I have a frikkin wii

Balfa

Yay! I just wanted to say it. It's the first time I've ever attended a console launch, and it was fun. 10 hours in line and it was definitely worth it. Wii sports is fun, but I'm about to begin Zelda...

Balfa

Okay, too tired to play zelda now. Will report more tomorrow. The wii shop looks cool, though. Opera should be available soon, and they already have the likes of sonic, zelda, mario 64 and altered beast for download

The news and weather channels aren't live yet

BlitzKrieg

c*nt

Retr0gamer

BlitzKrieg wrote:

c*nt

I agree. Damn you Balfa. The freezer at home is looking very tempting now. I might just buy some sleeping pills and take enough so I don't wake up until the 8th.

Mossy Monk

BlitzKrieg wrote:

c*nt

lol tbh

im...LOST

Cool. Be sure to keep us updated.

Rhyme

I hate you...

more plz...

Doodee

had my flight not been a day earier than intended I would have been waiting in one of the queues.

Toys r Us in Time square was unbelievable, queue was a half a block long at 2pm yesterday, and everyone had brought their DS.

stupid BA

Ciaran500

Pics?

Is it sold out every where over there?

joe_chicken

You are evil.



evil.

thelordofcheese

If you would be so kind as to PM me your address, and times when you won't be home to defend your new purchase, that'd be great.

Why? ohh... for statistical purposes, not theft, ohh lord no, not that

tman

Retr0gamer wrote:

I agree. Damn you Balfa. The freezer at home is looking very tempting now. I might just buy some sleeping pills and take enough so I don't wake up until the 8th.

Just had an image of Retr0 waking up in the year 2030 ala Evil Dead 3:p
Fair play Balfa, I look forward to hearing a boardsie's opinion on Zelda

Balfa

Ciaran500 wrote:

Pics?

Is it sold out every where over there?

Probably. My local Walmart had 28 units and I was 25th in line, so I got pretty lucky. Anyone who arrived in the line after about 3pm yesterday was told they'd get a raincheck on a further shipment of 30 that the shop was expecting in the next couple of days, and everyone after those thiirty were just turned away.

And I don't know what sort of pics you want... I mean, everyone knows what a wii looks like by now. Unless you mean pics of me... there are ninja ones somewhere on boards.

Yeah, we all had our DS's in the line and played a few 5-8 player games of mariokart. And a few games of Advance Wars at which my ass was very kicked Me and my wife ordered pizza to "outside the front of walmart" too, which was very cool.

Balfa

Oh, and pretty much all the wii sports are kinda crappy except tennis. And probably boxing in two player. And I haven't tried golf, yet.

And the speaker on the remote is as tinny and nasty as some reviewers have been saying. But you get used to it pretty quickly, and it does add an extra bit of immersion to the game.

Asok

I will crush you like a clam on my tummy!

1huge1

cough kill balfa cough

seriously though ive been following the launch very closely and even watched loads of vids on youtube with ISDN! thats how desperate i am to get this thing

Giblet

Why do they use tables if they have perfectly good bellies!

Balfa

I still haven't tried red steel, but so far, I haven't seen anything that couldn't be done on a gamecube. But then, that's pretty much the same thing I say about xbox 360 games. If I want good graphics, I'll stick with my PC games.

The controllers are seriously tiny, by the way. And very comfortable.

ZygOte

comeeeeeeonnnnnnnnnnnn, COMEEEEEEEEONNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN

Ciaran500

Balfa wrote:

But then, that's pretty much the same thing I say about xbox 360 games. If I want good graphics, I'll stick with my PC games.

o_O Have you played most 360 games?

How accurate and responsive are the controllers? Have you tried to see if there's any problems using them at a distance?

Zapp Brannigan

Tell us about Zelda!!!

Balfa

Ciaran500 wrote:

o_O Have you played most 360 games?

Never mind... I don't want to start a fanboy war. I retract my previous statement.

How accurate and responsive are the controllers? Have you tried to see if there's any problems using them at a distance?

Hm, my living room's only 10 feet wide, so I don't have much room to wander. The IR pointer is very jumpy, but it doesn't seem to affect its usability much. The only time it feels awkward is when you're entering text on the on-screen keyboard. I've missed keys once or twice.

As for the motion sensitivity, it's pretty much the same. Accurate but a little jumpy (or maybe "sticky" best describes it), but it doesn't really affect playability. Swinging a baseball bat at the ball felt pretty intuitive without any lag. Same with the tennis rackets.

Oh, and wiiconnect24 seems a bit dodgy. I'm not sure if they're having teething problems or what, but I randomly get error messages saying can't connect. And there was a significant delay between me sending an email to my gmail address and actually receiving it.

Blow Me

wii is a kids toy :rolleyes:

KdjaCL

Blow Me wrote:

wii is a kids toy :rolleyes:

Umm Video games are actually toys so all consoles are kids toys.

Balfa any chance you could get drunk get a load of mates over and play Wii sports with a webcam?


kdjac

thebman

Balfa wrote:

Never mind... I don't want to start a fanboy war. I retract my previous statement.

