Losing your inhibition (Wii delight #002)

My plans for Friday? Xbox 360 LAN party.

My plans for Friday night, Playing some Wii Sports with a bunch of friends.

kick it into high gear. Literally. Have a version of Wii Boxing where not only do you punch each other onscreen, but physically kick each other in real life. That'll add some spice to an even virtual brawl :)

My plans probably involve sitting around waiting for my new Wii A/V cable to come in, cause the one that came in the box melted the second I plugged it in. =/ I was promised two day shipping two days ago...

Ok, I just played Wii Sports with 4 other friends on a projector in our computer lab. We obviously had no inhibitions...it was too much fun.

Some people should have some inhibitions about their giggles though. :)

So let me get the straight... a license to look stupid is Wii delight #2? Somehow I feel this is grasping at straws. If party games is what the wii is MADE for, then i think it will be alot like my Pictionary board game. Pretty much put away until the (unlikely) party comes along. And just like pictionary, I will feel pretty defeated if i play it alone.

Maybe it will take some developer to design a game for the Wii that isnt just a collection of minigames, an "arcade" experience, or some glorified tech demo, for me to see the light. Zelda, im sorry, gets so far just by nostalgia and brand recognition alone. It may be a good game, but for so many nintendo-outsiders, its hard to see what the big fuss is about.

Maybe the game Im waiting for will come, but until then, im sitting out on next gen, until the wii and ps3 prove themselves.

what? no flame war yet?

@4. melted? snap that fuckin whomps.

anyway, ya wii sports is a shitload of fun, i've been playing it with all my roommates at school, except when they got so bollixed last night... i didn't trust giving the remotes to them. i made the right choice to say the least.

this was probably one of my best reasons for wanting a wii.

... the best drinking game i can think.

Now, to find $250 for the wii and $180 for three more controllers.

Some people are so scared of looking goofy they won't let themselves have fun. All I can say is break this out at a party and the same people that make fun of videogames will be lining up. Just like guitar hero it's better with a crowd.

I had a friend over today to play Wii Sports. We're both 30, and grew up playing video games together. While I remained an avid gamer, he plays more casually now on his Xbox 1. And he's been over to play games on my 360.

We had played Wii Sports for no more than 10 minutes before he said he was going to pick a wii up on the way home. I said good luck on that. After playing for two hours, he said that this was the most fun he has had playing video games in the past 10 years.

Zelda, im sorry, gets so far just by nostalgia and brand recognition alone. It may be a good game

---

Best game of all time, but... thanks for coming..

Friend of mine is in his 40s and the only things he's really played was Pong, way back. He didn't want to play Wii Sports when we went to the Nintendo store a couple weeks before its launch, because he didn't "want to look stupid." Well, he finally played it tonight at my house and he said it's the first time he's actually thinking of getting a console of his own.

He absolutely loves tennis, killed me in bowling and laughed when he realized he was starting to worked up a sweat in boxing.

I even got him to play Zelda for two hours! Two hours! I couldn't get him to play 10 minutes of Ocarina of Time, or even Wind Waker when it was released.

We're having a tennis rematch in a sec.

I think I'll pick up Rayman's Raving Rabbids Friday. I saw the review on X-Play and it looks more fun than I thought.

Yes, Wii Sports is an awesome game for a group of friends. I have to ask though, is anyone sore from a night of playing? I think I through my arm out from getting a little too fierce with Wii Boxing...

Saturday night, at midnight, my girlfriend and I picked up the Wii at Walmart. A little after 1am (when the bars close here in Lincoln, NE), her room mates come into the house nicely drunk and catch us playing Wii Sports in the living room. Neither of her room mates are into video games, in fact, Melissa calls my DS Lite the Devil's Machine and tells me to get rid of it every time she sees me playing it.

After watching us play for a bit, we hand them the remotes, and the rest of the night is a fight for who gets to play next. It reminded me of my high school days, getting drunk with friends and playing goldeneye on the 64. If you want your non-gaming friend to enjoy the Wii with you, wait for them to get drunk before turning it on.

