I have a Wii – Yep – I beat the crowds and have a Wii. The box arrived and for a while we simply just admired the fact that we had one. Then we could hold off no longer and we opened the box.

Setting the device up was a fairly straightforward affair though my understanding of how it works from what I had seen previously (admittedly mostly on the TV) was surprisingly off the mark. The Wii Remote utilises a sensor bar which is a long strip that sits on (or below) the TV for interacting with the onscreen pointer, however on our unit the pointer juddered an awful lot and it took a lot of practice keeping the pointer on the screen. Also, the remote uses standard batteries rather than some rechargeable battery which was also a surprise. The rumble on the Wii was also a bit of let down compared to what I have been used to on other gaming platforms. This doesn’t mean that it’s bad – it is simply not quite what I was expecting.

In terms of games that we have, I would say they go so far as being okay. I have the sports pack which contains games like boxing, bowling, golf and tennis. Excitement was far away from what I was expecting – somewhat driven by the fact that you only get one controller and most of the fun is surely in two player games?

My two (nearly three) year old daughter likes the mini-game in another game we have called Catz which she took to almost instantly once she figured out how to use the Wii remote. A big observation here and something that eventually put her off was why can’t games have a one-click ‘play again’ button instead of having to navigate screen upon screen of information? I kept telling her press this, then that, then point there, then click, then click again, then select that, then click, you get the picture? If she could have got back into the game with one button she would have played it for ages, as it was she got a bit bored of the menus and decided to do some drawing instead.

Setting up the Wireless Connection to the Internet on the Wii unit was easy, even with a WEP code in operation. I connected to the online service quite excitedly however; the lack of available content online was somewhat disappointing and extremely light. I downloaded a news bulletin thingy and a demo of a game but it turned out (after a multi-megabyte download) that the demo was simply a series of screen shots – unless I missed some obvious play function of course! If Nintendo could get a thriving online gaming development community going similar to the Microsoft attempt with XNA then they may be onto something. It would also be useful if the unit at least played DVD’s too then the panelled intro menu may be useful.

The Wii is now switched off and plugged out. We will try it again soon, because I want to like the Wii – I really do – perhaps we need to get another controller and maybe some different games – but in my opinion the games I’ve seen so far are way too expensive for what they are. Perhaps they might drop in price after Christmas – I hope so otherwise the Wii may just find its way into the loft with all the other ‘great ideas at the time.

Related

• Something to fill a quiet moment
• A romantic flashback to the ZX81
• Smooth transition
• Calling all Field based and Remote workers
• Good Old Sony