# bored with the Wii



## Thank The Cheese (Jul 3, 2007)

I bought the Wii on launch day, and loved it, but I have not played it in 2 months aside from 1 night when friends came over a couple weeks ago. In fact, I was cleaning my apartment a week and a half ago and disconnected the Wii so that I could dust behind it. It has still not even been reconnected to my TV. 

Just wondering if there are other Wii owners here, and if they have gone through the same thing?

I guess the shortage of good games has a lot to do with it; but I've also found the controllers to be less amazing as hoped, particularly for First Person Shooters, which is what I was most excited about.


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## symphonix (Jul 3, 2007)

You're not entirely alone. I also bought my Wii at launch. It is a fantastic console, don't get me wrong, and I think it represents great value for money.

I've loaded mine up with a fair few virtual console games, without which I'd be getting very little gameplay out of the Wii lately. The problem is that while there are good games in the pipeline, most of the offerings so far have either been party games (Wii Play and Wii Sport) which aren't as much fun single player, or adventure games (like Zelda), and many are of hit-and-miss quality.

Its not that its a bad games system, in fact I'd say you couldn't beat it for a party/social/casual gaming system, nor could you beat it for value-for-money, but most of the game releases so far aren't for the hardcore gamers.

And there are definitely no good FPS shooters out yet ... Red Steel is supposed to be OK, and I found Call of Duty 3 unimpressive. There isn't really anything great in that genre for the Wii, yet.

Fortunately, there are some good games to be released in the next couple of months. I wouldn't trade it in just yet. At the very least, it has a nice web-browser and is very popular when you're having a party.


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## Thank The Cheese (Jul 4, 2007)

oh no, i'm not suggesting I will sell it, just saying it has not been as overall impressive as I'd hoped. But you are right, it's just a lack of good games, and all consoles go through this period early on. Especially the Wii, seeing as 3rd party developers have very much written it off until recently, or are releasing PS2 ports. 

It is a fantastic party console, and I have so far gotten the best use out of it from GameCube games I bought such as Mario Sunshine and Smash Bros.. I do look forward to Galaxy, and I am HOPING that Nintendo will show developers how FPS can be done well with Metroid Prime. 

I bought Red Steel on launch. It was...not great. When I first bought it I initially despised it, then I got used to the controlls and decided it was actually pretty good...then I started to hate it again. It definately had better gameplay than COD IMO, but the storyline was idiotic and was not challenging nor deep. 

One of the biggest draw cards for Red Steel was the sword fighting, but it was awkward with 1-2 sec delays between action off-screen and action on-screen, plus the swipes were all pre-animated, so you did not feel that swinging your controller one way or the other made a difference. Also, you could not sword fight in multiplayer, which was just a total dealbreaker. While in-game sword fighting was not particularly entertaining, I think multiplayer sword fighting could have been a bit of fun. 

As for CoD. dear lord that was terrible. I rented it at 6PM, and took it back at 7.30PM the same night. I was not impressed!


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## Mikuro (Jul 4, 2007)

I really think Wii Sports is one of the best games in years.

But I know what you mean. I haven't played mine in over a month now. Every system has a slow period near its launch, though. Usually there are a few good games early on, and then once you play those out you need to wait a while. When I got my PS2, I got Tekken Tag Tournament, and that sort of carried the console for a while. I played a couple other games early on, and they were some of the worst games I've ever played on any console (like Midnight Club: Street Racing).

The good news is that Smash Bros is coming out soon.  In a way that's continuing the trend of party games, but I don't care. SSBM for GameCube was awesome even in single-player mode.

The Wii needs some good RPGs and some good old-fashioned action games. Also, game developers reeeeally need to learn how to use the controller. Way too many of the games just use gestures in place of buttons, and that's stupid. My brother was really disappointed when he learned that you didn't _really_ control the sword in Zelda by swinging the controller. You just wiggled the controller to execute the exact same set of moves from the GameCube version. Boooo!

With the Wii, processing input has become complicated. I don't envy Wii developers!


