Wii should be friends (games)
Short review of the system: I love it. The Wii itself is great, and it also improves GameCube games (by merit of having a 480p-capable component output). It's a little annoying that you still need to turn on a Wiimote in order to boot a GameCube game (i.e. it'd be nice if you could navigate the Wii channel menu via GC controller) but that's a minor quibble.
Also, I highly highly recommend this Nyko Wiimote Charging Station. $30 and it gives you recharging abilities for two Wiimotes, and the replacement battery cover (which is necessary to expose the charging connector) also has a nice textured rubber grip which improves the feel in the hand. It's a rare case of a third-party accessory being better than the first-party solution and also improving aspects which are just ancillary to the intended purpose.
Zelda: Twilight Princess is absolutely beautiful, though I only played the first few minutes of it. (I now have a renewed interest in finishing Wind Waker first.) Also, both WW and Metroid Prime 2: Echoes look phenomenal on the component output. MP2 in particular looks like it's suddenly gotten a huge graphical upgrade.
Also, the Internet channel works great, and actually does an incredible job of handling my various sites (which isn't too unexpected since it's based on Opera, but still). It's a bit funny that it'll happily pseudostream mp3s using the del.icio.us playtagger but won't download them directly, though.
Also, the "Everyone Votes" channel is pretty entertaining. I look forward to seeing what else Nintendo does with it (and what other fun social-networking channels might show up later on).
Also, is it just me or does a lot of the music throughout the system sound a lot like Fantastic Plastic Machine? I wonder where I can find information on who composed it all. Nintendo's usually good about providing credits of their games, but this is the first time they've had an OS with pervasive theme music. Actually I think this is the first time anyone has had an OS with pervasive theme music. It is also surprisingly un-annoying.
Comments
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I haven't finished Twilight Princess yet (like 2 dungeons left it looked like), but I loved it. theantix' recent visit has renewed my interest a bit, because we were having trouble finding decent games that the SO and I could play.
Its two-player mode looks like a lot of fun, judging by how 1P CPU-battle mode goes.
That's what we ended up doing too. Except the current bundle is Cooking Mama (looks decent, would probably buy when it's a $20 title, not worth $50), Spiderman 3 (could care less, may try to resell it), Zelda (we'd buy it anyway) and Super Paper Mario (we'd buy it anyway). So really, we're getting one game that looks ok but is over priced and another we don't care about just for the pleasure of owning a wii. And oh yeah, a very overpriced 1GB memory card too, plus the extra controller and nunchuk we'd buy anyway.
Sorry. Had to let that out.
I actually enjoy the fishing in TP now, but my immediate reaction is still annoyance. It'd be something else if the game explains how it's supposed to work, and maybe it did but completely went over my head, but it made the already kinda-slow introduction to the game much worse.
Word of advice: Cast. Wait for the wooden bobber to bob. Pull wiimote up when bobbing. It's not that hard.
However, it is an awesome game. There are some really cool bits during the first part of the game, which I won't spoil. My only real complaint is that little additional content opens up between the final few dungeons.
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