Hm, my living room's only 10 feet wide, so I don't have much room to wander. The IR pointer is very jumpy, but it doesn't seem to affect its usability much. The only time it feels awkward is when you're entering text on the on-screen keyboard. I've missed keys once or twice.

As for the motion sensitivity, it's pretty much the same. Accurate but a little jumpy (or maybe "sticky" best describes it), but it doesn't really affect playability. Swinging a baseball bat at the ball felt pretty intuitive without any lag. Same with the tennis rackets.

Oh, and wiiconnect24 seems a bit dodgy. I'm not sure if they're having teething problems or what, but I randomly get error messages saying can't connect. And there was a significant delay between me sending an email to my gmail address and actually receiving it.

There have been reports of WiiConnect24 not working on consoles occuring a couple of hours prior to the console breaking. Not wishing to alarm you or anything. Its on Kotaku or something like that. Its linked with disk read errors aswell I think.


Emails don't neccessarily send immediately. Thats normal.

Blow Me wrote:

wii is a kids toy :rolleyes:

Thank god you warned me with your logical post with reasons why, otherwise I might have purchased one. You saved me :rolleyes:

tman

brim4brim wrote:

Thank god you warned me with your logical post with reasons why, otherwise I might have purchased one. You saved me :rolleyes:

He's already been banned for dragging up an old (1999) thread:p

BlitzKrieg

And I don't know what sort of pics you want... I mean, everyone knows what a wii looks like by now. Unless you mean pics of me... there are ninja ones somewhere on boards.

can you spot him?



or is he soooo ninja that he's not there?

Reganio 2

How those the remote work I can't imagine playing Resident evil with a remote control. Can you buy a controller for it. That is the only thing stoping me from buying a wii I think it is a stupid idea. I cant imagine sitting up all night playing whatever game with a remote control and it will give you cramp in your hand very easily won't it.

Jim

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiimote

Vids of people using the remote http://uk.wii.com/exp/

Balfa

BlitzKrieg wrote:

can you spot him?



or is he soooo ninja that he's not there?

Hahaha, actually, I'm not in that compilation, and that makes me feel left out But then, if you could SEE me, I wouldn't be a very good ninja, would I?

I was the ninja iinfiltrating the white house in that good ol' thread.

I'm just back from a session of rayman raving rabbids (which we bought this afternoon) at the inlaws. That game's a whole lot of fun And after playing it and some trauma center, let me put your mind at ease and state that the pointer is indeed very accurate and not at all "sticky". The stickyness must just be a wii menu thing.

But my shoulder's sore from wii bowling (which is far too easy) and my wrist is sore from various rabbids minigames. I guess using this controller takes some getting used to.

Retr0gamer

Thats great Balfa. Now tell us how great zelda is!

SNL

Balfa whats the story with multiplayer gaming is there dedicated servers like xbox live or anything.

joe_chicken

Hmmm... yes... interesting... Rabbid Rabbits you say?!

NOW TELL US ABOUT ZELDA!

Balfa

Hmm. People keep asking about Zelda. So far it's just standard Zelda fare. Similar sort of fetch-me puzzles and stuff but now heart pieces are only a fifth of a heart now, instead of a quarter! I think that's a good thing. Hopefully it means there will be more findables and the game will be paced longer.

The motion stuff is kinda weird. I like pointing the wiimote to aim the slingshot, but waggling the wiimote to swing your sword may as well just be mapped to a button. It doesn't do anything more than register movement, any kind of movement. I just keep shaking the remote while z-targeting to attack.

And so far this game seems to lack the soul of OoT and WW (and LttP). WW had soul right from the start with the magnificent opening, but I guess OoT didn't really get any soul until after completing the deku tree dungeon. Perhaps I'm not yet at this game's equivelant of that.

That said, it's still Zelda, and feels like it's going to be excellent. And big.

And for those asking for pictures, here's a lame picture of my retard cat which happens to be in front of the wii.

Balfa

And let me stress again. If you are expecting graphics better than a gamecube, then you will be horribly disappointed! If you're expecting graphics the same as gamecube, you might be marginally impressed.

The effects and polygon count seem okay, but it looks like it's the textures that are hurting it the most. Some very basic HDR flare here and a smooth volumetric shadow there. Patches of sword-cuttable zelda-grass are individual polygons that sway, but the rest of the grassy ground is so dull it almost looks N64ish.

BlitzKrieg

dmn that cats a retard...

DublinEvents

You know with the Wii generating all the positive reviews and publicity, it might actually end up as an essential household item and beat both the Xbox 360 and the PS3 in terms of number of units sold.

evad_lhorg

BlitzKrieg wrote:

dmn that cats a retard...

ah its just chillin out havin a wii

sprinkles

Balfa wrote:

And for those asking for pictures, here's a lame picture of my retard cat which happens to be in front of the wii.

Your wii fell over.... I'm sure you keep it upright and this was a your retarded cats fault

evad_lhorg

just like the ps2 and xbox 360 it may look better standing up but its afer for your games to have it flat.

