OKAY! Last night I was invited to a Wii house party at our local N-Reps place. He had 2 Wiis hooked up, one with Wii Sports and the other with Monkey Balls. This is a heads up now. Although I am pretty sure it's impossible to "spoil" either of these games, if you feel knowing anything about either of these titles will lessen your enjoyment of them, please stop reading now. Excite Truck was available also, but no one was interested given that Excite Truck is already available to play. Zelda was not available at the request of many (myself included; NO SPOILERZ!!) and also to keep one person from hogging the Wii all night. Long pause here for those who want to avoid spoilers for the 2 above said games.
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......still with me? Alright! Lets get to what I got to the party. Lots of booze lots of good times. A projector was displaying Guitar Hero 2 and Karaoke Revoltion on the side of the house in the backyard. That was the only non-Nintendo stuff on display. On a large, nice Samsung projection TV was Wii sports. There were alot of folks at the party, so I didnt get to play forever mind you. There weren't enough nunchucks to go around, so all games that required it on Monkey Balls and Wii Boxing weren't played. DAMMIT!! I really wanted to check out Wii Boxing, too...
Everyone who played seemed to be having a really great time. Apparently a few of the folks who came are die hard Microsoft/Sony fans. Why in God's name they even bothered showing up I'll never know. They seriously REFUSED to play the system, and would occasionally lament why on earth anyone would want to play such a stupid, simple game. They were always met with raucous, drunken shouts of "SHUT UUUP you bitch!" and the like. The entire time I was there whenever I would see these guys, they looked just miserable. They essentially looked really, really upset that everyone was enjoying the system so much. Perhaps even just a tad jealous even? Well, no matter. This story isn't about them. I just thought you all would get a kick out of knowing that. Other than them, every one else (there were alot of nongamer/casual gamer types there) was having a blast with whatever they got to play.
My wife got there a bit late. She made it just in time for my shot at Wii Tennis. I was originally going to team with my manager, but when my wife came in, he said "Oh, THERES your teamate." And so it was on. Best two out of three matches. The first thing I noticed is that when picking how many matches you will play, if you are right or left handed, etc. was the pointing function of the remote. It is quite dependent on where you calibrated the pointer originally. It seems that Wii sports just uses you system calibration. Monkey balls in contrast, assumes that as a party game, the controllers will be getting passed around alot. At the beginning of every game that requires the use of the pointing feature, you guide a little bug to the center of a target to calibrate your controller for that game. Seeing as how Wii Sports doesnt use the pointer funtion in any of it's games, it wasn't critical to the gameplay. It just would take you a few seconds to find your cursor and it seemed wierd moving so off from its actual point on the screen. It was obvious after some messing around that my remote had been calibrated for someone sitting on the couch behind me, about 4 feet to the left, I would wager. And then the game began. Again, I was impressed with the quick response time on the remote. It was just an absolute blast. My wife kept knocking into me because she was so getting into the tennis action. There are two ways to play this game as I saw. I shall refer to them as the Fun Way, and they Dumb Way.
Dumb Way: Just flick your wrist. Time it right, flick it and you are gauranteed to hit the ball. It is overly easy to do it that way, and you actually have less control over the ball. It just hits it. Yay for you.
Fun Way: Swing like you are a tennis rock star. RRROCKET!!!!! This way needs more room (obviously) and takes alot more practice to get down. The difference is its ALOT more fun. Why? Just because your flailing like crazy? Absolutely not! Its because of the amount of control you have on your swing! Reports of the simplicity of this game is greatly exaggerated. You do only swing, but if you have enough room to fully swing your arm you will be amazed at the amount of control you have over the hit. My wife played tennis in high school, and she was throwing top spins on over hands, slicing shots like I dont know how, and it only took her one match to get them down. The group was playing "Winner stays, challenger gives up the controller" style. My wife and I graciously gave up our controllers after getting a 5-0 record. Rest assured a few of my friends are now counting down the launch date just for a rematch. Again, the "limited" area of this game shows itself only if you just do wrist flicking motions. If you see your self sitting on your couch with with Wii Sports, you will probably get bored with it really quickly. If you aren't too advers to moderate exercise and have enough room to move wherever you set up will be, this game will be a blast. Again, I am sorry to report to you guys I have no impressions of any of the other games as I didnt get to play them. I did watch one "casual gamer" female play baseball. The only complaint I heard was "Hey! How come I'm out? That was a grounder!" "Hey! How come I cant control that fielder?" Other than that she was having fun.
OK! I need to get ready for work, so I will have to stop here. I will put up my impressions of Monkey Balls later tonight when I get home. A little preview; Nothing but multiplayer. TONS of minigames. I saw a few that I wanted to try that required the nunchuck. Monkey FENCING?!!! NUNCHUUUUK! Gimme a NUNCHUUUK!! Oh! Speaking of which I did see one, and got to hold it. It's very light. It molds well into your hand. The analog feels very "grippy". It might be slightly odd to hold it with index finger over the Z button and middle finger over the C button, but then again, I only held it for a few minutes and didnt actually play anything with it. Alrighty then guys and gals! I will post to you all later. Take care of yourselves!
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