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## symphonix (Jul 4, 2007)

> Way too many of the games just use gestures in place of buttons, and that's stupid.



A friend of mine recently got a Major League Baseball game for Wii, for which there were no motion controls AT ALL. Since every Wii owner already has Wii Sports Baseball, I can't imagine anybody not hating this game.  



> The good news is that Smash Bros is coming out soon.



Hell, yeah. :-D


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## Thank The Cheese (Jul 4, 2007)

symphonix said:


> A friend of mine recently got a Major League Baseball game for Wii, for which there were no motion controls AT ALL.



lol that is ridiculous. That is perhaps the easiest game of all to take advantage of the controller!

I seem to remember reading that Nintendo had said Smash Bros would not implement gesture-based moves as they felt it "got in the way" of gameplay. If I find it I will post it here. if true, that is a little disappointing, but one thing I do not like about a lot of current games is that they often use gestures for the novelty value and not for gameplay value, so perhaps it is for the best.

EDIT: I found it. 
From IGN article 'E3 2006: Super Smash Bros. Brawl'



> Under the direction of series creator Masahiro Sakurai, Super Smash Bros. Brawl will feature classic, GameCube-style combat -- not Wii-style motion-controlled combat. That means players who prefer to play the game with the traditional control setup can look forward to using the GameCube control-style they're already accustomed to.
> 
> "We found that trying to implement too much motion-sensory functionality can get in the way of the game. We're looking at keeping the control simple, as it has been," said Sakurai. "The Wii hardware has sockets for the GameCube controller, too. So I'll just say now that you may not want to throw away your GCN controller yet."



though it doesnt say there will be NO gesture control, but looks like it may be optional.


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## mw84 (Jul 4, 2007)

I managed to get one just after launch and ended up selling it about a week later. The thing that really put me off was the lack of games available at the time (to a degree now even), the quality of the ones that were available and the lack of online gameplay. 

I think Nintendo have got a lot of things right with the Wii, revolutionary controller, built in wifi as standard and the price but in my opinion the game developers have really let it down.

Recommend a 360 if you're looking for something else. Despite how much a loathe Microsoft, they've actually done remarkably well when it comes to the xbox.


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## Thank The Cheese (Jul 4, 2007)

mw84 said:


> I managed to get one just after launch and ended up selling it about a week later. The thing that really put me off was the lack of games available at the time (to a degree now even), the quality of the ones that were available and the lack of online gameplay.
> 
> I think Nintendo have got a lot of things right with the Wii, revolutionary controller, built in wifi as standard and the price but in my opinion the game developers have really let it down.
> 
> Recommend a 360 if you're looking for something else. Despite how much a loathe Microsoft, they've actually done remarkably well when it comes to the xbox.



yes, i had forgotten about online play -- that is a HUUGE dealbreaker for me. I'm certainly not going to sell mine, but no online play = very little re-playability. 

I do want a 360 -- I very much want to play God of War!


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## Ferdinand (Jul 6, 2007)

How heavy is the Wii? I'm just wondering, because a friend of mine owns a PS3 and yesterday I just came over and moved it around and saw that it's really, really heavy, considered that it's just a console. My PS2, which I never use, is waaaaaaay lighter! So how does the Wii compare to other Nintendo consoles and/or PlayStations?


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## bluedevils (Jul 6, 2007)

It's lighter and smaller than an ordinary ps2 at least from memory.  I haven't moved either units in a while.


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## Thank The Cheese (Jul 7, 2007)

yeah it is very light, relatively speaking. 

The Wii weighs just 3.82 pounds, where the Xbox 360 and PS3 tip the scales at 9.9 and 11 pounds, respectively. The Wii is also considerably smaller than the other consoles, at just 8.5" x 6.2" x 1.7"; the Xbox 360 measures 12.2" x 10.2" x 3.3", while the PS3 is a whopping 12.8" x 10.8" x 3.9" -- about double the size of the Wii. 

for those of us living in the majority of the world who has adopted the metric system (  ), that is 1.73kg. I've bought blocks of cheese that weighed more!


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