Wiiiiiiiiiiiiii

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Hi guys. Just thought I'd type a post from my brand new Wii for fun. These babies rock!

 

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How cool, care to give us a personal review?

 

Don't wake him ^^ from what I have seen he needs his beauty sleep

 

LOL. That was the last thing I did before I went to bed.

I'm not the best at reviewing things but I'll give it a go.

Mine came with the standard Wii Sports, one remote and nunchuck and Zelda. I've got a second remote and Wii Play on order, should arrive on Tuesday.

My first thoughts on opening the box was how small the console was. It looks better on it's side but necessity dictates I have it horizontal and it just looks like a small CD or DVD player, nothing special but it is in a nice and cool iPod white (disclaimer: iPod is a registered trademark of Apple Corporation inc. I am in no way making a claim of ownership of the copyright of the words "iPod", "pod" or the letter i). The sensor bar is tiny and is completey discrete sitting under my big TV. They've given you about three different ways of mounting it including sticky pads or its own little stand.[UPDATE]My girlfriend just read this post and said she didn't even know the sensor bar existed until she just read about it!

Set up is amazingly simple. The remote that comes with it is automatically paired to the console (I believe it uses a combination of Bluetooth and IR to communicate). Adding extra remotes is just a matter of pushing a button on the console and then pressing two buttons on the remote. This is where the first of my "wow, they've thought of everything moments came", you can temporarily pair your remote with another console without overwriting the original pairing, so you can take it to a friend's house and the pairing reverts back as soon as you turn the friend's console off.

Setting up the TV and sound settings are pretty standard, you can navigate the menus in the standard way of using the directional buttons on the remote or the cool way by pointing the remote at the screen and moving a cursor around like a mouse.

Setting up the intregrated .11b wireless caused me fewer problems than any PC I've ever tried to set wireless up on. It supports all the encryption standards including WPA2. Luckily, I was forewarned about remembering to switch my WAP to b & g standards instead of just g. As soon as it connected it performed a full system update. This is my only gripe, as it took nigh on 20 minutes. I don't feel the .11b connection is making full use of my 8mbs ADSL connection and I don't think including .11g would have excluded many people from using it, especially given the impending arrival of a USB based wired adapter.

So, your Wii is out of the box, set up and fully updated. On to the fun stuff. You've got several "channels" to choose from (with more to come I'm sure). The disc channel starts up whatever game is in the drive, more on those later. The Mii channel is basically creating avatars and corresponding player accounts. These are fully utilised in Wii sports but I'm not aware of any other games that use them yet (I suspect Wii Play might though). It's good fun making them all the same, and surprisingly easy to get a good likeness as there are plenty of different options (hairstyles, noses etc). You can even transfer a Mii to a remote and use it on another console and, if you've got the Wii set up to communicate with the 'net whenever it wants to, your Miis will apparantely go out and mingle with Miis on the consoles of your registered friends. I haven't seen this in action yet as I don't know anyone else who owns a Wii.

There is a channel for viewing and editing photos from an SD card which I've yet to use but it looks as simple and effective as everything else on the Wii.

Two channels which are added via software updates are the News and Forecast channels. These are basically RSS readers showing the news and weather but they are done so well. Both give you the ability to spin a satellite image of the globe around, zoom in and see the news and weather in any location, all using the remote in a point-and-click way. Unbelievably, it's so much fun it was a good hour before I even got round to putting a game in the drive. It makes me think also that it's only a matter of time that they add a Google Earth Channel.

One more "official" channel is the Wii shop. You buy points at the going rate of 1000 for £7 and can buy and download games from old systems. Now, when I heard about this I thought it was going to be old NINTENDO systems, but no! You can acutally buy the Megadrive version of Sonic the Hedgehog! How cool is that? There are only two N64 games available at the moment but there are loads of NES games. At the time of writing this, I don't remember seeing any SNES games and I wonder if that's not because Nintendo are making quite a nice living porting SNES games onto the Gameboy Advance. The cheapest games cost 500 points and the N64 ones are currently costing 1000 so it's not badly priced. All these old games, we are warned, are likely to require a Wii Classic Controller, available from all good stockists at £15. I would assume you could use a GameCube pad with them as well as the Wii has four ports for these and is fully backwards compatible with GameCube games. Not owning a GameCube, I haven't been able to put this to the test yet though. As an aside, my gf told me when she was shopping for my Wii, Game were offering a GameCube for £20 with every Wii bought. How pointless is that?

