being problems with this in the future. How many games will there be where you can sit down and enjoy it for a few hours without giving yourself some sort of RSI?

I moved onto Pool & Air Hockey (I think it was) from Wii Play next. Again, they were both fun, but Air Hockey was giving me major wrist/hand pains after only a few minutes.

For the most part it was mostly mini-games we played, and from the release line-up, it seems there will be quite a bit of that (Rayman, I believe, is mini games) and I just hope they find good ways of utilising the Wiimote for full length games, without it becoming gimicky.

I can't help but feel that once people get over the gimickyness of Wii Play, Wii Sports and the like, that there's going to need to be some really clever stuff to help the Wii stand up to the likes of the 360, and the PS3.

I've already heard that games like Splinter Cell is just a port of the last gen (PS2, etc) version and I really think that just porting games over to the Wii isn't going to do the machine justice, and unless a lot of good games come out for it, I can see it becoming the next GameCube in a year or two - that is, a tiny section in the back of stores, with a very limited selection of games to choose from, with people buying the Wii primarily for their next hit of Mario/Zelda/Metroid.

I just hope there will be some full length, game-games. I generally only play Adventures still, so I'm hoping there will be some good story based stuff because so far from launch it seems that Zelda is the only thing on offer, and that doesn't interest me much.

I was also surprised about the Wii sensor bar. Hehe, call me stupid, maybe I thought the machine was just going to magically detect what the controller does, but I had no idea you had to attach this sensor bar above/below the screen.

The Wiimote is also a lot smaller than I thought it would be. I had thought it would be similar in size to your average remote control, but it's much smaller. It's really good, though, in that it doesn't really take any getting used to (with the basic mini games, at least). The Wii, well I knew that would be small.

Anyway, the verdict is in: The Wii was really, awesome and fun to play, really good times. But to me, it's yet to prove that it can do more than mini-games, and do it well.

Frankly, if it turns out you can't rest your hand when playing Wii games, that's the end of Wii.

Still sounds like fun to me - even if the RSI aspect means it has to be limited to a 'fits and bursts' kind of fun. Definitely looking forward to its release - first time I've been even remotely interested in a console in about a decade.

Thanks for the rundown, Toefur.

The RSI bit (besides the possibility of insufficient support from publishers) is the only thing that really worries me about the Revolution. Still, surely it can't be any worse than God of War or Fahrenheit's button mashing mini-games.

I take it you haven't played Donkey Kong: Jungle Beat? Playing it for long periods of time was hard on my palms, my wrists and sometimes my whole arm. And it always kept me coming back for more. I'm very excited about the thought of having to work a little to play these games- it'll make it all so much more rewarding. I think you're overstating the problem- When I took piano lessons, my hands were occasionally getting sore, but when they did I just had to take a break for a minute and I could jump right back in. Same thing here. I just hope there are games where you strap wiimotes to your legs and jump! That would be so much fun.

Anyone get a Wii yet? I was at my Gamestop for the midnight launch over the weekend, and it was CRAZY!!! Also haven't slept much, so busy playing Rayman and Wii Sports, I'm a "Wii" bit addicted, lol.... I love it!

I got one, Wii Sports is an absolute blast multiplayer. My arms are a little sore today after so much boxing yesterday though.

Yeah, the first two I played were bowling and boxing...you're right, the boxing can be exhausting, lol. Today I tried baseball for the first time. Pitched a LOT of foul balls!

The only one I didnt play alot of was bowling. I tested it out, and enjoyed it, but we really got into the multiplayer of the others. They're all awesome though. Really a cool pack-in that shows off the Wii's possibilities. (not graphically, but gameplay-wise)
Monkey Ball is good too, if you liked the originals. I'm disappointed in the new Monkey Target, but other than that I don't have any complaints.
I haven't even opened the cellophane on Zelda yet..

I like how Wii games are basically dominating GameSpot's Most Popular. Judging by the scores the launch games have received, it seems the Wii has some potential. I was expecting reviews to be rougher considering the relatively new, untried technology.

Jake and some others from Telltale managed to get ahold of one. I was out of town on Sunday, so I missed out :(

So, what did they say about it? Good? Bad? Hard on your arms?