WoW Wii weekend
This was one of those weekends where I felt like a shlub because it seemed like I didn’t do anything. I cleaned the pool, took down the outside Christmas lights, trimmed the topiary out front, washed the bed sheets and covers, ran the roombas on the rugs, the scooba on the tile and the dirt dog on the lanai and picked up and organized a bit. It seems like a decent sized list but in truth in total it took me two or three hours to get it all done which in the span of a 48 hour weekend is nothing.
As I walked around the property this weekend I had constant visual reminders of the results of my ill advised sprinkling during the freeze. I was so pissed at myself. I got annoyed with Ali while we were taking the outside lights down. I told her I was so angry at myself because the sprinklers did more harm than good. She said something like “… well that is why I have kept quiet…” Translation – yea that was stupid. I immediately was annoyed by this. I told her that she didn’t offer any strong opinion about the sprinklers. She was acting like she warned me not to run them. We had a bit of an exchange back and forth about it. What annoyed me the most was I know if the situation was reversed and Ali confessed she was feeling bad about a decision she made, I would try to console her about it not stomp on your foot and rub it in, whatever.
So anyway I hooked up the Wii Friday night. As soon as you grab ahold of the controller and have your hand movements mimicked on screen by a little blue hand you are intrigued. I fired it up and started digging in. I called Ali over to watch and participate in the fun. We played with all of the games on Wii Sports that comes with it as well as most of the games included in Wii Play. We played with the damn thing till almost midnight. As I hoped, Ali found the interactivity of the experience fun. At times she was more into the action than I was. She actually did quite well, beating me in more games than I did her. She also was the first one to come down with a Wii injury. After she beat me in boxing she threw her hands up wildly in celebration. As she did the cord connecting the controller to the nunchuk flew up and hit her in the eye. Luckily it was only a surface wound.
Ali also found the world of Mii’s fascinating. Mii’s are the little cartoonish characters you can create to represent yourself in the games. She had a lot of fun creating them and also going online and looking at other people’s Mii’s they have created. At first you would think from looking at the Mii creation interface that you were pretty limited in what you could create. However after seeing what other people did, it became obvious that you could do much more with some tweaking. Over the weekend Ali made Mii’s of Father Time, a Fortune Teller (for online Mii contests) as well as one for Nicki and my mom. We also downloaded extra Mii’s to our system I grabbed Beavis, Butthead, Darth Vader, Charlie Brown and Snoopy. Mii’s are fun.
Let me review the different games I played.
Tennis – probably my favorite game of the lot. I always have liked video tennis games. The Wii version is incredibly simplistic yet realistic at the same time. The only gripe is you can’t do an 1 on 1 match, only doubles although you can control both players on your doubles team. There is something very satisfying about the quick flick of your wrist resulting in a smash cross court. The built in speakers in the controller adds to the realism as the swoosh and impact of the tennis racket is played through them.
Bowling – my second favorite game. This is probably the most realistic of all the games. They have the physics perfectly simulated. It is a lot of fun. My best game is 201.
Baseball – very simplified version of the game which is basically stripped down to hitter versus batter. Hitting is all about timing. Again, it is very realistic in the physics of the game. I found myself posing after hitting a ball deep.
Golf – again, great physics, very pretty scenery. It is a bit too simplistic and putting is a bit frustrating.
Boxing – I played this the least. It is basically a spastic flurry of movements that require no real skill. Offers the best workout of all of the games.
A lot of the games on Wii Play were more annoying than anything. Out of what we played, my two favorites were billiards and shooting gallery. The other ones either were too tough to control or just not that much fun. The Wii Play games are sort of designed to demonstrate all the different ways the Wii controller can be used and it does a good job at that.
The Wii features Wi-Fi connectivity which is very cool. Once connected you use it to open up even more Wii goodness. You can go online and download more stuff for your Wii. Some stuff is free, some stuff requires “Wii points”. Wii points are obtained by buying them. Each Wii point is like a penny. 2000 Wii points costs $20. The downloads cost varying amounts of Wii points. I bought 2000 Wii points so I could grab a couple things.
One of the things they have available are old games for various consoles. I snagged myself an old favorite of mine, Punchout for the NES. I used to play that thing forever when it first came out. I was a bit rusty and was only able to get to the second round of Bald Bull. I’ll get all the way back eventually. You have to be really quick on the controller as you get far into the game.
The other thing I downloaded was the internet browser for the Wii. It is surprisingly good. Apparently it uses Opera which is one of the favorite Linux browsers. It was cool to browse the web on the 61 inch TV. Everything displayed properly, even videos on You Tube, very cool. By the end of the weekend I was a bit sore from the Wii activities which is a good thing. Getting some exercise while playing video games is a great thing in my opinion. The Wii get’s two thumbs up from me. Over time I will snag some other games that further display the power of Wii. Right now what I have will be plenty of fun to keep us busy.
When I wasn’t playing with the Wii I was buried in WoW. I have another virtual goal that will require a lot of puter time. It results in me running the same thing over and over and over again until I acquire enough “honor points” to buy what I crave, a 118 dps weapon!
To add on to the shlubby feeling I didn’t eat very clean this weekend. I had fun over the weekend but I felt guilty about it. Our next month or so will probably make up for it with the Naples Half Marathon and Ali’s race following in short order. There will be a lot to do.