After Christmas Report - time to Wii.

As I mentioned in my last post the Wife and I bought a Wii for ourselves for Christmas. We opened our presents on the evening of the 23rd - after I got home from work. I had Christmas Eve off, but have to work Christmas day.

So we had the Wii, a number of Gamecube games, a number of Wii games - along with a number rented from work (I do love my free rentals from Blockbuster); and of course the controllers and memory cards for all the above.

First off the Gamecube games - I really enjoyed the ones I got - Geist, Mega Man Anniversary Collection, and F-Zero GX (F-Zero being one of my favorite SNES games, and one of my favorite games of all time). Decent games, and ones pretty much exclusive to the system. I also got Paper Mario but I haven't played it yet. The wife got a slew of RPGs (6 of 'em) - which was one of the reasons we got the system, so she had access to the GC RPGs she hadn't played.

Now take the title of this blog - Confessions of a Casual Video Gamer, and the fact that Rock Band 2 (and to a lesser extent the various Guitar Hero games) have dominated my video gaming time - you would think that I would have had a Wii already. But to be honest I scoffed at the controllers. The thing is I like "Hardcore" games, I just usually am not good at them. I personally think that the Hardcore/Casual split is mostly illusion. But I do have a particular approach to gaming - I normally can't sit down for hours on end to play - I need smaller chunks that when I was a youth. Then came Rock Band, and Peggle and Plants vs Zombies, and playing older console games on emulator (with save states and such) and I find I am solidly in the so called "casual" zone. And Rock Band really proved to me that non standard controllers can work.

So what Wii games did we play - Wii Sports (of course), Bleach Shattered Blade, New Super Mario Brothers, No More Heroes,Houses of the Dead 2 & 3, Boom Blox and a few others. I find myself really enjoying the approach most of these games have to control - notably the Boom Blox and Wii Sports. They are really a different kind of game than what I am used to (I loved Flower too BTW). I find myself being more active playing them, and really liking the fact I can sit down (or more likely stand up) and play for 5 or 10 minutes.

Another big bonus for the Wii is "light gun" games, especially on rails. I love those games, I've loved them in the arcade, with Duck Hunt, the Menacer (remember that?), and Elemental Gearbolt. But there just aren't that many games for them on standard consoles. The Wii has a ton of them - and don't think for a minute that this fact didn't color my desire for the machine.

It is also interesting to play "standard" games with Wii controls - No More Heroes (an Action Game) and Bleach: Shattered Blade (Fighter) both felt very odd with the control schemes - not necessarily worse, just different.

And the Wife and I played more games together - we do the occasional Lego game together, but we actually played for large chunks of time together. I really like that. I don't care for 1 on 1 competitive games, and I really don't like online, but playing with a loved one in the same room - that has something to recommend it.

So all in all I have really had a blast playing with the Wii. And I think I will keep doing so, for a long time.

Gotta go, need to bowl another line or two.

Games Played since last post:
F-Zero GX (Game Cube)
Geist (Game Cube)
Mega Man Anniversary Collection (Game Cube)
Boom Blox Bash Party (Wii)
No More Heroes (Wii)
House of the Dead 2 & 3 (Wii)
Wii Sports (Wii)
Rayman Raving Rabbids (Wii)
New Super Mario Brothers (Wii)
Bleach: Shattered Blade (Wii)