You guys are still referencing that PA strip wrong. I do not think it means what you think it means.

OK, This may just be asking for it, but where are all the stories of how much fun people are having playing their PS3's??? So far I have had 3 nights of people coming over and playing Wii Sports, they all love it.

the ps3 games are not as party oriented. Resistance is cool online but who wants to splitscreen a hd game.

I'm going to have sex with my wife on friday nite.

well i bet all 230 pds of her is gonna enjoy it

This is exactly what I did right after I got my Wii on sunday. I gathered 5 friends, headed over to one of our houses and played for 3 hours straight before we hade to get dinner. 2 and a half of those hours were spent playing Wii Sports. Tennis seems to be the best (quick and fun) while golf would have been better, except it was such a long wait for the people not playing. Bowling almost seemed boring compared to the other two. But boxing was the roudiest by far. All of us where laughing histerically as the first two of house randomly flailed our arms trying to throw punches or stand back up.

It's become a running joke at school. When we pass each other in the hall we flail our arms randomly.

hey, I worked out my arms and biceps playing Wii Boxing last night. My father stopped by the check out the Wii (he's a stern 360 fan) and he loved it. We played Wii Tennis, Wii Boxing and a lot of Marvel Alliance. I tried playing Wii sports with just simple flicks of the wrist. It works but when the computer in Wii boxing hit me with a monsterous flurry of punches and knocked me the hell out, I had a rematch that had me punching at the screen like I was Balboa fighing Creed in Rocky 2. It's easy to really get into the game. Even in titles like Excite Truck, I was really loving it when I found a car that suited me, hook up the custom soundtrack and learned how to do jumbo combos. That game is simple but soooooo addictive and the motion sensitive ways of making perfect landings and steering your car is great fun. Awesome game.

Zelda...awesome. So many comparisons to Ocarina but I sure as hell don't remember Ocarina starting off as well as TP. Is it me or are the character models and facial expressions in TP very well done. Midna's character is flat-out awesome. Game of the year candidate and shows some real diversity and range when Nintendo can give us Windwaker and turn around and give us Twilight Princess and both are awesome in two completely different styles. How the hell did we even use the slingshot with a gimp analog stick prior? Wii controls are the best way to play Zelda. I ain't never going back to dual analog for that title or FPS games...ever.

Red steel sucks hard. WTF hasn't anyone commented on the awesome controls of Call of Duty 3 on Wii and how UBI Soft totally blew it with that ass-backwards, retardo, "bounding box these nuts", control scheme?
It may not look as good as the 360 and PS3 versions but I'll take the Wii versions control scheme over dual analog every day of the week and twice on Sunday.

Enough talk...back to the Wii marathon...time for some Tony Hawk DHJ.

ah this is hilarious. you guys aren't fooling anyone. just admit that the wii isn't all its cracked up to be. i bought one and i very much regret my purchase. you can't even pretend like the character onscreen is copying your exact movements. rather, you swing the controller a certain way instead of pressing a button. innovative? i think not. a bold move? definitely.

i just wonder how all this will last...

i plan on picking one up eventually..i just cant see these arcade-style games having much longevity or depth...but we'll see.

I play wii sports by myself...

Read that penny arcade again. "Playing Wii Sports can be workout. Technically, only small movements of the remote are actually necessary. You can play that way. But it makes you a fucking toolbox." Read that, the comic actually means the opposite of what you took it to mean. I was confused too because of the panel layout or something.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_wczw4PlKuE

enjoy, hehehe!

I must be the only one who bought a wii and hated it. I sold it right away to my brother. He seems to like it. My sisters think it looks cool, but "dont get around" to trying it (like with any game in life)

Me personally, I think the whole swing of the remote is a HUGE gimmick. I mean, link swings his sword the saem way, even if you swing the controller left, right or down. Then you can swing swing swing to do timed attacks. I really dont see the point in this. Why cant I just push A, A A for that? And wii tennis was real boring. You dont do anything but flick the remote when the ball comes at you. no different then pushing A when the ball comes at you. I am really dissapointed in Nintendo this time around. If only they remade N64 with todays graphics, all games for it remade and with updated graphics and online multiplayer, it would be the greatest system on earth.

