Whats a Wii Like?
After a few days Wii-ing (I couldn’t resist it), I thought I’d pass on some thoughts for those wondering if the new console lives up to the hype… well…. for hard core gamers it’s not the thing to have as your main console. For everyone else is fantastic fun, and even hard core gamers may want one as a second console.
The graphics won’t rival an Xbox 360, PS3, or a high-end gaming PC with a recent graphics cards, but thats something that Nintendo have not made a big secret. The processing power is also not in the same league as the Xbox 360s' symmetric tri-cpu setup, the PS3s' cell processing cores, or the latest dual or quad core PCs', again something Nintendo have never tried to stop people bein aware of, but the Wii has one great feature that seems to be missing from the other two, simplistic fun.
The Wii may not have the wow factor of the Xbox 360 or PS3, but people keep coming back for more turns on it, and even those who aren’t normally into computer games seem to pick it up, enjoy it, and want another go. Most of the current Xbox 360, PS3, or PC games tend to be either first person adventures or racing games, both of which have been done to death (how many Grand Theft Auto adventures do we need?). The Wii gives you cartoon looking games which are great fun to come back to, so instead of shooting a some type of opponent, or racing some car or other, I’ve been playing tennis by swinging the controller like a racket, boxing using the controller like a pair of boxing gloves, and rolling a monkey in a ball down a course by gently tilting the controller… which, after a over two decades of using a joystick, keyboard, or touchpad and being limited to “push or not push” for gaming, makes a nice change.
My advice, if you have the spare money and you’re looking for something that will provide you with more than a few hours of fun, buy one.