Bewiiver

Monday, November 20, 2006

Would it be unfair to say that the best part about the Wii is all the awful puns we get to make? I mean, the sound "we" appears in a lot of words in the English language. "Xbox" doesn't rhyme with anything, and PS3 is an acronym. Piece of Shit Three? Point of Sale Tree? It doesn't have the same ring. But "Wii"? There's something you can milk for a long, long time.

And, I'm done (except for the title of this article, which will live forever). My take on the Wii, in short, is that it is magnificent. Nintendo has filled a very real niche in the gaming industry. I really predict that they will capture the non-gamers with this system. The motion controls are both more intuitive than what we're used to (for the most part) and more refined than that crap you see at stores that you just plug into your TV.

But, to be somewhat fair, let's start with the negatives. When you first take the system out of the box you have to run a software update. Okay, fine, the Xbox 360 did that too, no big deal. The issue with the Wii is that it took foreeeever. Granted, I did this at 2:00 PM on launch day, but it took us two hours to update that bastard. Thank goodness I had a few funny episodes of Robot Chicken to watch, or we would have killed ourselves. The Xbox must have taken about 30 seconds to update the first time. Lame, Nintendo. Laaame.

Now, the motion controls are great, but they're unpredictably laggy. Moving the cursor around the screen goes through phases of smooth motion and jerkiness. I can't figure out what causes it, or how to alleviate it. We turned the sensitivity up to max but that didn't correct the problem. It doesn't happen much in games, but the main UI is wonky.

My other complaints about the Wii are fairly benign. Once again, Nintendo underestimated demand of its component video cables; good luck getting your Wii in progressive scan, because those things don't exist here on planet Earth. Wiimotes and nunchucks are also hard to come by. Not impossible, like the cables, but you had to move fast on launch day to grab anything. I wondered if I would be kicking myself for not buying more accessories, and here I am.

And now for the good stuff. I thought the smartest thing Nintendo did was bundle a game with their system, and hoo boy am I glad to be right about that. Wii Sports is the killer app for the Wii. No question about that. The pick-up-and-play-ability of their Baseball, Golf, Bowling and Boxing games is astounding. It feels like the real sport... so much so that you wonder if you're on your way to becoming less of a real person by playing this remarkable digital simulation instead of going outside and doing it for real (and, now that it's winter, freezing your ass off). Bowling is probably the best of them so far. Once you get the hang of it (which takes about three minutes), you feel like a champ. No uncomfortable shoes, no overpriced hot dogs, no lame victory animations on the scoreboard; just you, your friends, and an infinite supply of clean balls and pins.

Another awesome title for the Wii is Trauma Center: Second Opinion. First off, that subtitle rocks. Second of all, this is how you do a surgery game. You get eight tools and use the Wiimote to cut incisions, draw blood, remove tumors, and roll bandages over wounds. It knocks Operation out of the freaking park. The feel of it, like Wii Sports, is so real that it makes me want to... well, terrible things.

Zelda: Twilight Princess is good. Probably. I guess. Like Suikoden V and Final Fantasy XII, Zelda takes a long time to get started. But unlike those games, in Zelda you have to play through the introduction, what you might call the "tedious" part of the game. I'm not averse to the Teenage Boy in Small Happy Village plot, but Zelda's towns (or at least the starter town) are freaking biological Rube Goldberg devices.

Example: the shopkeeper lady is upset because her cat is missing. As the only person in this town whose feet are not glued to the ground, it was my job to find the cat. This is what I assumed, because she didn't indicate a reward for getting the cat and there was no "GET CAT" objective anywhere I could find. So we walked around and found the cat at a pier, staring at fish.

When you run towards the cat it flees from you. I tried herding the cat back towards the shop, but to no avail. So I say, "up yours, cat" and pull out my fishing rod to try some fishing. The instant I unpack the rod the cat jumps to attention and is right behind me. As I walk around the cat follows. Okay, fine, we've got an awfully smart and single-minded cat here. With the cat I tow I walk back to the shop and talk to the lady. She misses her cat and wonders where it could be. I stare at the cat behind me, then back at the lady. I talk to her again. She still doesn't see the bloody cat.

I walk out of the shop, the cat on my heels. At Sunshine's behest I go fishing. Using the Wiimote for fishing is pretty good, up until the point you've caught the fish, because then you have to hold the remote above your head for five seconds. That does not feel like fishing to me, my friend. Anyway, I caught a fish, was congratulated by the game and told that my biggest fish record would be saved in some journal somewhere. Fantastic. Then it says to press A to release the fish. I press A, and the fish flops back into the water.

I look back and the cat is still staring at me. Sorry cat; the game told me to release the fish. But her pleading polygonal eyes warmed my heart and I caught another fish. This time, instead of doing what the game says and pressing A, I pressed B. Lo and behold, the fish flopped right into the cat's mouth. We then watched a little animation of the cat running back into the lady's shop. If I was Link I would have snapped my rod in two at that point.

So Zelda bugs me a bit. I want a Master Sword and access to the full game world now. But I'm just a rebel like that. Happily, the virtual console was up and running, so I could revel in Mario 64 and F-Zero to my heart's delight. When I ran through the Big Blue track in my hovercraft I felt 12 years old all over again.

There's a lot more to the Wii than just this, but you really have to see it for yourself. I'm a bewiiver. Won't you be one too?