Further Wii Thoughts

In the fine tradition of not having much time to digest the news, today's post is relatively unimportant. Still, I've had my Wii for almost 2 weeks now. Wouldn't you like to know more?

So far, I've played 4 games on the Wii: Wii Sports, Super Monkey Ball, Trauma Center, and Marvel: Ultimate Alliance. Each one is a good representation of a different genre: The first two exclusively for the Wii and its unique remote (but one made by Nintendo and the other not), a game that was initially for the DS, and a game that is on all of the major consoles.

As I said before, Wii Sports is both fun and easy to play. The motions aren't perfect, but they're pretty easy to pick up and translate pretty well on screen. Monkey Ball, on the other hand, doens't fare as well. Most of the instructions are vague and the controls do not translate well into on-screen actions. It could have been great, but the end result just wasn't too hot.

Trauma Center was a Nintendo DS game, so it was originally designed to be played with the touch screen and stylus. On the Wii, you use the remote controller like a mouse pointer, so the transition is actually quite good. The controls are a little hard to get used to, but once you're comfortable with them it becomes really natural. I imagine that any future translation of a DS game to the Wii should be relatively successful. The only stipulation I would put on that is that if Nintendo just makes a system transfer, they're ripping off the players. If they want people to shell out $50 for a Wii game instead of $30 for a DS game, there had best be some incentive (better graphics, new content, etc.).

Marvel: Ultimate Alliance was a fun game, nearly identical to the X-Men Legends series in game play, just with different characters and story. If you enjoyed those games, you'll enjoy this one. The major difference is playing it on the Wii instead of the traditional console controllers. The controls are slightly different since there are fewer buttons available to the Wii/Nunchuck controller. They attempted to circumvent this by making Wii remote motions control your on-screen attacks, but this ends up being somewhat unnatural and hard to pull off when there's a lot happening on-screen. Still, the control scheme ends up feeling natural after you become accustomed to the difference. Altogether, not a bad transition.

So there you have it. I maintain my previous advice, whenever the stocks of Wiis come back in, you should buy one if you have the chance. It's a great system.