Wiiiii!!!!!

Last night, a friend emailed me asking if he should go "all in" on a Nintendo Wii.  Since I have had one for a couple of months now, he wanted my opinion on how I've liked it, what games I had, what the prospects were for the future, and, most of all, whether he should get one our not.  I felt that my response would make a good blog post, so hopefully he won't mind having our conversation aired in public.

The Nintendo Wii is a very different video game console than any ever made.  Last week, over spring break, I was at home playing Wii Sports Bowling with my mother (who hasn't wanted anything to do with a video game since the days of Pong) and my 5-year-old cousin.  Not only were they having a good time, they were both pretty good (my mother averages over 200, actually).  My mother wouldn't touch an X-Box or Playstation, and Brittany certainly wouldn't be able to hang with me in Soul Calibur.  So it's certainly got that going for it.

But we're more advanced gamers.  We've put a beat down on Sephiroth in FF7, Ares in God of War, and Dracula in Castlevania.  What does the Wii hold for us?  Quite a bit, actually.  The Legend of Zelda: The Twilight Princess is every bit as deep and good as past Zelda games such as A Link to the Past and The Ocarina of Time.  I also have SSX: Blur, and while it does feel rushed in places, it has the most innovative uses of the Wiimote yet, requiring more precision and timing than you could ever achieve with buttons on a controller.  Very rewarding to a hardcore gamer.

And as to the future?  I'm very excited about Super Paper Mario, Metroid Prime 3, Super Mario Galaxy, and Smash Brothers Brawl.  And that's all scheduled to come out this year!  Also the possibilities of the controller are promising.  Imagine a RPG where you point at enemies to target them and then do a gesture to cast a spell instead of selecting it out of a menu?  The Wii Sports games are all pretty simple, but I would love to see more advanced games such as Hot Shots Golf or Top Spin Tennis use the controller in the same way.  All in all, I'm very excited about the future.

But with all that said, I also really like what the X-Box 360 people are doing.  The have hands down the best online functionality.  They're really hitting their stride with quality titles such as Oblivion, Crackdown, and Gears of War.  And trailers for games like Assassin's Creed and GTA-IV make me drool with anticipation.  Plus they're coming out with a black one.  If I weren't a poor college student with not enough time to play video games already, I would buy one.  The PS3?  Wake me when God of War III comes out.

So should you go all in?  I say yes.  It's considerably cheaper than either the 360 or the PS3.  There are already some really fun, innovative games out, and more coming.  It's great at a party and also has some depth for the serious at-home gamers as well.  It gets the Wiley-Style seal of approval.