Wii - post your first impressions here

[John Beaulieu]

Picked up my Wii earlier today and been giving it a good thrashing since so here's my first impressions (feel free to use this thread for your own).

The console itself looks lovely, beautiful lines, small and tidy and yet surprisingly heavy, and the stand works wonders. Remote has a nice weight to it, nun-chuk doesn't. The interface is good - you can see that there is a lot of room for the interface to grow.

Absolutely gutted that it only ships with composite, with component or rgb cables being non-existant at every place i tried ... the visuals are something that I can't comment on until I get the cables to do it justice and the ability to output in 480p.

Picked up a couple of games - Wii Sports, not too bad I can see it being a major hit in multiplayer, Rayman Rabid Rabbits, very enjoyable and yet I have hit a brick wall already with the bastard 'trace the outline to feed the rabbit' mini-game - throwing the cow was great though. Red Steel - wish I hadn't bothered with this ****e, controls like a dog, looks sub-par next to what I am used to playing. Not tried Zelda yet - trying my hardest to hold back until i can source some component leads for this one.

So overall, lovely console with 3 good games out of the 4 I own - seriously let down by Nintendo's inability to provide decent cables for anyone even remotely interested in visual quality, if I thought that the console would be easy to get hold of next week (when the component cables are supposedly released) I would advise people to wait until then.

[sj33]

My only complaint with the interface is the way it sticks all the Virtual Console games onto the main page as channels, instead of having a single Games Channel or something... looks a bit untidy IMO.

[Stuart Smith]

Just got mine all setup, had a quick blast on Wii Sports and Red Steel. It definitely takes some getting used to, I'm still prone to spinning around like a twat on Red Steel, but nothing can beat the sheer thrill of actually physically controlling these games. The motion sensor on the PS3 Sixaxis comes close, but this is tangibly different...the real deal, so to speak.

Loving it. I'm also gonna hold off on Zelda until I have a component cable, I reckon so, but slightly perturbed by the back of the box not mentioning anything about HDTV/EDTV the way the Red Steel and Monkeyball ones do.

Who got what games, then? Anything really good apart from Zelda, Steel, Monkeyball? Need to put some things on the Christmas list!

[KTroopA]

Has anyone played COD3. any good and how does it control?

[Junko]

Im totally enamoured !!!! Its a beautiful piece of kit . Only have Wii sports until Christmas but having so much fun , it handles perfectly , the controller is comfortable and instinctive to use . Really really happy so far

[sj33]

Has anyone played COD3. any good and how does it control?

It's alright, takes a while to get used to, looks like ass but the controls are 'fun'.

But it's really the sorta thing your better getting on the 360 IMO.

[Gavin]

Loving it so far - controls more responsive than I expected them to be....

But the thing that surprised me the most is that even when in standby, it receives messages from your chums and glows the slot blue to let you know you have a message - very very cool indeed!

[Big Seany]

Well, it looks nice - won't be playing it until about 1 hour from now when I sit my ass down in the comfy chair out my garage and fire the ****er up. The packaging is just beautifully done, shame the Zelda boxart is wank.

Impressions tomorrow.

[sj33]

But the thing that surprised me the most is that even when in standby, it receives messages from your chums and glows the slot blue to let you know you have a message - very very cool indeed!

That's what WiiConnect24 does Anyone who's played Animal Crossing will see the potential there.

[Mr_Skinny]

So far i'm happy, everything works and all the setup and updates were a breeze.

The unit looks fantastically well made, and the controllers and sensor bar are much smaller than I was expecting. Hopefully it will prove to be as reliable as previous Nintendo hardware has been.

It DOES look like ass on composite cables if you have an HDTV, but that's to be expected.

Wii Sports - Not played much of this yet, I was hopeless at aiming my shots in Tennis but the bowling seemed fun.

Red Steel - The controls are dire - why did they not lock the crosshair to the centre of the screen like ona any pc fps???

Not tried zelda yet, will wait till I have a bit more time.

