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Is getting a Wii worth it?
Fizban140
Registered User, __BANNED USERS regular
Registered User, __BANNED USERS regular
Right now I have a PC (kind of old so not too many games to play) and a 360. I am bored of all my games and I need something new to play so I am considering getting a Wii. The only thing I am worried about is that the 2008 line up besides Brawl will pretty much suck. Galaxy looks good, Zelda does too, but a whole year of average games in 2008 doesn't look so exciting.
I am looking forward to Vegas 2 and GTA4 of course, but there is no telling if Vegas 2 will be any better than the first and I am dieing for some new games to play.
I am looking forward to Vegas 2 and GTA4 of course, but there is no telling if Vegas 2 will be any better than the first and I am dieing for some new games to play.
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I would suggest that there are actually a number of excellent titles for the console, and that you can expect a number more. If nothing else, there's currently a backlog of at least a year's worth of quality titles out there. Here are the ones that have been released so far that I think you need to at least try, with the ones I personally have bought/will buy at the top:
Super Mario Galaxy
Super Paper Mario
Legend of Zelda: The Twilight Princess
Metroid Prime 3
No More Heroes
Geometry Wars Galaxies
Excite Truck
Trauma Center (both of them)
Resident Evil 4
The multitude of party games (Wario, Raving Rabbids, Link's Crossbow Training even makes a good pass the controller game)
And then there's the virtual console. I never had an N64 back in the day, so playing through games like Paper Mario and the classic Zeldas the way they were more or less meant to be played (in my underwear, sittin' on the couch, controller in hand) for what I'd call a completely reasonable per-title price is pretty awesome too.
and finally, for 2008 titles that likely won't suck at all:
Mario Kart, DQ Swords, Baroque, Star Wars Force Unleashed, Rock Band, Bully
Okay yes the last two are ports but everything points to both containing features not in the original versions. And it is very early in the year for release announcements, so six likely top shelf titles on the menu isn't bad at all given that it's February.
So I'd say the Wii's a pretty solid platform with at least enough on it, and coming out, to keep you occupied for the year.
CUZ THERE'S SOMETHING IN THE MIDDLE AND IT'S GIVING ME A RASH
This is most likely due to the barrage of games for the 360 that have come out, and my general disinterest in most of the Wii games. Galaxy and Zelda were awesome, but after that I find very little interest in most of the games.
PSN: TheScrublet
I never had a GameCube so the BC was a big plus to me, as I wanted to play a lot of those games. Virtual Console is a lot of fun for the old school games, and the experience of the controls is so different that games that use it well are a blast.
2008, 2012, 2014 D&D "Rare With No Sauce" League Fantasy Football Champion!
I didn't like either of the Trauma Center Wii games: the controls were just a mess (stylus-style controls plastered on to a non-stylus controller) and the difficulty, especially in the second one, was a bit too high. I can't say much about the party games other than I did not enjoy Mario Party 8, but I haven't played Rayman or Wario.
That said, Wii Sports is a ton of fun and comes packaged with the system. Super Mario Galaxy is amazing and a must buy. And from all reports Brawl will be too. I've only heard good things about Metroid Prime, but whether you'll enjoy primarily depends on whether you liked the past Prime games. Resident Evil 4 and Twilight Princess are incredible games and if you haven't played them on the GameCube they deserve a pickup. Resident Evil: Umbrella Chronicles is also a pretty fun light-gun style shooter (it's more fun with two-players though).
Mutliplayer and Online offerings are lacking compared to the other consoles. Friend codes kill most interactivity and the minuscule harddrive doesn't allow for much additional content (I don't think any has been released yet, though Guitar Hero is supposed to). And while it does offer some classic titles through the Virtual Console, it's not as nice as the 360's since there's no obligation to do anything other than emulate the game.
It's a solid console and sure to grow in the future, but right now it probably gets a little less play than my PS3 and significantly less than my 360.
I've heard the multiplayer servers have some issues -- at least from nintendo, haven't looked for info on the games that use their own servers. I plan on waiting a few weeks at least after Brawl comes out to make sure that the online play is actually playable before getting it.
Overall I used my Wii a lot when I bought it at launch and enjoy it occasionally at this point, but I sometimes wish I'd just gotten a 360 instead. There aren't a whole lot of games on the horizon that I'm dying to get for the Wii.
That just sounds odd. :P
But it could be because I lost my damn Wii Sports CD (which apparently Gamecrazy-type places do not stock, because dur! it comes with the system!); that to me was the best game on the wii. I get bored with the wii games. Lately I've been playing GH3, everyday shooter, or pixeljunk monsters on the PS3. I tend to play on game systems by myself, I hope to rope the wife in when I get Rock Band.
my 2 cents.
edit: "in-house multiplayer" is very fun, particularly wii sports. and it's really great when you can introduce someone to playing the wii who's never played before, especially non-gamers.
