Entry posted by Etcetere
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So recently I got the opportunity to try out the coolest white rectangular prism you will ever spend two hundred and fifty dollars on. For a good year or so the world's been both captivated and perplexed by this little box of wonder. Gamers have gotten so used to the traditional way of playing that most have been afraid to try something new, dubbing this machine all sorts of monikers ranging from "stupid" to "really stupid". But we all know the truth. They're the old generation.
The 360 upgrades remakably in dual processer speed, hi-def graphics, and excellent online service. That is, until it crashes.
The PS3 takes all that even further with hundred's of dollars worth of storage, Blu-ray disks and speed you don't need. "-Yet." a PS3 enthusiast would add.
Both systems give us fantastic quality. But honestly, buying these two of the next-gen consoles is basically buying the same hting as before, but better. There's nothing new. Nothing ingenuitive.
Meet Nintendo. He has lots of ideas. So do the other guys. But he's the only one crazy enough to use them. "Controllers? Pfft!" He says. "Who needs thumbs when you've got an entire wrist?" Before it was his crazy notion to give a Gameboy a lid and stick another screen on there. Sure, PSP has wide screen. But don't you dare touch it lest its owner scream at you, and also, there's only one of them.
Nintendo is different. Nintendo is daring. Just to prove it, they name their new masterpiece an unintelligible syllable. PlayStation lost its ingenuity to the point that we're readily awaiting the PS4. Who would've guessed? And then XBox tried the same thing, but to look impressive, they skipped all the models 2-359. That way gamers can say to eachother, "this thing wasn't supposed to come out till 30,000 AD," and assume Microsoft has one of those time portal rift things. Which I'm not refuting, by the way.
So we come to Nintendo's ultimate proof of anti-follow-of-crowd-er-ness. The Wiimote. This is the thing everybody's been so struck that we don't know what to think of it. Well, know I know what to think of it. For one, it's loads more comfortable than I had originally anticipated when seeing it for the first time. It's not as big as those advertisements with it rising out of milk make it look. For any bubble-wrap enthusiasts, virtual or not, the A button will be a seductive temptation. You'll want to press it time and time again, regardless of how many times your game beeps at you "not in range". While the unlabeled B button trigger isn't as therapeutic as the L and R buttons of GameCube, it's still comfortably positioned. It's like the Gamecube controller - your hand wraps around it like an inside-out glove. While I wish they'd kept the START button for nostalgia's sake, it basically comes replaced with the - button, the + button, and the *house* button. And for those of you thinking the 1 and 2 buttons as absolutely ridiculous and out of reach, they're the A and B buttons for when you hold the controller sideways and imagine it's a NEStroller (or a steering wheel, which of course bear every resemblance). Which while not as comfortable as holding it pointerways, it's still a step up from the rectangular prism shape that the Wii console itself adopts. But you're not meant to hold the console and wave it around, so I digress.
And then you plug in the officially titled Nunchuk controller, although it's discouraged you use it as such. While it's not necesary to use this device in some games, the thrill of dual-wielding input devices will make you reluctant to ever pull the cord out. This Nuntroller, carefully designed for those ambidextrous toe njoy as well, comes packed with a joystick (because you always have so much joy rotating an analog rod around) and the C and Z buttons. I as well wish they were akin to the L and R analog-squishiness, but they're just as pleasurable to push or press (which any true gamer will recognize as two entirely different actions). So while we never again (for the next few years anyway) will enjoy the company of X, Y, L, or R buttons, the primary function of these controllers more than more than makes up for it.
Many a gamer has been put off by the idea of actually making the action of swinging a sword/bat/baton/fishing pole/hammer/salad tosser/vacuum in real life to do so in the game. One reason is they are fearful of actually expending energy. Another reason is they are fearful of looking stupid, during all the times they cry out "frag", "pone", and "suczores". And I believe the last reason is that they think it doesn't work.
Take it from somebody who's played it: It does not work like a charm. 360 and PS3 controllers work like a charm.
Why is this? Because charms don't work!
The Wiimote works like a very diligent bricklayer, I could say. Or it works like Axe antipersperant for the first 5 minutes.
- The Wiimote comes with a strap to comfortably fashion around your wrist, which I imagine was invented after a few too many beta testers got too excited with their swordslashes after developing very sweaty hands. Rather than be sued for creating holes in millions of user's TV screens, they added the wrist guard, as well as a warning to attach it at the beginning of every game to make it perfectly Stella Liebeck-proof.
