Well, it was bound to happen, though I was doubtful for quite sometime. But it has finally arrived and past: I have played the Wii.
None of my local GS/EBs had the kiosks in so, having an afternoon free, I broadened by search radius a bit and found one about 20 minutes from my apartment. Much longer than I cared to drive, but passable.
As I pulled up I saw the kiosk was empty. In fact, there was only one customer in the store finishing up a transaction and the two employees. I asked for some Wii time, the clerk took my ID and handed me the surprisingly small remote. It's amazing, I knew everyone said it was small, but even after seeing all the size comparisons it still wowed me when I first put it in my hand. It's a tad narrower than my wife's 1st Gen iPod Nano, a tad longer, and obviously thicker. I was surprised to feel that the remote is comfortable even sideways, even grasped as I would to play an NES game with it (vs. the somewhat loser hold for Excite Truck). It's well designed.
Let me preface this experience with the fact that they might as well have had me sit
on the system itself because the way the screen was angled and the rack of stupid upcoming GBA quadruple packs of "COMING SOON!" I was pretty pinned in front of the unit. Not ideal, but it worked alright.
Excite Truck was sitting at the end of some screen. It took me a moment to remember to hold the controller sideways and use the Dpad rather than trying to point at the screen to navigate menus. And then, I thought the controller was broken because it was "losing" center--that is, I could turn all I wanted but the truck kept going forward. It wasn't until a little later that, if you think of the Wiimote as being flat in front of you, you don't want to twist it parallel with the horizontal plain, but you want to break that plain and tip it down to the right to turn right, etc. (which I'm assuming means that Ubisoft's wheel won't work with the game, unless I'm misunderstanding how everything works together). After I figured that out, things worked much better.
The game is fun. A lot of fun. Almost
Burnout fun. I was kinda excited for it seeing videos and such, but I'm convinced I'll get it at launch. It's probably not worth the full $50 I'll pay, but it'll be the perfect break between Wii Sports and Zelda to balance out the launch and provide another game for people to try out. It's a lot more fun to play than watch. People have complained it looks like crap. In the end, the visuals may not be anything to "WOW!" over, but I can tell you the majority of the problems were indeed that it was hooked up with composite cables to an LCD screen. It looked just like when I jack my Gamecube (lolzzz! Wii=GC1.2!!!111 LOL!!) into my LCD TV with its composite cables. It ain't pretty, but it is usable. Component will be a must for me at launch, as I suspected. And in the end, it took me about 10 seconds to stop caring about composite video signal problems and become more concerned with the rocks falling everywhere around my poor truck.
With my relative proximity to the screen, playing with the Wii Menu wasn't a real great experience. It was kind of neat that Wiimote rumbled just a tiny bit when you went over a menu option. I played with the Miis a tad, and of course all the internet stuff is a no-go at the store (at least for now, not sure if they'll have WiFi to play with in the stores or not). The pointer navigation will be helped by A) not sitting
on my TV at my house and B) just getting used to the thing.
In the end, the Wii just feels right. I have zero qualms about making the Wii my first (and likely, my only, at least for a long while) system of this generation. I simply cannot wait to get my own system home to hook up and play.
How's that for a too-long writeup based on 30 minutes of playtime to fuel your hype fires?
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ING God, the Wiimote, is SOOO small. Smaller than I ever expected in my wieldest dreams. Once you get the hang of it, Excite Truck is Really fun. I also played Motorstorm on the PS3. The controllers were kinda Meh. the R2 and L2 SUCk. they feel soo awkward in your hands. the Tilt is really bad. The graphics are