My Nintendo Wii arrived safe and sound from Amazon.co.uk this afternoon. There was no need to sleep in the gutter or outside PC World to get my hands on one, just a comfortable (if slightly anxious) wait in the office until Parcelforce dropped it off around lunchtime. And then another anxious wait until it was time to go home.

My impressions so far… Creating the Mii was fun, but as-expected since there is a Flash version of the Mii Channel available online. The interface is generally easy to use and reasonably fast, but anything on the network is sluggishly slow - for a good reason, there are undoubtedly thousands of Brits and Europeans online tonight all trying out the Shop Channel!

Now, the gameplay. Keeping in mind I only own Wii Sport at the moment, it’s been a good laugh but a limited experience. I first tried Tennis, which was extremely easy to get to grips with. There’s no need to move very far, but I developed the urge to jump around anyways, making me look like I was swatting giant imaginary bees.

Second, I went on to bowling, which in theory wasn’t hard at all, but it took a few turns before really managing to let go of the B button at the right point. Once you get it, it’s like going bowling, but without the sweaty mingers in the next aisle and the uncomfortable shoes!

Third, I gave boxing a go. I knew this was going to be a good one, because I’d seen a number of You Tube videos showing guys punching like girls or girlfriends kicking ass. Within an instant, I was hitting with all my strength, jabbing my opponent in the kidney and roaring with pride when winning.

I was dreading trying baseball - being Canadian, I’ve never been a fan of this all-American sport - so I had a go at golf first. There’s no question that I’d be rubbish at real golf, I can’t even finish a game of mini-putt without getting aggravated! It turns out that the game of golf is a whole lot easier than in real life, especially when following the visual and audio cues it gives. I cleaned up at this one, with my husband constantly going overboard with power.

So finally, we had to try baseball. Let’s just say, it really was a non-event. It’s not the most exciting game when you’re batting, and when you’re pitching, it’s just plain dull. So we only played that one once.

All in all, the Wii Sports is a great demo of what the Wii can do, but it leaves you wanting much more. It’s a shame Amazon.co.uk didn’t manage to send out the other games we ordered - Zelda, Rayman and Wii Play - on the same date as launch, but I can only be thankful that my Wii showed up on time, which was unfortunately not the case for my fellow writer Stu!

I can comfortably see a long, prosperous and evolutive future for the Nintendo Wii, as we’re only just scraping the very surface of its abilities as a social games console. I expect we’ll be seeing some fascinating games developed over time, taking advantage of the intuitive and unusual controllers.

And now, I raise a wiimote to all my fellow Brits and Europeans who are getting a first go at it this evening. Enjoy yourselves! [VP]

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This entry was posted on Friday, December 8th, 2006 at 11:04 pm by WiiWii
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