The Wii is Losing Hardcore Gamers

When my father bought the Wii for the family, I was ecstatic to try out the motion sensor gameplay.

He bought all the right games: “Mario Galaxy”, “Twilight Princess”, “Mario Party”, it was great, wonderful, until I started playing.

I played “Twilight Princess” on the Gamecube and enjoyed the plot twisting, interactive and tear wrenching gameplay which was all completely lost because of the flippin Wii mote.


Swinging your arm to wield a sword is a novel idea, but once my arm became tired, the immersion was lost. I knew I wasn’t a reincarnated warrior saving Hyrule, but I didn’t need to be reminded with a cramp.

I blame parents who blame video games for causing obesity in children. It’s your child, take the game away, throw out the junk food, but OH NO, that’s asking you, an adult, to change your habits for the betterment of your child.

I fell sorry for Nintendo, because they have almost defeated the purpose of playing a game by attempting to make it healthy.

The Wii does well when focusing on ideas like “Wii Sports”, because it’s short, simple, and doesn’t need hours of play to complete. Furthermore, most of these types of games provide little to no emersion for the player so there is nothing lost when you feel the real pain in your arm from bowling.

Let’s be specific, the Wii is losing their serious fanbase and gaining the casual gamer; a player lost to Xbox and the Playstation. So, despite attempts to make classics new on the Wii, I believe it has seriously backfired because of the lost emersion of the player in the game.

However, Nintendo is far from dead to a serious gamer, mainly because of the option to download old classics and play with an actual controller. This is only a slight saving point for the Wii, because if a game is not enjoyable with the featured controller why bother playing the game? Also, when you have to play old games to enjoy a new system, it defeats the purpose of buying it.



I think they found their error and are attempting to fix it slightly by letting gamers play with a normal controller, but if they continue to turn out tired classics, they will still loose their oldies and just have casual gamers left.

Nintendo needs to try something new with their old classics because goombas are only so impressive and finding temple weapons, like in “Twilight Princess” is a tired collecting strategy dying hard and fast. If they don’t, I guess us fans will have to convert to the X-Box.

Sims Castaway: Please stay away!

Quickie: Don't Buy




I’ve been playing one version of the Sims or another since it was conceived by the sadistic minds at EA Games. Unfortunately my dying laptop could barley handle basic Word functions, so I had to stay away and sighed at the loss.

Finally the Sims started to release on X-Box, PlayStation and Gamecube, and the Wii and I gladly regained my god powers making my sims burn in their own kitchens and die in small dark rooms.

But time after time I have been disappointed with the console versions of the game. For example, when the Sims 2 appeared for the X-Box I found out that you could not have children within the game. You were stuck as a sterile sim only out to complete goals and climb the Simcorp ladder.

The Sims: Castaway seemed like a fun buy and if I didn’t like it I could return it in 7 days. Thank goodness for the liberal return policy.

You create a character at the beginning of the game, very similar to the original standbys: clothing, skin tone and occupation. Also, you can create other crewmembers to help you with chores and tasks.

At first you are alone on an island and it’s okay at fist, but if you decided to be completely alone, it turns into the forever Castaway movie.

EA attempted to make Sims more like a RPG. But walking to different zones to collect certain materials rather then just moving about the world omnisciently and assigning tasks becomes very tedious.

One of the largest design flaws I found was when you build a shelter and make a mistake, you cannot simply delete it. You have to go into “GRAB” mode, trash it a and if you do dismantle it, you still loose all your precious supplies. It’s annoying and time consuming.

If you did decide to create additional characters the next step in the game is to find them. When you do, hope you didn’t make a lazy sim, because they are entirely useless, especially when the concept of a multi-sim game is to eventually make a thriving tribe. GOOD LUCK!

Everything is more difficult with this RPG style. Talking to sims is impossible because you have to constantly move around and catch up with the other sim. You also have no control over the other sims unless they are in your tribe. And how do you build a tribe? By talking. UGH!

Everything about this game is difficult to achieve because of the basic game flaws EA overlooked. These could have been altered and the game could have been very enjoyable, but in short the game sucks.

