Wii

Yesterday after Church my family and I went to the mall to do some Christmas shopping. I finished very quickly as I normally do, and had a few hours to kill. After falling asleep in a $5,000 massage chair, I saw a game store demoing the wii. I grabbed my 9 year old sister and went to try it out.

The wii controller, as most of you should know by now, is what makes this console stand out. Dubbed the "wii-mote", it offers freedom that conventional controllers haven't been able to offer up to this point. For example, in some games you can swing the remote around like a tennis racket. Others make use of it like a gun. Demo unit designers encountered some problems when trying to use the traditional method of bolting the controller to the demo unit. A tether wouldn't work either. So in order to make sure people wouldn't run away with the controller, stores have set up a collateral system. It's quite humorous.

I had heard that stores were thinking about making customers hand over a credit card or an i.d. card in order to demo the wii. I guess they reconsidered though, since many kids don't have anything like that to offer as collateral. When I first walked into the store with my sister, I saw that two guys were using the demo. So, as is traditional, I took up the hawk position over their shoulders, waiting in line. When they were done, I asked if I could have a go. The guy said, "just a sec man, I wanna go get my shoes back". Since the guy didn't have a cell phone or wallet on him, he gave up his shoes in order to demo the game!

When I went up and asked to demo it, they took my cell phone, and needed something from my sister. She, being 9 years old, didn't want to take off her shoes or jacket *rolls eyes*. So I ended up playing shoeless too.

We ended up playing a few rounds of excite truck. It was really great. People were walking by and looking in the window and shouting for their friends to come over. We drew quite a crowd (Unlike the guys using it before us... one of them was looking at the wrong side of the screen the whole time and wondering why the controller lagged so much. Yea, they had skills).

The control is very intuitive. You hold the controller like a steering wheel. One button accelerates, one brakes, and the D-pad is used to boost. My 9-year old sister picked up on it right away, and I'm embarrassed to say, was in first place for the first 1/2 of the first lap. The control is very responsive. It's very easy to over correct. Smooth controlled movements are key.

I was disappointed that they weren't demoing any of the sports games, because I think that the control scheme used for those is a better test of the system. I did have a great time though, and felt more connected to the game than if I was just messing around with a regular system. My sister and I were laughing the whole time, watching each other crash, or land a sweet jump, or boost off a cliff by accident. It was great fun.

The built in rumble and speaker in the controller also adds to the fun. It's neat to hear the sound of getting a powerup right next to you.

So, that pretty much wraps up my 'review'. I recommend the system to anyone, serious gamer or not. I'm definitely going to snag one as soon as I can.