I’ve had a little more time to play around with the Wii now and was able to pick up a few extra games this afternoon for it. I’m still very pleased with it, and really surprised by some of its features. Here are some of my thoughts about the console and the games I purchased.

Console
The WiFi connectivity is nice. I was wondering if I was going to have to run another CAT5 cable towards my TV or get a hub or something (I already have 1 line running to my TiVo). So it was nice to find out that it had WiFi built in. I had a little bit of trouble with it losing its connection, but then I saw this comment on Alex’s blog which recommended changing the router up to channel 11. This seems to have fixed the connectivity issues that I was having, that or the Wii got used to my network, either way it doesn’t seem to fall off anymore. I will admit I was a little surprised to see that it didn’t have a built in DVD player (like the PS2, etc), but I guess their disc’s might be in a different format or something. It’s built in photo-viewer (which will read images off the SD card you can put into the console) works decently, it’s nothing special but it’s not bad either. The controls are great. I was concerned that they just wouldn’t feel natural for a gaming system, but I was very wrong.

So far from what I’ve seen, there doesn’t seem to be much of a way to play with friends over the Internet, but I haven’t had time to really investigate it, and if someone comes across this post that has more details on this, please let me know as I’d be pretty excited to be able to do this.

Wii Sports
This is the set of games that comes packaged with the Wii. It includes Tennis, Baseball, Bowling, Golf, and Boxing. So far I’ve mostly been enjoying Boxing, Tennis, and then Bowling/Golf. I really just started playing Tennis late this afternoon, but it’s quickly becoming my favorite game of the set. Boxing is good, but the punches just aren’t quite fast enough in-game for what I’m throwing in real life. As for Golf, I’ve never actually played real golf, but it’s a fun game to sort of relax and play. You do have to keep control of your speed though, what I’d consider a “real” golf swing goes off the meter in the game. Baseball is tough, all you’re really doing is either hitting or pitching. Pitching on it is extremely easy, and hitting is extremely tough. Swinging at just the right time to not hit a foul ball is next to impossible for me. Although I will say that Baseball is a great example of seeing just how in tune the controller is with your hand movements. You hold it just like a bat and if you bring it back like you’re about to swing, then do that wobble thing that you always see batters do, you can see the bat in the game follow your movements, it’s great/impressive.

WarioWare: Smooth Moves
Honestly, this game is just sort of silly. It’s actually a slew of mini games. However, it is good for something that won’t tax your brain, and it gets you used to all the different ways you can use the controller(s).

Rayman Raving Rabbids
Complete insanity. Raving Rabbids somewhat reminds me of WarioWare: Smooth Moves in that it’s somewhat mini-games (although not quite as mini as WarioWare). Some of them are somewhat challenging from a coordination perspective, some are completely simplistic, and some just make you laugh so hard it’s difficult to complete the “mission.” I’m glad I purchased it though, it’s good fun.

The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess
I was really worried that I’d end up regretting having purchased this game. I haven’t owned a Nintendo since the original NES (and the only system I’ve owned between the NES and my Wii is a PS2 which I rarely ever play), but I have played some of the Zelda variations through the years on friends systems. I haven’t liked any of them since the original Zelda on NES (even if it’s graphics were horrible by today’s standards). All that being said though, I am REALLY enjoying this game. I put it in figuring that I might play for a few minutes and then go back to some Wii Sports … about 3-4 hours later, I was still playing it. It’s not overly action packed (at least with how far I’ve been able to get into it so far) but it’s neat getting to swing a sword around, do some quests (yes, I’m one of the geeks that had multiple high level characters on EverQuest and World of Warcraft before quitting, so I can get into the questing stuff). I can’t quite put my finger on it exactly, but something about this game really intrigues me and makes me want to keep playing to see “what’s next.”

Whelp, time for me to get back to playing some more ;) My arms are already sore, I’m sure that’ll feel good tomorrow, hehe.