The final thing you can download from the shopping channel is a free beta version of a web browser based on Opera, and this is where Nintendo's foresight is really showing. The browser is very simple to use, you have your list of favourites which you can add to, entering web addresses is relatively simple with the on-screen keyboard and you can zoom in on pages and it scales text and pictures very nicely. Most flash based sites seem to work, there are even a few designed with the Wii in mind such as wiicade.com - flash games modified with the remote in mind. Utube works OK but again, sometimes the .11b connection shows it's true colours by stalling at times, something that never happens with my PC that uses a 108 mbps wireless connection.
Now what I imagine is the best thing about it for most people - Orb works fully on the browser. Well done Nintendo, you just sold me an under the TV media center for £180! Orb streams music, photos and video from my PC perfectly, and as you can set it up to work on internal LAN without going through Orb's servers, it's pretty fast. You can use Orb to stream from a PC based TV tuner but not having one I've been unable to put this to the test. However, if it works to quote an article from the Register:

LMAO.

The one worry of the browser, and might be addressed with the full version, is malware. It seems to save cookies and cache pages, but there is no obvious anti spy-ware mechanism. Of course, viruses written for the PC are unlikely to have much affect on the Wii, but what about tracking cookies and things of that sort?

The Wii also has a message board where you can add memos to a pariticular day, email registered friends (only other Wii owners as far as I can see) and look at the stats of how much you've played each game each day.

OK so onto the games:

Wii Sports. It's impossible to imagine before hand how much fun this is. It's basically a demo disk to show you what the Wii is capable of. It includes simplified games of baseball, golf, tennis, boxing and bowling. They each have the standard variation on those sports as well as several challenge type games such as "hit the basball into this target area" type thing. All games are multi-player. Those like bowling and golf can be played by several people with one remote but others (tennis and boxing) will need multiple remotes. As I detest baseball as a sport, it's ironic that this is probably the game I find most fun. It really shows off the technical capabilities of the Wii's control system. The baseball bat moves perfectly in time with the remote. Hold the remote behind your head to take a swing, and even the angle you are holding your bat changes. You can do a daily fitness test where you are put through your paces in several games and told what your physical age is. The first attempt I was told I was akin to a 70 year old! Day 2 saw me get it down to 30 which is more like it as I'm 26. I think this drop was more to do with me getting used to the game rather than shedding several pounds overnight. However, it is very energetic and I can easily see that I could lose some weight if I keep at it regularly. No sign of me throwing the remote through the TV yet either. Of course, as with most games, the fun is in playing against a bitter enemy (or my girlfriend in my case). We've even been playing golf together and you see if I can ever get her onto a real golf course. I can't wait for the second controller to give a her a trashing on the tennis. Although only the gf and I have played it so far, I can see the Wii becoming the great leveller. My Dad is useless at computer games because he can't grasp the control system. Now there is no control system to master, it's just like real life. Want to hit a backhand? You don't have to remember what three button combination will do it, you just literally swing a backhand. Genius.

The fact that I am the world's biggest Zelda fan and I didn't start up Zelda for nearly 24 hours is testament to the quality of Wii Sports. Sadly, Zelda really shows up the difference between conventional games and games made for the Wii. As it was in production long before the Wii was even announced I can't complain, and the parts of the game that require the Wii remote to be used in a "non-standard" way (swinging your sword, shooting, fishing and so on) are done well but there doesn't seem to be enough of them. Although I've only played it for a couple of hours so that could change. Graphically it looks good, but I'm sure as development goes on, games will only start to look better. Apart from that, it's usual Zelda fayre; princess gets kidnapped, Link goes to rescue her and so and so forth. I've not really played it enough to discover any hidden depths but I like what I've seen so far.