Im going to stick with my 360 this generation (Ps3 does not interest me in the slightest)

"...no different then pushing A when the ball comes at you."

No, it's completely different from pushing A. The ball goes in the direction you hit it in, have you not noticed? You can lob it, fire it off low, diagonal, directly straight... I'd like to see you just TRY doing that by just pressing A.

Um 007craft, I don't think pressing a button can put topspin or backspin on a tennis ball or determine the exact trajectory the ball will go.


Yeah and I know what your saying about Links sword, but the point of it is you are swinging links sword. Use the imagination a bit and your there.

Wait, friday, not thursday? Friday, I'll be playing Twilight Princess in the comfort of my room back home. Now thursday... that'll be a good time to play Wii Sports with the children (and maybe a little bit of Mario Kart: Double Dash). Actually, I won't be surprised if I end up playing Wii Sports friday night... Ironically, Wii Sports has been getting more game time than Twilight Princess is.

See, I'm a tennis player, and even though you can't do certain critical moves (like overhead smashes and drop shots) in Wii Sports Tennis, I've been addicted to it for the past 3 days that I've had it. No seriously, even though the reviews say Wii sports is one of those 15 minute to an hour session games... I was playing that game ALL DAY today after classes ended. You can work up a good sweat in that game.

"But what happens when you stand up and put some umph into the forearm?"

You break the glass on your TV? ;P

"What are your plans for Friday night?"

Game wise? Gears Of War Co-Op with the girlfriend. Next!

Coming up on hour 10 of Twilight Princess... I'll likely still be playing on Friday night... awesome game... just... awesome....

played some wii with a some friends and had a blast. a really funny moment was when my friend (who was really skeptical about wii) played wii golf. he tried a few practice swings and then when he was ready he actually stepped foward to hit the ball hahahahaha.

GEARS player tourneys with buds on xbox live manwhile wrestling with a nasty viva pinata addiction in-between matches.

The penny-arcade everyone is referring:

http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2006/11/13

It's so true. Don't play like a toolbox.

I may try to pick up a Wii this weekend if I can pull myself away from Gears of War long enough. I was also thinking of hitting BK for a value meal and all the "King" 360 games.

If I do manage to score a Wii, I'll be grabbing Zelda along with it. If not... well, I can wait.

Great post. It's totally true.

The night I got my Wii my two best friends, sister, mom, and step-dad were all going crazy for bowling and Wii Sports. After playing for

I will be getting a Wii shortly, and my dreams of being a toolbox will be realized. As a current ham on DDR and Guitar Hero, Wii is a dream come true.

As for Friday: Guild Wars Nightfall.

Once again people. A "toolbox" is the guy who sits on the couch making the smallest moves possible to play.

We need to head this off at the pass before it starts showing up incorrectly on the CW or something.

Yep, those comic strips sure can be hard to follow!

Am I the only one who likes to sit down when I play video games?

When I want physical activity I golf or go for a walk.

Last night I had my first Wii-related casualty. I was playing bowling and as I went to toss the ball, I ended up clipping a rocks glass on the coffee table with the remote and shattering it into a hundred pieces (a majority of which headed straight for the TV.) Now, it may have been the booze but man, that had to have been one of the funniest things I've ever seen/done in my life. It took us 15 minutes to stop laughing enough to clean up all the glass. Thanks Nintendo, you've even managed to make destroying my house fun!