- There is a bar, about the size of a keyboard's space key, that sits centered beneath the TV to sense pointing and position. This way you can move a cursor around the screen and click on stuff. One may find at first the difficulty in keeping a steady hand and be frustrated at the cursor flying all over the screen, but it only takes a minute to develope jitter-proofness. Truly, adaption to the Wii controls is extremely different, but extremely easier than adapting to pressing which-button-to-do-what.
- Playing Wii Sports one at first will have the intuition to use reserved motions, not wanting to look silly or over-enthusiastic. But while it's very much possible to play this way, it's (A) easer and (B) MUCH more fun if you move as realistic as possible. You don't have to do all those crazy exaggerated motions that they show in all the Wiimercials, but it'd probably be even more fun if you do. Which is why they also warn you at the start of games to make sure there's no people or objects around you that you could hit.
- The Nunchuk is motion-sensing as well! While it doesn't have a pointer like the Wiimote, it's just as well detective of movement. So you can box, control both sword and shield, dual-wield guns, or actually use nunchucks!
- Does the motion system work? YES. Smoothly? YES. Easily? YES. Does it increase play value? YES. Is it a million times more fun than the other console's control systems? YES. Am I a Wii enthusiast? YES.
Playing Twilight Princess alone was a great insight to how this system would work for elaborate games. You use all the buttons sensefully, using the Wiimote to move Navi around the screen as a cursor. You briskly slash it to make Link slash his sword. When you oull out an item like the fishing pole or slingshot withe B button, you use the Wiimote to aim and maneuver it. Be excited - one of the items will be a ball and chain. And then playing Wii Sports gave me an insight to the more creative ways it will be used - the outside-the-box ways, like in WarioWare or such. There's even a surgery game, though I'm a little apprehensive in trying that one out.
I'm not even going into the fact that GameCube controllers plug right into it, GameCube games slide right in (an interesting phenomenon, considering it's slot docking and Wii games are on normal-sized CDs), It's got free Wi-Fi service (in this case, Wii-fi) and if you have a wireless network in your home it can browse the internet using that, that you can download and play the greats for the systems NES, SNES, N64, GC, Sega Genesis and the TurboGrafx.
The Wii opens up a new plane of possibilities for video gaming. The Xbox and Playstation, sure they're not bad. They're actually really awesome. But they're still inside the box that we had with the last generation of systems.
XBoX360 is cool.
PlayStation3 is cool.
Wii is fun.
And isn't that the point of games in the first place?
(o)
The 360 upgrades remakably in dual processer speed, hi-def graphics, and excellent online service. That is, until it crashes.
The PS3 takes all that even further with hundred's of dollars worth of storage, Blu-ray disks and speed you don't need. "-Yet." a PS3 enthusiast would add.
Both systems give us fantastic quality. But honestly, buying these two of the next-gen consoles is basically buying the same hting as before, but better. There's nothing new. Nothing ingenuitive.
Meet Nintendo. He has lots of ideas. So do the other guys. But he's the only one crazy enough to use them. "Controllers? Pfft!" He says. "Who needs thumbs when you've got an entire wrist?" Before it was his crazy notion to give a Gameboy a lid and stick another screen on there. Sure, PSP has wide screen. But don't you dare touch it lest its owner scream at you, and also, there's only one of them.
Nintendo is different. Nintendo is daring. Just to prove it, they name their new masterpiece an unintelligible syllable. PlayStation lost its ingenuity to the point that we're readily awaiting the PS4. Who would've guessed? And then XBox tried the same thing, but to look impressive, they skipped all the models 2-359. That way gamers can say to eachother, "this thing wasn't supposed to come out till 30,000 AD," and assume Microsoft has one of those time portal rift things. Which I'm not refuting, by the way.
So we come to Nintendo's ultimate proof of anti-follow-of-crowd-er-ness. The Wiimote. This is the thing everybody's been so struck that we don't know what to think of it. Well, know I know what to think of it. For one, it's loads more comfortable than I had originally anticipated when seeing it for the first time. It's not as big as those advertisements with it rising out of milk make it look. For any bubble-wrap enthusiasts, virtual or not, the A button will be a seductive temptation. You'll want to press it time and time again, regardless of how many times your game beeps at you "not in range". While the unlabeled B button trigger isn't as therapeutic as the L and R buttons of GameCube, it's still comfortably positioned. It's like the Gamecube controller - your hand wraps around it like an inside-out glove. While I wish they'd kept the START button for nostalgia's sake, it basically comes replaced with the - button, the + button, and the *house* button. And for those of you thinking the 1 and 2 buttons as absolutely ridiculous and out of reach, they're the A and B buttons for when you hold the controller sideways and imagine it's a NEStroller (or a steering wheel, which of course bear every resemblance). Which while not as comfortable as holding it pointerways, it's still a step up from the rectangular prism shape that the Wii console itself adopts. But you're not meant to hold the console and wave it around, so I digress.
