Hijinks Inc.

Category: Wii

  • My Wii Impressions

    So I haven’t posted in a while. No, I don’t blame this on the Wii, but more so on the fact that I still haven’t jail..break…ed (broke, broken?) my iPod Touch yet. In fact I surprised myself with how little I’ve been playing my new toy. The system I bought came with four games not counting Wii Sports, and I had bought Smash Bros Brawl right after I made my original purchase. I’ll break down my experience game by game.

    Super Smash Bros Brawl
    Probably my biggest mistake was playing this first. I loved the original Smash Bros on the N64, and I have many great memories of playing with three buddies hurling insults at each other as our little sprites hurled punches. Great time. I fired Brawl up only to realize that I had to play through the Subspace Emissary campaign to unlock the other half of the cast (not unexpected). Playing through the single player campaign was fun at first, then it got old, then it got boring, and now I just want to finish the freakin’ thing so I can unlock all the characters. Yeah, there’s a metric crap-ton of fan service in there, but 90% of it I don’t get and don’t care about. Just give me the full cast so I can not play it again until I have people to play it with.

    Guitar Hero 3 Wii
    I picked up the guitar, figured out how to secure the Wii Remote in the guitar, and fired up a song. Afterwhich I prompted shut it off. It’s fine, it’s Guitar Hero, and it’s nothing I haven’t played before.

    Monster 4×4 World Tour
    This is a game in which you race monster trucks. That is what we term as a given. Seemingly the only reason why you would want to play this game is to be able to experience the glorious feeling of controlling your monster truck by twisting and turning the Wii Remote. Coincidentally enough, this experience is neither glorious nor a reason to play the game. I promptly put it up on eBay.

    Tiger Woods PGA Tour 08
    I read 1up’s review before I played the game, and they gave it a good score, mentioning that it was the best golf experience on Wii. Either I suck at golf games or the Wii has set a low bar of what is considered “the best”. Obviously I don’t suck at golf (I was the master at Microsoft Golf for Windows 95), so this game must not be any good. That’s what I’m telling myself anyway. Tiger joined the monster trucks on eBay.

    Super Mario Galaxy
    If I could do it over I would have played this game first and not even tried the other games. I’m only 8 stars in, and this is definitely the reason I was looking for to justify my purchase. I love it, its amazing, I’ll be enjoying it for a long time.

    So in a narrow victory, Super Mario Galaxy saves me from throwing the whole thing back on eBay for a ridicules profit. Hurray for Mario!

  • Excuse me while I..whip this (Wii) out..

    [Insert screams here.]

    I’ve never been much of a console gamer. The last console I owned was a Playstation, and I bought that a good three years after the PS2 came out. Before that I had owned an original NES, a Super NES, and an Nintendo 64 (all bought at least five years after they came out of course). Amazingly enough I’ve never considered myself a Nintendo fan until I just typed that out. My, the things we discover about ourselves.
    Self-discovery aside, last weekend I decided to cash in my PSP and library of PSP games (farewell Crisis Core!) to get a Wii. Suffice to say I’ve been late to the video game party all my life, but after this latest purchase I feel like I’m up to date (only two years late! Yes!). I finally own a current system. The joy! The glee! The expensive games! Admittedly I bought it mostly for Smash Bros and Wii Sports, but the fact that Guitar Hero 3 and Mario Galaxy were bundled with the system I bought was not..unpleasurable.
    The Wii isn’t a console for the hardcore gamer. Granted, it doesn’t need to be. After selling out for almost two years straight, the idea that the Wii is just a “fad” or a “trend” is less a theory and now more of a fanciful dream. Now that Nintendo has ironed out most of the kinks, the Wii is ensconced as the quintessential party system.

    Did I mention I bought it so I could bring it to parties and play with my girlfriend? Whoops, I think I just fell into a large demographic.