Wii Opinions

Having had some time with the Wii now I can offer some educated opinions on the hardware and functionality of the system. One of the things that struck me the most was how accurate the pointing can be. I had often seen videos of the Wii being used before, and for one reason or another, the pointer on screen was very shaky. However, after using it myself, I can safely say that you can really make it as accurate as you want - or at least, as accurate as you can hold the controller. Tilting the controller works flawlessly and never interferes with gameplay. Use of vast swinging motions, which one would expect when swinging a bat for example, don't really do much for accuracy and in actual fact, games are often played better with smaller motions. The only times I have had troubles is with bowling in Wii Sports and a couple of micro-games in Wario Ware, but I will concede that it is probably because I didn't know the timing or simply how to play those games respectively. Also, any game that requires the remote to be pushed towards the screen should be programed with a good deal of margin for error, since it is difficult to do with any degree of accuracy. Apart from those tiny issues, the controller works very much like you would expect it to, almost scarily so in some cases.

As for the games, Wii Sports is great for introducing people to the Wii. Including it as a pack-in with the console for North America and Europe was really the best thing Nintendo could have done and I wonder why they didn't just include it in the Japanese launch. The games in Wii Sports are obviously familiar and people who have never even played a game before can just pick up the remote and know how to play. The actions involved are what you'd expect them to be and nothing feels too odd or abstracted.

Wario Ware on the other hand relies almost entirely on abstraction and so non-gamers seem to shy away from it. I, however, prefer this game simply because the range of actions and tasks that it will give you are far more interesting. Combine this with bouts of Nintendo nostalgia and you've got a package perfect for long-time-gamers. This game is extremely Japanese though, even more so than usual, with Edo period-style writings and music backing up the different Wii-remote position explanations, I wonder just how they will change all of that for a western launch and if the atmosphere it creates will suffer as a result. Regardless, Wario Ware demonstrates a plethora of interesting ways in which to use the Wii-remote in a collection of games that are just fun to play.

In conclusion, I'm very pleased with what I've seen so far and can't wait to see how developers will use all the features available to them in the future. Less ports with tacked-on controls and more innovation, please!