At Least There's Wii...Right?

 Let me just say: having a broken Xbox sucks. To all of you playing The Force Unleashed demo: stop it.  Right now.  Seriously, it's just not fair.  I guess I'll have to unpack the Wii now.  It's been sitting in its box for about 2 weeks now because we recently moved (for the second time in about a month, but that's another blog post altogether).  Before that I had unpacked it, but it just sat there for about 3 weeks, never being turned on.  

Raise your hand if you think Nintendo would have gone out of business had Wii (or whatever console they would have made) not been such a financial success. Seriously, they've suckled at Mario's teat so long it's drying up.  I mean, it's a popular console, and I still haven't finished Metroid Prime 3 even though I'm a Metroid fan; but why am I just not excited about playing it again?  Don't get me wrong, I've enjoyed the series so far, even though I never finished the second one (that's only because I rented it and ran out of time, but didn't want to rent it again).  I guess one con about it is that, graphically, it's not much of an improvement over its predecessors.  I know, the Wii isn't meant to be a graphical powerhouse, it's meant to change the way we play games.  

So that gets me thinking about Prime's controls.  They're decent, but in some ways using the Wii-mote to aim and the analog to move forward/backward and strafe sometimes makes certain parts of the game more difficult than they should be.  And personally, I don't think a game's difficulty should be related to how hard it is to control the game.  

But enough about Metroid Prime, my lack of excitement for the Wii go much further than that one game.  Now, I know I'll play Wii Sports, but only Tennis and Bowling.  I'll get the Wii Fit out again,  but only for the balance games.  I don't need a video game belittling me for gaining weight.  I mean Wii is great for parties with your friends (I'm looking at you Wario Ware). Maybe I just don't invite my friends over enough?  

All of this gets me thinking about something that I used to believe in: Gameplay > Graphics.  But the Wii has really challenged me on that.  Most of the games are just difficult to look at they're so bad.  But just a brief look at gaming shows that great games don't have to have great graphics: Pac-Man, the original Mario Bros., early Zelda games.  However, when these games came out, those games had good graphics for the time.  So, as gamers, have the current generation of consoles made us graphic whores?  Of course the answer to that is probably another post too, and I've already talked too much (you've probably stopped reading already, right?)

And as I think about it more, I think I've realized why I don't like the Wii: its motion controls are not really motion controls.  In most games, you just swat the controller around and stuff happens on the screen.  But Link's sword doesn't follow your exact movements, the Wii Sports Baseball game doesn't follow your exact swing, etc. etc. etc.  And then Nintendo decides to come out with this add-on that will make the controllers do that.  Well, I call  Bull**** on that.  That's how the controller should have been in the first place.  I think I'm officially done with Nintendo.  I've had enough disappointment from them lately.  So enjoy your brief moment in my sunshine Nintendo.  When my 360 gets back, you'll go back to collecting dust.

Sorry for the long rant.  Hopefully you read it.  If you did, thanks.  If you didn't, shame on you.  Go back and read it :)