I spent several hours at my boss's house last night having more fun than should be legally allowed playing his brand spankin' new (of course) Nintendo Wii. We played Wii Sports, Rayman Raving Rabbids, Red Steel, and ExciteTruck. He had a bunch of other games that we simply didn't have time to play because we'd get so sucked into a game we would play it for an hour without realizing it (funny feature of the Wii - after constant use, it starts suggesting you take a break).
ExciteTruck was simple, fast, and insanely fun - and that was with nothing at all unlocked. Steering is very hard at first but after a few races you get very good at it and there are all kinds of cool powerups, including a terrain-morph that causes the whole track to change as mountains rise up, hills fall into swamps (leaving you hanging in mid-air) and volcanos spring up out of nowhere.
Wii Sports is simple but very fun. Bowling was great, very intuitive. Tennis was also great, especially with four-person doubles (resulting in some hilarious overexcited hitting the person next to you really hard with the Wiimote). Boxing was where it really shone, though. You use the wiimote and nunchuk controller which lets you block, dodge, jab, uppercut, etc etc and by the end of three rounds you are completely exhausted.
Red Steel was freakin impossible. I've also read some reviews that say the game itself isn't taht great, with a bad script and lots of bugs. I wouldn't recommend it - and when I get my system I think I'm going to pick Call of Duty over Red Steel for my "blowing lots of people away" game. The controlls are extremely difficult at first and after an hour they hadn't gotten much easier, though we only played deathmatch so maybe there's a nice tutorial as you start the single-player game.
Rayman, though, was the absolute shit. Basically, you are
Rayman| and your world has been overrun by insane, sadistic rabbits who lock you up and force you to undergo hilarious "tests" for their amusement. The tests we got through were:
- cow toss (swing the remote around over your head real fast and release the B button at the right moment)
- disco dancing (kind of a DDR sort of deal)
- slamming bathroom doors shut!? so weird - target the door with the remote and swing the nunchuk. this was really fuckin hard for some reason
- trace the outline of different foods (also really fucking hard)
- deliver the exploding present (move remote & nunchuk up & down like you are running)
- rail shooter type minigame but with toilet-plunger gun
All in all I can't wait for some disposeable income so I can bring home one of these babies for my very own.
