Wii
Added: November 20th, 2006 (tagged with: nintendo, toys, video+games)
The Nintendo Wii was released Saturday night at midnight. I made my way over to the EB Games in Evanston at around 4 p.m. on Sunday. After eating dinner and taking the Red Line back into the city, I had my Wii all set up around 8 p.m.
The first thing I did, was play around in the Wii system menu. Changing default settings, viewing messages, and creating Mii characters for myself and Stephanie. Mii is a virtual world inside the Wii where you can build characters and send them off to other Wii systems connected to WiiConnect24 (which I don't have setup yet because the Internet has been down in my building for several days). After about 20 minutes of playing around with characters, it was time to start gaming.
Wii Sports
First up, Wii Sports, the game that was included with the Wii system. After inserting the disc backwards (hey, my Wii is standing vertically, it's hard to tell which way is up), I flipped it around and started playing my first Wii game.
Included within Wii Sports are: Baseball, Bowling, Boxing, Golf, and Tennis. Each game has three training exercises, and there is a Fitness program as well to tell you how old you play like (with 20 years old being the best score, in my first time through, I played at a 37 year old level).
I went through all of the training exercises in the game to get a quick feel for the Wii Remote and Nunchuck attachment. My favorite training programs so far are the Home Run practice in Baseball and the Picking Up Spares practice in Bowling. The way my apartment is set up (being really small), Golf and Boxing are a little difficult, but I will see how it goes as I get more familiar with the system.
Rampage
Earlier in the week, I had picked up my copy of Rampage: Total Destruction, and now that I finally have my Wii, I loaded in the disc and started up the game.
Rampage had the first cinema that I have seen in a Wii game. The opening few minutes was a 3D cinema explaining how the average citizens became monsters destroying cities around the world (note to self, do not drink soft drinks from Scum Labs).
Rampage was fun. Similar to the original games (which are included on the Wii disc), you control a human who has mutated into a giant monster. You climb building, eat people, and destroy everything. In the game, you can unlock characters by finding their frozen DNA within the city blocks. First city up: Las Vegas. The goal: destroy each city block within a specified amount of time. The result: smashing things = fun. I need to read through the Rampage instruction booklet to find out all of the moves I can do with the monsters to aid in my destruction.
Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess
And to wrap up the night, I popped in the Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess. I just had to see what the game looked like. I am busy playing Final Fantasy XII to be able to invest the time necessary into playing another RPG at the moment, so in depth game play will have to wait. I did start the game and successfully herded 10 goats into the barn while riding my horse, Epona. Sounds lame, but you need to learn how to ride and control your horse, so it is worth it. Again, I didn't play that much of the game yet, so no overall verdict, but I can't see a Zelda game being bad. The controls are pretty straight forward, the graphics are okay, but I have not gotten into the story yet to know what is going down. More on this game later :-)