And then you plug in the officially titled Nunchuk controller, although it's discouraged you use it as such. While it's not necesary to use this device in some games, the thrill of dual-wielding input devices will make you reluctant to ever pull the cord out. This Nuntroller, carefully designed for those ambidextrous toe njoy as well, comes packed with a joystick (because you always have so much joy rotating an analog rod around) and the C and Z buttons. I as well wish they were akin to the L and R analog-squishiness, but they're just as pleasurable to push or press (which any true gamer will recognize as two entirely different actions). So while we never again (for the next few years anyway) will enjoy the company of X, Y, L, or R buttons, the primary function of these controllers more than more than makes up for it.
Many a gamer has been put off by the idea of actually making the action of swinging a sword/bat/baton/fishing pole/hammer/salad tosser/vacuum in real life to do so in the game. One reason is they are fearful of actually expending energy. Another reason is they are fearful of looking stupid, during all the times they cry out "frag", "pone", and "suczores". And I believe the last reason is that they think it doesn't work.
Take it from somebody who's played it: It does not work like a charm. 360 and PS3 controllers work like a charm.
Why is this? Because charms don't work!
The Wiimote works like a very diligent bricklayer, I could say. Or it works like Axe antipersperant for the first 5 minutes.
- The Wiimote comes with a strap to comfortably fashion around your wrist, which I imagine was invented after a few too many beta testers got too excited with their swordslashes after developing very sweaty hands. Rather than be sued for creating holes in millions of user's TV screens, they added the wrist guard, as well as a warning to attach it at the beginning of every game to make it perfectly Stella Liebeck-proof.
- There is a bar, about the size of a keyboard's space key, that sits centered beneath the TV to sense pointing and position. This way you can move a cursor around the screen and click on stuff. One may find at first the difficulty in keeping a steady hand and be frustrated at the cursor flying all over the screen, but it only takes a minute to develope jitter-proofness. Truly, adaption to the Wii controls is extremely different, but extremely easier than adapting to pressing which-button-to-do-what.
- Playing Wii Sports one at first will have the intuition to use reserved motions, not wanting to look silly or over-enthusiastic. But while it's very much possible to play this way, it's (A) easer and (B) MUCH more fun if you move as realistic as possible. You don't have to do all those crazy exaggerated motions that they show in all the Wiimercials, but it'd probably be even more fun if you do. Which is why they also warn you at the start of games to make sure there's no people or objects around you that you could hit.
- The Nunchuk is motion-sensing as well! While it doesn't have a pointer like the Wiimote, it's just as well detective of movement. So you can box, control both sword and shield, dual-wield guns, or actually use nunchucks!
- Does the motion system work? YES. Smoothly? YES. Easily? YES. Does it increase play value? YES. Is it a million times more fun than the other console's control systems? YES. Am I a Wii enthusiast? YES.
Playing Twilight Princess alone was a great insight to how this system would work for elaborate games. You use all the buttons sensefully, using the Wiimote to move Navi around the screen as a cursor. You briskly slash it to make Link slash his sword. When you oull out an item like the fishing pole or slingshot withe B button, you use the Wiimote to aim and maneuver it. Be excited - one of the items will be a ball and chain. And then playing Wii Sports gave me an insight to the more creative ways it will be used - the outside-the-box ways, like in WarioWare or such. There's even a surgery game, though I'm a little apprehensive in trying that one out.
I'm not even going into the fact that GameCube controllers plug right into it, GameCube games slide right in (an interesting phenomenon, considering it's slot docking and Wii games are on normal-sized CDs), It's got free Wi-Fi service (in this case, Wii-fi) and if you have a wireless network in your home it can browse the internet using that, that you can download and play the greats for the systems NES, SNES, N64, GC, Sega Genesis and the TurboGrafx.
The Wii opens up a new plane of possibilities for video gaming. The Xbox and Playstation, sure they're not bad. They're actually really awesome. But they're still inside the box that we had with the last generation of systems.
XBoX360 is cool.
PlayStation3 is cool.
Wii is fun.
And isn't that the point of games in the first place?
(o)
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