I’m still waiting EA, when are the Sims going to have a decent game to play on a console? Playstation, X-Box and the Wii are all online now, so why not develop a Sims 2 and also have expansions available to download online? This would allow players to have the feel of Sims 2 they want and they can expand their world with a click.

I spent too much time playing this game looking for a promising development, but the graphics were average, the third-person play made everything harder, deleting became a bureaucratic process, relationships were hard to develop and the goals were very tedious.

Same ol Zelda Just Prettier

Quickie: Buy



When I purchased my Nintendo 64 at the age of twelve, I had no idea I would enter into a love affair with the Legend of Zelda series. But after twelve years of battling evil in the land of Hyrule I can only scream, LOVE YAH LINK!

Gamers have been longing for a Legend of Zelda title as impressive as the Ocarina of Time. To be honest Windwaker was fun and had a wonderful plot, but it was not what people expected to find on the Gamecube.

Finally advertisements for Twilight Princess appeared and I believed the second Ocarina of Time had come.

After waiting six long months I brought the Gamecube version of the game home and played until my eyes were red from exhaustion.

Honestly I can’t say I love the game. I played it through once and never returned for a rerun.

This is because I believe the game was too short and almost too easy. Perhaps it was to adapt to the Wii system controls or because I knew what to expect from a Legend of Zelda game, but it still held to the lasting themes in the series.

When we did eventually obtain a Wii my father did buy a copy of Twilight Princess.

My father would sometimes play Twilight Princess until midnight. Frustrated and tired he would often ask me or one of his grandchildren for help.

But it seems that he just becomes upset when we explain how to conquer an enemy or solve a puzzle, so usually I leave him to figure it out.

One day he said, “I lost my sword, and now I’m a wolf. Is that supposed to happen?”

My sister and I giggled, “YES! There is a wolf on the cover dad, come on!”

I love how they designed the wolf. They bring it to life by using very small details like when the wolf finds an item, he sniffs at it. I also like how the attack system of the

The landscapes between shadow and light realms are dramatic and add intensity to the game play. One instance of this is when you are on Hyrule castle as a wolf and you fight these one-red-eyed-black-birds that trumpet eerie sounds when they attack.

I’ve fallen down so many times from the castle heights, the noise still haunts me from beyond the game to the point where I feel like I’ve entered Hyrule’s version of The Birds.

All the traditional themes from past games were present in Twilight Princess: the puzzles, the elementally inspired dungeons, many lovely ladies Link can’t have and new twists. Personally I love the transformation from and the new history reveled with the introduction of Midna from the Twilight Realm. It’s a unique twist, especially because my first thought was Hyrule was being attacked by aliens. I had no idea the creators would open and close a new world so quickly however.

When Midna becomes her true self and breaks the portal to the Twilight Realm, I cried. Yet again Link looses one of his loves. Is this a tragic effect of fate and reincarnation? Is Link stuck in a soap opera where he never can find happiness in any woman he meets? They either become Sages, or are too old, too young or are truly his sister.

Personally I wouldn’t mind seeing a game where Link breaks against fate and could even choose to become a villain. I understand it sounds a little too like Fable, but if there was an added future motif, it would give the game series new legs to run on.

Honestly the collecting items-dungeon slumming-saving the princess RPGs are outdated and need a revamp. Fable was just the beginning and I’m sure other RPG genres are fighting to keep up. This was the game we were waiting for since Windwaker. Windwaker is a cute game, and I developed a love for it, but I wanted the realistic showdown released as a demo video for the Gamecube.

Every game I’ve played in the Zelda line has been great. I have no qualms and hope to see the hits keep on coming and expanding to new horizons on the Wii system. But I will be extremely disappointed if Nintendo fails to come out with another Zelda game for the Wii, because honestly Twilight Princess was for both the Gamecube and Wii. They need to make a unique game just for the Wii, show off a little and add a little more modern element in order for this series to honestly survive to their next console.

Introdution

I'm female, I play video games. Right now I currently have a Wii, but I had a N64, PS2, X-Box and Gamecube. I've been playing video games since I was a child and one of the first was 'Beneath the Root' a very old game full of pixels and a complex story line.

I hope you enjoy my game reviews and I'm sorry if some of them may be a few years late, but I'm a poor student working on a BA degree.