My first introduction to the Wii was not a great one, let me explain. I am what you might call athletically challenged, I mean I can walk without falling over but little outside of that. So when I had to head a virtual ball a few times it did not work out so well. Overtime I warmed to the console & saw its potential, to me it was & still is a good console.
The console focused on fun, family & friends, while you can play alone the best experiences to be had are definitely with a group. The Wii Remote, Nunchuk & some of the accessories are great &
although graphically the games were not very impressive it was never really about that. Nintendo designed a console I really felt brought people together & reminded people what it is to just have fun.
I feel what damaged the console & stopped it being as successful as it could have been were the poor budget games that very quickly flooded the market. As always Nintendo wanted to make their console not only appeal able to all demographics but also to all developers. They made it easy & relatively low cost for developers to release games on their platform, which was great but also had its draw backs.
In this post I wanted to highlight some of the great games that were released on the Wii & give you a good reason to buy it or go back to it.
I type these words with a high level of confidence when I say I don't think there is any gamer that has not played at least one version or another of Mario Kart. At its core the idea is very simple; drive round some great tracks with crazy power ups & try to come first place. The game itself is so much more than that & no matter how much you play there is always time for one more race.
Like previous installments there are different cups made up of a number of courses, some are new to the series & others are old favorites. You have the option of playing Grand Prix, Versus, Time Trails & Battle. The big difference with Mario Kart Wii outside of the new tracks is all the ways you can play, you can use:
Wheel accessory along with the Wii Remote
Wii Remote & Nunchuk
GameCube control pad
Wii control pad
The music for Mario Kart Wii is so positive & up beat that it's impossible not to smile when you hear it. It may sound cheesy but some of the music reminds me of being a kid playing in the park in summer time without a care in the world. There is only one sound in the game that no matter how well your are driving or how confident you are about taking first place washes all of that away & makes you sweat, of course I am talking about the dreaded Blue Shell. With that one exception all the other music & sounds are awesome & non fear educing!
Visually speaking the games looks great from the design of the Karts & Bikes to the tracks themselves. Some of my favorite courses in design & to to play are; Choco Mountain, Delfino Square & Rainbow Road. What did he say? Rainbow Road! It's a great looking vibrant course & can be very challenging. While picking the course won't help you win any friends the joy & relief of coming first place cannot be replaced by anything else.
I think any truly great game is simple to play & hard to master, Mario Kart Wii is a good example of this. Once you have played every course a few times you think yeah I am pretty good at this, that is until you take on other players & not just AI. Mastering skills like drifting & getting a speed boosts at the start of a race are essential. The collectible power ups can shift the balance of a race massively, someone that is last place can get just one power up & end up taking first place & someone in first place can quickly be knocked down to last place. Some people get very frustrated with this system & on occasion I have too. What I love about it is that you can be last place on the last lap & still have a chance of winning & if you are in first place & miles ahead of everyone it isn't a guarantee your going home with the gold. The other players keep you on your toes & ensures you never become complacent or over confident.
For me the only real flaw is when using the steering wheel I don't find the karts/bikes maneuverability to be as good as it is with the GameCube or Wii Pad. Overall a fantastic fun driving game with no huge flaws & is one of the key reasons to buy a Wii or dust off the one you have.
Ah Wario Ware, even saying the name makes me smile. The first time I played it was at a friends house, a bunch of us were just hanging out & spent probably no less that three hours playing. While it would be easy just to say its a bunch of mini games it's a lot more than that & definitely not to be over looked.
There is a sort of story to the game, Wario discover a magical Form Baton that he and his friends use to have wacky adventures. While the story is lacking it is not the sort of game that really needs one.
The game is silly crazy fun & the music used in it is equally so. I love that the music sounds like it is encouraging you to have fun but also act quickly, this is really important in later levels where the game gets pretty manic. I like the design of the mini games themselves, the simplistic almost cartoon style animations along with the designs of Wario & his friends.
In terms of gameplay I can't say it enough but it is so much fun! One of my favorites parts is the tutorial, strange right? You have this very serious & droll voice telling you how to hold your Wii Remote along with a little soul music playing in the background & then he says something funny at the end, for example:
The Umbrella
Hold the Form Baton vertically, thumb resting lightly on the button.
Through this stance, you channel the quiet dignity of a circus clown.
Another favorite of mine is a running game which requires you & your team mate to jump at different times & try to get as far as you can. Being honest you don't really need to jump you can just move the Wii Remote or Nunchuk up quickly & it works just the same but it's more fun if you actually jump. My only real flaw with the game is that when you start you can only play single player. To unlock multiplayer you need to play the whole game through once solo, this seems strange as the game is clearly made to be played by more than one person.
I can sum the game up in five simple words; wacky, fun also buy it!
I played House of the Dead 2 for many years in the arcades & loved every minute of it. Unfortunately over time you end up moving on to other games & start to forget about killing zombies, killer toads & imps that can control axe wielding suits of armor. Of course that is until it gets released on the Wii & you say to yourself "oh yeah I loved playing that game I must buy it".
The story is set a short time after the original, you are in Venice looking for missing Agent G. After battling a few enemies you find G who is wounded & gives you a journal detailing almost all the bosses & their weak points. I always thought G was really great for doing this, it's just a shame it did not do him much good. As always there is a rich mastermind that thinks causing chaos & destroying civilization is a good thing & his name is Caleb Goldman, which being honest is a pretty cool villain name. You get to shoot your way through a horde of different enemies & try to save the world.
If ghosts listened to music then I think the House of the Dead soundtrack would be one of their favorites. Spooky noises, eerie screams & moaning zombies help fill the game with despair. This of course works well with the setting of the game & helps create a grim atmosphere.
For the time graphically speaking the game looked great but I wished they had done a remastered HD version of the game. The set pieces & enemies really add depth to the game especially with some of the bosses. One of the features I loved was the blood & gore effects you got when killing enemies, it was always so brutal but so cool!
I loved using the gun on the arcade version & while the Wii Gun is not quite the same I feel its pretty close. Although some of the boss were cool & added some great tough battles it was always the regular enemies I liked best. There was the big chain saw guys you had to shoot a ton of bullets at to kill. There was the dual axe zombies that you have to wait for them to reveal there face so the bullets would not deflect off their axes. Of course once of my favorites is the zombie toads that would come out of no where & bite you. Rescuing civilians was great as often you were rewarded with health packs, however failing to save them resulted in tears & a bloody mess.
Has the game aged? Yes most definitely. Is it still a great gore filled shooter with a cheesy story line & zombie toads? Yes. If you have not had the chance to play it before or want to play it again the Wii version might be the way to go.
Once again another post draws to an end, I am reminded that I still have my Wii set up downstairs in my living room & I should really play it more. I regret in some ways that I did not play more titles on the Wii but my focus was usually on the Xbox 360. Here are some the games I wished I had played & still might:
Super Mario Galaxy 2
New Super Mario Bros
Donkey Kong Country Returns
Xenoblade Chronicles
Mad World
Kirby's Epic Yarn
Pikmin