Super Mario Galaxy is ridiculously fun, and if you have someone who doesn't mind being second player (less active, but still involved and makes the game easier for player 1) then it's even more fun
Trauma Centre I've been enjoying. Endless Ocean is nifty, if a little slow/mellow. Cooking mama is cheesy and hokey and fun (then again, I find cooking games in general terribly amusing)
I mean, it's cheaper than a ps3 which is sweet and it's a fun little machine, but it's not hte be-all end-all of gaming. I like it because it's a different style - more casual, and the controls are vastly different than the button mashing that's prevalent in other consoles. Ultimately it's up to you whether or not it's worth it.
Americans trying to play Brawl with a Japanese copy of the game doesn't work out too well. The people who live in Japan and have given us their opinions said that online works very well, though I think there were some connection issues a few days after the game officially came out (some people got Brawl about a week before it was supposed to be sold) that were resolved. I imagine that this is in no small part due to the fact that Japan is relatively small coupled with their great network infrastructure.
The basics you need to know for Brawl's online multiplayer is that "With Anyone" is limited to three minute matches, no stock. "With Friends" lets you play with anyone on your Brawl friend list with every option available to local (i.e. single console) multiplayer except custom stages.
Right now, you've got a lot of good games to choose from. Zelda is crazy fun, as is Resident Evil 4 and Metroid Prime 3 (for that one you may want to play 1 and 2 so you know whats happening though). Don't have Galaxy yet, but I hear it's great. And the Virtual Console is excellent, most of the hits, and a lot of the sleeper classics are on there already, with more to come.
And it's worth noting that there's a huge library of cheap Gamecube Games you can now use, provided you get the controller and memory card
I remember there being a thread in G&T about good Wii games that was well-done, you should try and find it.
Hundreds (possibly thousands) of independent developers have been given access to Wii development hardware for this WiiWare service... so I imagine we'll be seeing a lot of games that are both:
A) Inexpensive
and
once that service is released. Some of my old friends from back East actually got in on it, and they're working on making an interesting multiplayer twist to an old game for it which sounds neat. And I think they were talking about putting it up on WiiWare for somewhere between 5 and 15 bucks, which if the other developers are thinking the same thing, that means that you'll be able to get new games without paying for all the markup normally associated with physical production.
That influx of indy developer creativity (with access to the full array of hardware, and the multiplayer capabilities of the system) should bring the Wii some very interesting and unexpected hits.
The Wii has a handful of solid 1 player games in the top 5 games Pheezer mentions. It also has some very fun multiplayer games for having friends over that, despite being simplistic, are fun and engaging due to how the Wii works. Don't look at future games changing that layout much -- 2 or 3 good 1 player games a year, and a few good multiplayer games released as well.
The rest depends on you, and how you play. For instance, I like playing games with my wife but she can't play FPS games and generally doesn't want to spend time playing them. She got REALLY into Crystal Chronicles on the GameCube, and she gets sucked into SRPGs on the GBA, but we probably wouldn't go "bowling" together and we don't have people over for video game parties anymore (and our living room wouldn't work for it). So for me, the Wii would have about 5 good 1 player games. I don't really like playing online -- I got my fill during Halo 2 -- so that doesn't affect me, and I don't like the Smash Bros line.
But you're not me. If you burn through 1 player games really quickly and enjoy the online connectivity and competition that the Xbox has, you're not going to be happy with a Wii -- unless you have friends over a lot and can play the minigames together.
I see it, in a lot of ways, as simply a popular GameCube, and I mean that in a good way. The GC had some really excellent games, but they came out sparingly. And they typically were in certain genres, and they were never online. The Wii controller makes Nintendo's games a lot more fun, or at least refreshingly different, but so far it hasn't really proven itself as altogether different from the GameCube, in terms of how often games come out and the variety of those games. Whether that's a good buy comes down to how you roll.
As for attraction, while I like Halo, and COD, stuff like Brawl and Galaxy pull me in more than the others; I enjoy the other games, but they don't really grip me as much as other types (though the Xbox has these as well).
I just *really* hate buying a console on the idea of "wait & see." Wait until the game(s) come out that you simply must have, that show you "hey, this console kicks ass" instead of banking on sales or popularity or whatever. I mean, minigame collections aren't exactly much "game," but the people at my work just won't shut up about them. And they keep buying new minigame collections! I wouldn't expect a massive RPG to hit the Wii anytime soon, and for an FPS to really work they'd likely have to at least rework the online play (as not every single-player FPS game can be Bioshock).
Undoubtedly, cool games will come out for the Wii -- but they're a poor reason to buy a console that'll be sitting in your living room from the moment you buy it. Judge the current library, and buy the console for those games.