The cheesy music on the Wii channels is also fantastic!

[Yoshimax]

Love it, love it, love it. The thing looks amazing - Somebody was round for a shot earlier and didn't even see it tucked on the shelf

Never been fond of the slot loaders but I likes this one - Very smooth.

Just got it online - Only thing really worth considering at the minute is Mario64 and I've been hammering that on the xbox with the weeman so I'll probably skip that - Sonic or FZero the only two options really.

Love wii sports, As Kotatsu said elsewhere Rayman Raving Rabbids is comedy gold and great fun to boot (John - You don't need to draw them exactly go for speed over pic quality - worked for me after several shots) - The rabbids with the Sam Fisher trademark vision are superb

Even enjoyed a bit of wii play - It's nothing more than a wii-mote training package but some of the games are well done (Laser Hockey is ace) and I've got Zelda sitting good to go - I can't wait for a component (ordered one from Asia) so it'll just need to be started on the compo****e.

Surprised how good the picture looks on the 40" LCD to be honest - I'd envisaged me sticking it on my 28" SD until I had the lead but it'll suffice for now - Looks better at 50hz than 60hz strangely !

Nintendo have struck gold with this I reckon - It's so intuative & fun I can't see anybody not liking it - you'd have to be mad.

[watusi]

Rayman Rabid Rabbits, very enjoyable and yet I have hit a brick wall already with the bastard 'trace the outline to feed the rabbit' mini-game - throwing the cow was great though.

Try holding the remote like a pen, makes it much easier.

Aayway, got mine today too. I think its fantastic. spent an hour fiddling with Mii's before even playing any games

[Destrukticor]

in composite it is weird how 50htz looks better than 60htz

component cable before chrimbo is all i need (the Wii is a present y'see)

zelda is fun
bowling is good
didn't pick up anything else but this looks good controls good and is just fun and has kept me of the 360 all day.

cable situation arse
console very good

[Bada Bing!]

I've got mine - F**KING HELL!!!

It's awesome, truly awesome. I spent the first hour setting it up, creating a Wii Mii, getting used to the controls, and connecting it to my wireless LAN. The Opera browser isn't available yet, neither are the Weather or News channels. The Shop is though, with loads of classic Megadrive, NES, SNES, and N64 games (including Mario 64 right from the off). I've bought 1000 Wii points with my credit card (piss easy), but held back from spending any as I have all the games it has listed so far. It's very very impressive and bug free. As soon as the machine connected it pulled down the latest firmware, which admittedly took a lot longer than say, a 360 update does. From the main menus and general feel, I am so far very impressed. Nintendo have done well.

Then I played Wii Sports. Christ I wanted to weep, it's fantastic. First up was Wii Tennis. So criminally easy to use, but so much fun. You play doubles, with one player at the front getting first go at the ball if you swing quick enough, if not, the next swing will let the back player get it. You can't control where your wee man runs to but it's all the more fun for it.

Wii Bowling is inspired, truly brilliant. You hold the remote back and swing it forwards whilst holding B. Then at the point you'd drop the ball in real life you let go of B. I got a strike in my first go, that's how intuitive it is.

I haven't had the balls to plug in Zelda yet. Firstly I might pass out (seriously I do this when I get excited), and secondly I haven't tried the nunchuck yet.

I was going to buy Monkey Ball too, but Game are ripping the piss with a ?40 price tag for all Wii games. I have to hand it to them though, they were insistent that no one was buying a Wii from them unless it was via pre-order. Couldn't get a Component cable so playing via upscaled Composite thanks to my lovely Pioneer amp. Doesn't look too bad, but bags of room for improvement.

F**k me, I'm excited. Off to take some piccies!







My luck day. Looked out the window and spotted a double rainbow!

[JamesS]

My only complaint with the interface is the way it sticks all the Virtual Console games onto the main page as channels, instead of having a single Games Channel or something... looks a bit untidy IMO.

You pick them up with A+B and move them around, so you can stick the Virtual Console games on their own page if you want.