Dear Reader:
Mit's Fusion Tour Wii impressions
I had my chance to play Wii tonight (September 29th) at the tour here in Detroit. I only got time on with Tennis and Excite Truck, as I wasted tons of time waiting in line for Metroid Prime 3, which was shut down when I was two people away from playing (only to be reopened for a little while, after the previous line had left), but it was awesome. The controller is smaller and more comfortable than I thought it would be, and the system looked smaller and sleaker as well (and yes, no blue lights, but they do exist, I saw one light up when the system was rebooting).
Tennis was the first game I played and it was awesome. You actually have to concentrate on the timing and type of swing you do, or else you’ll wind up smacking the ball way out of bounds or way too high or something. The tennis ball is nice and bouncy too, and has a brownish side to it, so you can tell what kind of spin is on the ball, which isn’t too hard to do. Wii Sports overall also has a very nice, easy to use and navigate layout, with a fancy sports networkish logo spinning around behind menus and such.
Excite Truck could’ve been a bit better. I blame it mainly on the sensitive controls. Yes, I got used to them and wound up placing first in the race I played through, but it would’ve been more enjoyable and easier to get points if I could have turned the sensitivity down. I would much rather be turning a lot than a tiny bit, which in itself provides more precision on jumps, as lining them up is rather tough with them so sensitive. I’m expecting sensitivy settings to be in the final game though.
Didn’t get to try Metroid Prime 3 but certainly watched a lot of people play it, and it seemed rather cool. I really wanted to shoot things, and show some Metroid Prime skills to all the obvious newbies playing the demo (I watched the Nintendo guy play through a demo level testing the controller, and he was doing a lot of normal advanced Metroid Prime stuff, like sidestepping without locking on to an enemy, and being good at locking on to things, rather than just aiming and shooting at them, which doesn’t work nearly as well). (Little update, I was behind the guys who posted previous videos from that show and got to play MP3 [guy in red jacket], he was the last guy to play it).
You people who have yet to have the tour visit you are in for a slightly better experience. Tony Hawk was absent from my stop, as the demo is pretty much broken, and they’re replacing it with a second Metroid Prime 3 demo, which will definitely help the massive lines that take forever to move (people usually take at the very least 10 minutes to complete one of the demo levels). Pray your stop has good lighting too, something weird was present at ours, which is what was causing the Metroid demo’s wiimote to mess up. (Slight update since that night, it appears Tony Hawk has showed up at stops after this, hopefully just until they get another MP3, if they do.)
