So after a few days of playing with your Wii...

It must be chafed!



So now that you guys who got Wii's have tried them out for a while, what you you think of the controls?

My opinions are:

Zelda doesn't use the controller in ways that excite me, but it still plays great, and swining the controller to swing the sword adds a little something and gets my arms moving at least.

And, I can play Zelda for hours and not get sore arms from holding the controlers up as people had feared. But I don't stand when I play Zelda.

But as for Wii Sports, I'm not super impressed. The reviews were right, boxing absolutley sucks. I don't know why they chose to use a split screen in two player mode. They reviews were also probably right about Tennis and Bowling being the best of the bunch. (I haven't yet tried baseball.) Those are actually decent. Golf on the other hand, while better than Boxing, my sister's huasband found incredibly frustrating because the guy onscreen would fail to swing the club a lot of the time for whatever reason, be it how he was holding the controller, or how fast he was swinging, I don't know. I was doing a bit better and I din't expect the controler to be perfect so I wasn't getting too frustrated with it. If I was rating it on my own experience I'd rate it more highly.

So anyway it's quite clear now that the controller isn't what I was hoping it would be. I'm sure once people work out what the controller is good at, and what it's not, and how best to utilize the data it gathers that some great games will come out, but as it stands now, I'm not yet impressed with it. Not only does it not detect its position in space in realtime like we thought it would, but it seems to have difficulty tracking rotation and movement with a lot of accuracy too. It does a decent job with quick movements, but a slow putt it doesn't detect so well. Slow rotation to turn a truck on the other hand it does okay, so I don't know what to think.

All I do know is that Nintendo made Wii Sports, and if anyone should have gotten the controls right it would be them. Perhaps with much practice I would be able to control the games exactly how I want, but as far as pick up and play goes, some games are way more frustrating then others, and most of the Wii sports aren't well suited to selling the system to people. But if you do want to show off the system and all you have is Wii sports, then Tennis and Bowling are definitely the ones to choose.

Well, I haven't found boxing to be particularly fun, but from my experience in the training modes, it does offer a lot of control and once you learn to time things correctly it does actually respond "like you think it will". At first it doesn't seem to, because you don't yet realize what differences in your actual motion translate into the game and how they translate. The same holds true for tennis, bowling, perhaps baseball (it's the one I play least), and golf to a smaller extent.

The problem with putting and golf is not so much taht the Wii remote isn't picking up your subtle movements, it's just that there is a "velocity threshold" or something that needs to be crossed before the swing is registered. I'm sure this is to prevent subtle motions from registering as an extremely weak hit. I think this was primarily implemented because these games were meant to be relatively simplistic and forgiving. A Tiger Woods golf game or something similar and more advanced than Wii Sports golf would no doubtedly not safeguard you from your own movements and register any little movement as a swing (or at least lower the threshold significantly.)

You won't really start seeing the depth in the Wii sports games until you start working the training modes and then working on increasing your skill in the games themselves. As your skills go up the opponents get significantly tougher. My tennis skill is at something like 1100 rigth now and the computer simply doesn't make any mistakes. It forces you to learn the intricacies of shots, how to put spin on the ball, etc etc.

I'm digging Zelda, but I can't say that the control scheme is significantly better than a normal controller. I do think it would be more intuitive to non-gamers, but non-gamers would probably have a tough time w/ zelda for other reasons. The more that I use the Wii remote for precision aiming, the steadier my hand is getting and I think it does have the potential to work equal or better to a keyboard and mouse. It's just they'll have to figure out a better method of moving/turning/aiming than the current bounding box solution that games are using.

And I disagree wholeheartedly with the statement that WIi Sports is not the game to sell the system to folks. None of the games are actually difficult when you start. I mean, I think I was +5 on my first game of golf. Easily won the 5 or so matches the first time I tried boxing. Tennis and bowling were easy as well. I still haven't played 1 player baseball (which is kind of strange seeing as I played baseball for about 9 years when I was younger ;) but I can't imagine it being significantly more difficult than the others.

I disagree! We played all the games with about 15-20 people at 3 different households this Thanksgiving and everyone had a blast. In fact people had a tough time with Tennis unless I showed them that. Tennis is in my opinon the best one but often times people weren't quick enough for it initially. Bowling on the other hand people did amazingly well with. Golf wasn't bad once you get used to taking practice swings. Baseball was fine too and I do agree with Boxing ... it was pretty eh...

All in all I could never get as many people involved with video games before so I think Nintendo has hit a grand slam. Zelda plays great for hardcore players and it's actually more comfortable to have a controller in each hand than to hold one controller as we used to. Everyone I got to play who knew about it also agreed it was a lot better than they expected. I think the biggest thing with Wii sports is that Nintendo tweaked it to respond to flicks of the wrist more after everyone balked about how you had to move too much. If you play Wii Sports using more of your wrist then it plays great. I think they adjusted the conrollers so that subtle movements don't interfere with the gameplay ... as it is now I've moved somewhat easily and started gameplay when I was just adjusting etc... They did a bang up job and you'd only know what the contoller was really capable of if you were developing for it and if you were, you'd adjust the conrols to be similar to what Nintendo did so people could hang around and move subtly without doing crazy things on screen.

