nwizardblog

Note: My apologies for the crappy pictures. Photography of the Wii area was strictly forbidden and heavily enforced. The pics of Wii stuff are completely ninja’d and not at all authorized.

OK, so I’m back from the Fusion Tour. Had a great time. There were 6 kiosks with 5 games at the conference: 2 for Metroid Prime 3, and one for each: WarioWare, Wii Bowling, ExciteTruck, and Wii Tennis, which halfway through the concert changed to Wii Baseball. I was able to get to try every single game once. So I played a total of 6 Wii games.

This is the line about a half an hour before the concert.
By starting, it was around the corner and down the street…

My first, thank god, was Metroid. I was 2nd in line for the game (I lined up for the concert almost an hour beforehand, so I was towards the front), and before long the line to play it became at least an hour or more long for the rest of the concert. It’s unfortunate I didn’t get to go back and try out the Ridley boss battle I really wanted to see (nobody the whole time played the boss battle demo).

One of the first things I realized, holding the Wiimote and nunchuk, it feels extremely comfortable. It wasn’t at all awkward, it felt like I had been holding this thing for years. Now, actually using it is a different matter. Metroid, being by far the most complicated use of Wii controls, was a bit awkward. Controlling your aim and sight by pointing isn’t natural after years of Halo and Half-life. It’s definitely far from the ease of use of a mouse, and looking at accuracy I would actually favor a dual control stick setup. It was far from unusable, but far from improvement on current schemes.

However, I can’t tell from the few minutes I got with it if it was really the game or the environment. I had to stand on this little circle so far from the screen, and I felt it might be better at a different distance (and without that stupid anti-theft cord). Plus, I really wanted to sit after over an hour of standing in line out in the hot sun. And of course I wasn’t able to mess with any of the sensitivity settings. So while I didn’t find the control perfect, and definitely thought with a little tweaking and the right setting that it could be killer. It really got me excited to try out Red Steel (which I reserved the same day).

Overall though, the game looked beautiful and was a lot of fun. The controls made sense and some of the features, like opening locks and ripping off shields with the nunchuck, were insanely awesome and felt wonderful to do. However, there’s so many x-factors here I don’t know how much was the game.

ExciteTruck was my second game, and surprisingly my favorite of them all. I thought the game had potential but was generally overhyped until I finally played it. News flash: I hate racing games. It’s my least favorite genre in existence. But ExciteTruck truly brought me into the experience unlike most racing games or even most videogames in general. Once you realize how tight the controls are, you really are drawn in and it really becomes a whole new experience just a blast.

WarioWare and Wii Bowling had the shortest lines. Smooth Moves was exactly what I’d expect from a Wario game, quirky, fun, completely off-the-wall and random fun little minigames. Not much else to be said there, other than maybe I could see the game falling short $50 worth if the minigame count is too low. Wii Bowling really surprised me in it’s realism. The ball always seem to curve slightly to the right, a habit I exhibit quite a bit in real bowling. I was taken aback at how much your throw affects the game. It’s the closest thing to a real bowling sim ever made.

Wii Tennis and Wii Baseball I got to play with my girlfriend. Wii Tennis was a blast, and my girlfriend said she really enjoyed it too. It’s definitely an excellent demonstration of just how fun a simple game with the Wiimote can be, especially in multiplayer. Wii Baseball was a disaster in terms of 3-inning zero point tie. Neither of us even got on a base. The controls seemed to work great though, the batting translated very well. We just sucked, which is kind of sad considering I played baseball as a kid…

Oh yeah, there was a concert. It actually wasn’t that bad.

Overall it was a great time. The music wasn’t bad either, and we got lots of free swag. Had a great time, and I loved the Wii. Metroid definitely wasn’t as perfectly controlled as I would have liked, but in terms of fun it and all of the games were wonderfully refreshing. I don’t regret my preorders in the least…