Balfa

sprinkles wrote:

Your wii fell over.... I'm sure you keep it upright and this was a your retarded cats fault

Blahh. When you get home after ten hours in line you don't put consideration into the feng shui placement of your wii, you just wanna play the damn thing.

Here's a problem: When I stand it upright on one of the shelves of the TV stand, it's too close to the shelf above, so the GC ports and slots on top are unusable Yet if you keep it flat, the hinged covers for said ports and slots don't even open properly because the hinge opens below the bottom of the unit The instruction book recommends that if you want to keep it flat and you want to play GC games, then you should remove the covers!

projectmayhem

DublinEvents wrote:

You know with the Wii generating all the positive reviews and publicity, it might actually end up as an essential household item and beat both the Xbox 360 and the PS3 in terms of number of units sold.

well i'm a member of another forum where 5 people got the Wii (americans) and 4 of them were bitterly disappointed. one of the 4 even brought his back!

reading gamespot and 1up, the consensus is that the Wii is a great little machine, but not a replacement for a 360 or ps3.

sprinkles

bit of a pain in the ass. design flaw!?

Ciaran500

projectmayhem wrote:

well i'm a member of another forum where 5 people got the Wii (americans) and 4 of them were bitterly disappointed. one of the 4 even brought his back!

Why?

projectmayhem

Ciaran500 wrote:

Why?

didn't enjoy the experience it offered. as was said in this thread, the graphics are barely passable as gamecube (hard to swallow after a year of 360 and all the ps3 videos) and the whole wiimote thing is apparently clunky... not quite as smooth as we've been led to believe.

sad, but i'm still getting one

Vyse

projectmayhem wrote:

didn't enjoy the experience it offered. as was said in this thread, the graphics are barely passable as gamecube (hard to swallow after a year of 360 and all the ps3 videos) and the whole wiimote thing is apparently clunky... not quite as smooth as we've been led to believe.

sad, but i'm still getting one

I have to say that the graphics thing does turn me off, sad I know. I can't face paying €250 for what essentially amounts to a new controller. I haven't seen any good reviews for the system bar Zelda (which I will be getting on my GC).

In 5 years time these graphics will seem archaic (think along the lines of PS1 gfx now). I really do think gfx play a big part in the gaming experience, don't care what anybody says.

Retr0gamer

I don't think we will see what the machine is capable of for another 6 months. All the launch games were designed on GC hardware until the final dev kits arrived about 5 months ago. Most of that time has been spent working with the controls.

Super Mario Galaxy looks wonderful imo, not a patch on the PS3 and 360's best but well beyond Gamecube.

Vyse, go play super metroid. It's archaic and doesn't look the best but I challenge you to find a better game or one that generates as much atmosphere. Graphics don't mean much to me but they are nice to have. I'm currently playing Majora's Mask. It looks god awful and the framerate is atrocious but by god does it play well.

Vyse

Funny you mention Metroid. I bought my GC specifically to play Metroid Prime (primarily because GamesTM gave it 10/10) and I hated it (yeah, I was that guy). Nothing about it appealed to me bar the soundtrack (which was superb).

Yeah I know graphics aren't everything but I would still find it hard to play every game with sub par graphics. Don't get me wrong, I hope the Wii does really well and I'm sure it will, I just don't think it's for me.

savemejebus

really?? metroid prime was what sold me on the gamecube. I thought the gfx were top notch, right up there with RE4 but the gameplay was so much better, truly amazing, perfectly balanced and so much fun

Setun

projectmayhem wrote:

didn't enjoy the experience it offered. as was said in this thread, the graphics are barely passable as gamecube (hard to swallow after a year of 360 and all the ps3 videos) and the whole wiimote thing is apparently clunky... not quite as smooth as we've been led to believe.

sad, but i'm still getting one

That hurts me in my special nintendo place.

Still gonna get one though, if I can.

Balfa

projectmayhem wrote:

didn't enjoy the experience it offered. as was said in this thread, the graphics are barely passable as gamecube (hard to swallow after a year of 360 and all the ps3 videos) and the whole wiimote thing is apparently clunky... not quite as smooth as we've been led to believe.

sad, but i'm still getting one

Oi! That's putting words in my mouth. I did not say they're "barely passable as gamecube". They're better than GameCube. And having just tried out Mario Sunshine (a beautiful game in itself) on the Wii last night, I now feel perhaps I was being a tad harsh on Zelda. And like Retr0 implied, Zelda was under development for years on Gamecube, and they only just switched it over to Wii this year. It's essentially a spruced up gamecube game.

For multi-platform games like Marvel Ultimate Alliance (which I got yesterday), the wiimote is almost a pain in the bum to use instead of regular buttons (although I do like rotating the camera by tilting the nunchuck ), but Trauma Center makes amazing use of it and couldn't have been done on any other system. Same with Raving Rabbids to a lesser extent. I just can't wait for Warioware...

The Wii is definitely worth and there's no way I'd consider returning mine.