I am very pleased with the Wii Remote. Its button setup is perfect and allows for easy transition from application to application without much thought. It has a healthy weight to it that doesn’t make it feel cheap.
Conversely, it’s not so beefy that you become easily tired. I found using it in Wii Sports, Zelda, and Red Steel to be very engaging and I never found myself fumbling for a button or needing to awkwardly handle it. The included nunchuk attachment proves very useful in many titles and adds a nice layer of extra control to most games.
It also includes motion control and has great button and analog stick feedback.The only qualm I have is with the weight of the nunchuk, which feels far too light and cheap. This causes a stark contrast between it and the Wiimote, especially when both are in use (i.e. Wii Boxing).
The sensor bar, used for all your pointer applications, is very forgiving about where you set it in the room as long as you don’t have anything in front of it. The only time the controls got crazy was when I had the sensor bar set below my TV, putting it at the same height as my coffee table. Everything sitting on top of the table would sporadically interfere, causing the pointer to shudder and shake across the screen.
Wii Sports
Wii Sports comes packaged with the system, so I’ll give you the basics on it. Here is a very stylized compilation of today’s more popular sports. With it you can enjoy motion controlled action by playing tennis, baseball, boxing, golf, and bowling.
Each of them is quite fun, though each have their flaws. Tennis is a crowd favorite, but feels pretty rigid compared to the rest. Golf is a pretty accurate and fun version of the sport, though it can get pretty frustrating if you don’t know how to make a proper golf swing.
Baseball’s strong point is hitting. The rules are made to make the game go by very fast, but the still seems to drag sometimes. Pitching can easily be done by just sitting down and wiggling the remote. Bowling is my personal favorite. It’s fun, accurate, and easy to find your niche style of play. This game had the least learning curve and was easily the most random as far as who won.
On the flip side, boxing is the worst sport on the disc. It’s frenetic, hard to pick up, and tiring. The wild difference in weight between nunchuk and Wiimote is frustrating and causes a lot of missed punches. Overall, this titles is a keeper and a killer pack-in that shows the potential of the Wiimote.
All in all, I am very pleased with the Wii. It combines style, function, and fun it an incredible and affordable package. Minor annoyances be damned (smartly done firmware updates can get everything running in top form)!
This system more than makes up for it by giving us great gameplay, intuitive and engaging menus and channels, and the ultimate in backwards compatibility. With much more planned for the Wii in the near future, any owner should be continually delighted as this product continues to live up to its monumental potential as the console that saved Nintendo.