Next on my wish-list is Red Steel - a first person sword-fighting game. The potential of that is making me drool.

One last thing to note, as a console aimed at families it has a very high level of parental control. Enter a pin and you restrict what type of games are played (based on age rating) access to the web and Wii shop.

So who should buy a Wii? Everyone! I truly believe, and have done since I first saw videos of the Wii in action, that this is the future of gaming. Forget your overpriced HD PS3s and XBox 360s. I've always been a believer in gameplay over graphics and the Wii oozes gameplay. It's virtual reality done properly. Driving games come with little plastic steering wheels to slip the remote into, you can buy a set of golf clubs and baseball bats for Wii sports, it's only a matter of time before someone brings out their own controller specific to a game (such a gun maybe). Nintendo have literally made a console with limitless possibilities.

Bags of fun.

 

Ive played on a Wii and i was well impressed. I only played the sports and i was so into the boxing. How realistic is it, and how much of a sweat does it get you into. I went off video games as the concept of sitting infront of a telly and pressing butttons was getting somewhat tedious.

Now that nintendo have brought this console out i will be getting one. Normally i cant stand golf or golf games, but how realistic it is this one, i love it. Ill be looking to gety zelda and red steel too as they look awsome

Eddie

 

Right on!

I've had mine since the release date 14th December. Still only have Wii sports and Wii play.

News channel has only just come online in the last week.

It really is the next generation of console. For the first time ever you can burn calories while playing!

I can't wait for what I think will be the best game of all time and probably sell more Wii's than anything else. I've been wating for it since I was a kid............................Those of you who have a Wii..............................IMAGINE..............................................

A new Starwars game where you can actually light sabre attack everything that moves.(while jumping all over your front room!)

Fingers crossed!

Check sig for details of my Wii if you want to test your Mii's out with mingle

 

Great idea, mines 5007 8167 2187 0702.

 

Thanks Baba, that review was superb - you win a gold star!

 

Thanks Mr Rinse, I didn't realise how long it was until I submitted it. One other thing I meant to say but forgot, the speaker on the remote is a great addition. There's nothing like swinging an imaginary baseball bat and actually hearing it wooshing past your head to add a sense of realism.

 

humm I have played one, but i'm more of a PS3 person myself (When it finally comes out in the UK) but I can see why people like it so much and I admit I had to tear myself away from Wii Tennis lol

 

LOL, how can you know you're a PS3 man when I doubt you can have played one? Great games are not solely about good graphics, it should be substance over style, that's what the Wii is all about.

 

humm i never recalled in saying i havn't played one which I have at the Cnet stores which have them running with RR 7 so yes i have played one and also I own a Gamecube & PS2 so its not like i'm a Sony fanboy, i personally think that Nintendo create the best games ever made, Zelda OOT, Mario 64 etc etc, but I just feel that the Wii is more for the casual gamers at the moment and is aimed at a different market than the PS3 & 360.

 

Fair enough, it was pure speculation on my part. Was that in the UK?

 

Another soul claimed by the Wii!

 

never speculate - that's another one of my motto's

 

I must be in quite a whimsical mood tonight.

 

Must get myself one! Never played on one, but it's certainly at the top of my wish list!

 

Do it! I just brought mine into work to kill a couple of hours on the night shift, even my old non-gaming, non-techy colleague enjoyed it.

Just ordered the component cables as it's generally held they make quite a difference in picture quality if your TV supports 480p. I think it will make quite a difference on big screens. Also, my second remote and Wii Play came yesterday. Tennis on Wii Sports is even more fun with two of you. Wii Play is not as good as Sports but has some nice little sub-games. The cow racing and ice hockey are cool, as is what is basically Duck Hunt from the NES that's been given an update.

I'm also now madly in love with Zelda, the initial disappointment I expressed in my previous review evaporated very quickly. Aiming the boomerang at multiple targets with the remote is cracking.