Thing is though, this novelty is soon gonna wear off with people.

I've been playing games (and still love to play) that use crazy guitars, piano keys and scratching decks, drum kits, dancing mats from as far as 1998 on the Playstation 1. And then recently there's that Sony Eyetoy, a revolution in gaming innovation in terms of originality. Those games were great, but they weren't the reason why the PS2 was the most popular console, but of course that did help.

Now as cool as the swinging about controller is, there's only gonna be so much attention this feature is gonna get before people are gonna get bored of it. I know for fact that after about 30mins of playing on my Drummania games for PS2, I'm usually a bit knackered, especially after intensive songs. Whereby I'm quite released to pick up the tiny PS2 controller and relax with some other games. Am I going to want to stand and swing that controller around all day long every day? No, I'm gonna wanna sit down and just play games like you've always been able too, and of course this is where the Wii will be lacking.

And with the Wii (as like the DS with its every game must use a pen cos its on DS) there's probably gonna be a distictive average amount of non Wii controller games that just use the joypad. And the Wii joypad controller is terrible as a normal game controller, it's like a NES controller but worse.

I would have a sore wrist.

Anyway, think of it this way...
It's possible to create these controllers for any system, not just the wii.

I am a bit dissapointed at the cursor that's always on the screen. It jumps around and twitches all the time, even when the sensitivity is reduced to the lowest (which reduces your range to 8 ft btw. I can't even sit on my couch at that range.)

Wii Sports in order of greatness (least to most):
Baseball
Boxing
Golf
Tennis
Bowling

There is actually more control to some of these games than you would expect, but it's difficult to get to.

Sswift: About Zelda: Is there an option for gamecube controls, is so would you say that the Wii controls are better than gamecube?

My only disappointment with the sword-controls in Zelda is that Link always swings in his pre-set pattern regardless of which way *you* swing, the jab-thrust being the only exception. Was really hoping the game would at least register 8 different directions (horizontal, vertical, & diagonal swings), but it doesn't.
(least I dont have to wrack my characters facing direction doing the spinning slash as will be the case with the GameCube version)

Regardless, the game still kicks some serious ass imo, and my arms were also fine after the couple 8 hours sessions I've had with it, although the game itself doesn't really require much movement if you just flick the Wiimote in your hand for sword slashing.


This is where the controller knowing where it would be in space helps....anyways, as far as I can see, the Golf game wants you to hold the controller facing away from you when you hold it in the swing position I found, my sis got a few faulty shots because she was holding it 90 degrees from the "sweet-spot" position.

I take it stuff like that will be a non-issue in the future when dev's come up with better libraries of code to detect movement regardless of the controllers current tilt and rotation, and work from there.......as it is, it currently reminds me of the DS, games working in gimmicky-like ways for the first generation of game releases (which most games are using either the pointer or gestures for, barely any 1:1 systems out), then all the sweet-stuff that makes the system a must-have follow soon-after.

Still love the system though, especially the interface, fast and slick.
(just wish I could create folders or rearrange the channels at least, my VC games are cluttering the screen)


Regarding Boxing, I must be the only one who has selected that as their fav, I always wanted me a 1:1 (well, close enough in the case of WiiSports) boxing game after having played the Fight Night Round series on the PS2. I guess for some it just takes some getting used to for figuring out exactly how the game likes its motions triggered, which I guess somewhat kills the pickup & play for newbies since there's some fine-tuning in your movements involved...


[EDIT] On a completely different note, I hope some company decides to make a wireless PS2 controller that's split in half tethered by a cord, I can't get over how good it feels to not have my hands in a claw-grip around a console controller for once with the Wii.

[EDIT2] To be honest, all I really need for my Wii right now is a copy of Metroid Prime3, Mario Galaxy, Super Smash Bros Brawl, and Metal Slug Anthology (/sigh @ game delays, this was supposed to be a launch title), and I'll be set with the Wii for the rest of my life.

Soo wii controller is motion detection not Motion tracking.

LOL.. so much for that Wii thing.. still usable and fun.

now when come motion tracking controller out. with glows and hands.

"Sswift: About Zelda: Is there an option for gamecube controls, is so would you say that the Wii controls are better than gamecube?"

I'm fairly sure there is an option for it, I'm pretty sure I remember reading that you could aim the bow and slingshot using the analog stick with a certain config. But as for which is better... Playing Zelda with the Wii controller feels a lot like playing Ocarina of time. Except for the fact that you swing the controller when you want to swing the sword. Is that better than pushing a button? Yeah, I suppose it's better. It immerses you a bit more in the game.

Regardin GameCube option in Wii Zelda, there's none, Wii remote/nunchuk only.

Regardin the aimin with analog stick in Wii Zelda, that's by turning off the remote pointer in the config menu.
(although I don't see the point once you become fully accustomed to the controller after 20 hours of Zelda, that pointer is really accurate when configured properly....)


Only the GameCube version of Twilight Princess works with the GameCube controllers.