My biggest concern is that most of the fun factor right now is due to the novelty of the control scheme. But months from now when that novelty is no longer new, what will we be left with. Its already been shown that the movements are essentially button pushes in most cases (instead of you actual movement being translated to an actual movement onscreen). So how long with the honeymoon with the controller last.
In some ways it restricts you, for instance in Wii tennis, they should have used the nunchuck to move the character around, but instead you have NO control of the character itself, you simple make him swing (while he moves automatically). The thing is, the control scheme isnt any easier unless the game itself it simple, if its an intensive game, the controls are just as convoluted as with any other platform. Me wiggling my wrist around to make someone jump is no greater a translation of the real thing as pressing a button, So what is the point.

bobeotm: I'm hoping that once developers have more experience dealing with the remote, that it'll be used more for stuff that's interesting and adds sophistication to the games (which is certainly possible) and less for stuff that would be done just as well, if not better, with buttons. As you say, that certainly is how a lot of it feels right now.

Zelda's great and everything, and it's nice that it actually works with the remote, but it definitely doesn't enhance the experience. It doesn't have to be this way, though, and with stuff like Mario Galaxy being developed solely for the Wii from day one, I expect some awesome shit to happen in the future.

It's in the developers' hands.

Re the comic:

Agreed that Joystiq keeps referencing it wrong. The comic is narrated by a third person throughout all three frames. The last frame is not a response to the other two, it is the same person talking. If you remember comic reading 101 you'd see that those arent speech bubbles... Hence "you could play like THAT," THAT being sitting and not doing much movement, is when you would be a toolbox, according to the comic. The comic is saying "if you are too self conscious or high-and-mighty to let yourself go with it, you're a toolbox." Whether or not we agree with that doesn't matter, that's just the joke the comic is making.

Personally I don't care how you play as long as you are having fun. Some of my friends have a complete blast going to town in Wii sports, but some are either more self conscious or calmer and don't see the need to stand while playing. I don't see a reason to fault either of these types of players. I like to get into it playing Wii Sports, for sure, but I pretty much vegetate on the couch playing Zelda.

One comment on the novelty thing:

At least with Wii Sports I think that can continue to be fun for a long while not only because of the social aspect of it, but also, at least for me, each game has layers of complexity the more you play. It will take a long time for me to hone my bowling skills, for example. The boxing is strategic and I still have a lot to learn there. The skill level thing is really quite awesome, I think, as you can easily gauge the skill of other players and continue to improve your skills single player if you want to. Also the fitness and training parts make for something you can play a little bit regularly for some time.

Red Steel to me just relies on the control scheme to be worth playing at all, so I can see that being no good after a while, but Call of Duty 3 really showed me that, with practice, first person shooters can be really fun on the Wii. I think I would get bored with the control scheme there as fast as I would with mouse and keyboard, which I never did get bored with. After a while the pointing a shooting thing gets automatic, which to me mirrors mouse/keyboard.

Of course this comes from a guy who couldn't play a first person shooter with control sticks to save his life.

I think the novelty of the "jiggle" or motions will wear quickly unless the developers find a way to weave those into a game well without overusing them. COD3 uses them a little too gratuitously at times.

I declare that I'm one of the ppl who prefers to play like a "toolbox" rather than moving around like a lunatic. The game is supposed to be the entertainment, not me and I personally consider games a form of relaxation rather than spaz fests. However, emulating some of the movements is a bit tough on the wrist when sitting down (specifically, I'm referring to Wii Sports). I'm still working on fine tuning the motions though.

However, I can easily see how my friends would enjoy doing the full act when they're drinking or my more animated/wild friends. The Wii definitely/clearly has the makings of a great party system, but I'd much rather be able to relax on my couch and play. However, I haven't quite figured out how to comfortably emulate golf and bowling without actually standing (and doing the full motion (in the case of bowling).

I'm really hoping developers don't go too movement-crazy with games and keep in mind a relaxed form of gameplay for non-party style games. The motion aspect an interesting control mechanic, but I'm not totally sold yet on its superiority or usefulness compared to analog sticks and buttons. The IR tracking of the pointer can often leave a bit to be desired too, so it will be interesting to see how well that works as a control scheme in games...and I'm not buying Red Steel to find out.

hate to be a complete ahole but shouldnt this be delight #003. I thought small size was delight #002. Or is it not delighting your inconstant heart anymore, o stiq?