I went to Gamestop and EB today to try out the Wii.
The demo game they have on all the kiosks is Excite Truck. There is probably a reason for this. But I'll get to that in a moment.
To control the game you hold the controller sideways and rock it from side to side to turn. To accelerate you hold down the 2 button, which is like the B button on the old NES pads when you're holding the stick that way.
My first impression is that Excite Truck is not very well designed. The trucks felt like they had no inertia when you turned them. And the levels were very confusing because a lot of the time you'd be driving through wooded areas with no track in sight. You'd constantly lose track of the track. And that's not good. Somehow I managed to keep making it around the course, but it was fairly frustrating. And the ability of the levels to change shape dynamically only served to make things even more confusing.
There was a kid at the Gamestop who told me he'd been kicked out of EB for playing it too long and would stay at Gamestop until they kicked im out and then move on to another local Gamestop and then another store from there if need be. He really loved the game. So that's good I guess.
After playing a couple rounds with him I went over to the EB and sure enough they had the same game set up there. An older excitable guy walked over, and asked the clerks there what the system was cause he hadn't heard of it. So when he got his remote, I asked for a second one, and I explained to him how the game was played. He too like the kid was really excited about the ability to control the game with motion. When I explained to him how you'd play boxing games with it, and how you'd play football games and baseball games, he just about lost it. By the end of my short description, I think he was seriously considering getting the system, but was disbelieving of what he was hearing at the same time.
Now as I mentioned above, there's a good reason I think they chose excite truck as their game to show off. And that reason is that it doesn't require the nunchuck, only the remote, and the controls only utilize the tilt function.
The reason I say this is because while setting up the two player game, we had to exit to the Wii's system menu to reset the game. And the system menu is controlled by pointing the electronic eye at the screen. The thing is though that we were so close to the system that it was not registering where I was pointing the remote properly. At first I couldn't even get the crosshairs to appear on the screen, and when I did, they jumped about and the corsshairs moved really fast.
Now, I know that when you set up the system at home you will stand much farther back, and you will calibrate the remote for that distance, but since Nintendo can't control how far back people can stand from the kiosks, I suspect they chose a game that doesn't require the pointer to paint it in the best light possible.
Of course even with these issues, I'm still optimistic about the system. One only needs to watch this video to understand why:
http://www.eurogamer.net/tv_video.php?playlist_id=1333&s=l
The demo game they have on all the kiosks is Excite Truck. There is probably a reason for this. But I'll get to that in a moment.
To control the game you hold the controller sideways and rock it from side to side to turn. To accelerate you hold down the 2 button, which is like the B button on the old NES pads when you're holding the stick that way.
My first impression is that Excite Truck is not very well designed. The trucks felt like they had no inertia when you turned them. And the levels were very confusing because a lot of the time you'd be driving through wooded areas with no track in sight. You'd constantly lose track of the track. And that's not good. Somehow I managed to keep making it around the course, but it was fairly frustrating. And the ability of the levels to change shape dynamically only served to make things even more confusing.
There was a kid at the Gamestop who told me he'd been kicked out of EB for playing it too long and would stay at Gamestop until they kicked im out and then move on to another local Gamestop and then another store from there if need be. He really loved the game. So that's good I guess.
After playing a couple rounds with him I went over to the EB and sure enough they had the same game set up there. An older excitable guy walked over, and asked the clerks there what the system was cause he hadn't heard of it. So when he got his remote, I asked for a second one, and I explained to him how the game was played. He too like the kid was really excited about the ability to control the game with motion. When I explained to him how you'd play boxing games with it, and how you'd play football games and baseball games, he just about lost it. By the end of my short description, I think he was seriously considering getting the system, but was disbelieving of what he was hearing at the same time.
Now as I mentioned above, there's a good reason I think they chose excite truck as their game to show off. And that reason is that it doesn't require the nunchuck, only the remote, and the controls only utilize the tilt function.
The reason I say this is because while setting up the two player game, we had to exit to the Wii's system menu to reset the game. And the system menu is controlled by pointing the electronic eye at the screen. The thing is though that we were so close to the system that it was not registering where I was pointing the remote properly. At first I couldn't even get the crosshairs to appear on the screen, and when I did, they jumped about and the corsshairs moved really fast.
Now, I know that when you set up the system at home you will stand much farther back, and you will calibrate the remote for that distance, but since Nintendo can't control how far back people can stand from the kiosks, I suspect they chose a game that doesn't require the pointer to paint it in the best light possible.
Of course even with these issues, I'm still optimistic about the system. One only needs to watch this video to understand why:
http://www.eurogamer.net/tv_video.php?playlist_id=1333&s=l