A Wii kind of week.

This is my second post on the Wii this week and for no particular reason either. No big game out or anything. I have gotten three new games recently which I hope to review fairly soon. I think it is more because on Sunday, I not only wrote a long overdue post about the Wii, but I also updated the Featured Posts for November with a trip back to when I bought my Wii and now I think about it. It also seems kind of appropriate, considering that we are moving into the second year of the system, and now finally you can start walking into Target and actually seeing a Wii on the shelf!

Not that it is really easy to find Wiis. Amazon still does not have them in stock, and it may just be a fluke that in my town they finally are available on a semi-regular basis. It never really ceases to amaze me that after two years the Wii is still wildly popular, still hard to get, and still beating the competition on a monthly basis for number of units sold. All the naysayers proved wrong this time, and Nintendo is laughing all the way to the bank.

The main complaint going into the WIi, much like the DS, was that it was nothing more than a gimmick. And after two years of playing the system I have to say it does tend to be a bit gimmicky. Especially when the motion sensing was done poorly, and honestly there are very few games that do a good job with it. Yet when a game actually does it well, it is extremely satisfying! I’m looking forward to Animal Crossing quite a bit because I think the motion controls could work really well in this game, though I’m wary as early reports are that it was done very poorly. But the fact remains that while often gimmicky, motion capture controllers are really really fun and because of that Wii has a huge advantage over the competition no matter what they say.

I think this year that games have begun coming in as well. Yes it has largely been true that despite being a huge success, most of the quality games that have come to Wii have been from Nintendo. There have been some gems such as Zack & Wiki, Elebits, and Dewy’s Adventure. But these haven’t hit as well as they should have. However, this year I think that has begun to change a bit. Guitar Hero while on every system is every bit as good on the Wii as the other systems, unlike other franchises like Madden. The Lego games as well I’m particularly fond of. Cooking Mama and Order Up are great for ye casual fans. And de Blob is stellar. I think that WiiWare has also filled in gaps quite nicely as well with gems like Lost Winds, Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles, and World of Goo. And coming soon are the much anticipated Deadly Creatures and that mushroom game (can’t remember the name of it). To me the telling thing about the Wii library is that all the games that many of the games that are worth getting on the Wii are often completely new franchises and to me this is great and proves that the Wii is ahead of the rest. It isn’t just rehashing the same game over and over and over again for the twelfth time, these games are actually new.

And looking into the future, this trend of new original games for the Wii seems to be getting even better with games like The Conduit and Little King Story as well as bigger sequels such as Monster Hunter and Tales of Symphonia which are both Wii exclusives. Or what about the big name games like Shaun White Snowboarding and Skate it which are both cross-platform but where else can you play them with WiiFIt? And though I do think the Wii Motion Plus is an admission by Nintendo that their motion-sensing isn’t that great, I am still excited and will likely be in line to get that one as well. I have a feeling within a year, this will not only be a must have accessory for any new game coming out, I think they will also have a new version of the WiiMote with it built in as well as greater on board memory that could be used for some really cool stuff.

The future looks bright for the Wii, glad to see some devs finally stepping on board, glad I’m on board as well. Just wish we could get everyone on the train. I know that some things that are made purely for graphics and nothing else just can’t make the journey, but it is sad that those games even exist in my mind. Here’s to another great two years for a great system.