Monday, February 11, 2008
Wii-ly big disappointment
Fellow video gamers have told me that the downfall of a really great systems have usually been a lack of really great games. Like the Sega Dreamcast. Sega Game Gear was also really good, I thought, although it ate through batteries like some kind of monster. They just never really caught on. Maybe it was bad marketing. I don’t know. The point I’m actually trying to make is my Wii-playing time is suffering a lot because there needs to be more great games for it that really take advantage of the unique wireless controls.
Wii Sports, which comes with the Wii console, is fine example of what Wii fun is all about. Simple to learn, fun to master, and great either alone or in groups. When Winter Sports The Ultimate Challenge came out, I thought this might be another fun title to have. The reviews I read on Amazon seemed generally positive, almost glowing, so I thought this would be a great addition.
Boy was I wrong. It’s so boring. The speed skating you just swing your arms back and forth. Is there some kind of strategy to it? Do you just pump the controllers as fast as you can like in some minigames? I don’t know, there doesn’t seem to be any kind of training mode that tells you. The ski jump has even fewer instructions. After the fourth time landing on my face I had the sinking feeling this game was a loser. The bobsledding seems pointless after you run and jump into the sled. What are you supposed to do, lean or something? Two minutes of leaning back and forth with no visible difference in the action gets quite tedious. The figure skating is a rhythm game, which I tend to be sort of good at sometimes, provided they’re simple enough. The cross-country skiing was weird in that your skier kept losing stamina and and pretty soon everybody else is miles ahead of you because they can inexplicably ski harder than you can. There’s just nothing giving me tips on how to do it right. I stop moving and your stamina goes up. I start skiing and he immediately loses steam. What a loser. I’m sure it’s probably me, but what kind of a stupid game doesn’t have tutorials?
There were other games built in there, like the luge and curling, but I couldn’t bring myself to try them after being bored to death by all the other events. I’m going to try poking around some more to see if there really isn’t a training area hidden somewhere in the game. But more likely than not I’m just going to put this thing up for sale and get rid of it.
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Categories: • Random acts of geekery