Being one of those who camped out for the Wii on November 18th, I thought I'd share my experiences and reviews of the console and Zelda.
For those who have never camped out, it's something I recommend. I arrived with several friends 12 hours before store opening. We were 14th – 18th in line, and there were supposed to be 54 consoles selling that day. Camping out was a fun deal. It was a mild fight for survival in cold November weather… But someone was constantly going off to buy food or hot drinks. Lot's of people were playing multi-player DS games. By lot's I mean like.. 15
Within a couple hours after our arrival, we were no longer at the end of the line, but in the middle. I don't think a single person joined the line after 12:30 at night till maybe 5am.
Realistically, we could have easily woken up early in the morning and come out, and still had an easy time getting a console.
20 minutes before opening, we were all handed pieces of paper that said we are #X in line for the Wii. Only 54 pieces were handed out.
Now your asking, why would I recommend camping out in the cold for 12 hours?
Well everyone there had a fun night together, and the morning was even better, cause we got our Wii's. Had we not camped out, it probably would have been another month before we got a hold of one. With lot's of stress and driving around in that time.
Wii, Wii Sports and Zelda
The first thing I did was try to setup my internet connection. Unfortunately that was an impossible task since Nintendo's servers were unable to handle the massive amount of traffic they were getting that day. It was till a week later that I finally got connected for the first time.
Wii sports comes with the Wii (atleast for now) and many people say how it's a "free game". I wouldn't agree. It's a demo disk, it's fun, no doubt, but there really isn't much to it. Single player consists of beating continuously harder opponents or doing one of 3 training (mini games) for each sport. Each game very different from the others, and it really shows what the Wii is capable of. Everyone can enjoy Wii Sports, but it doesn't quite make the cut for a game that you can play for ages. If you get a new Mario Tennis when it comes out, I don't think you'll ever see your Wii Sports disk agian.
Zelda is a great game. Something I love about it is how many hours it takes to beat. The lowest time I've heard someone say in person is 30-odd hours. That's a good amount of time for a $55 (CDN) game. Try finding every heart, unlocking all the secrets and you will probably have spent a minimum of 45 hours on the game.
Unfortunately, there was only "Tony Hawk's Downhill Jam" at launch, as far as skateboarding goes. I heard bad things, so we're going to be waiting till a new installment with better game play comes out.
Overall the Wii is a great console. It's very unique, very fun to play, but currently the game line up is lacking. Games haven't made anything out of the built-in Wi-Fi connection. When we start seeing Online First Person Shooters for the Wii, we'll star to get excited again. For now, I'll be playing Zelda to kill time, and Wii Sports to show people what the Wii can do.
I had a chance to play Need for Speed: Carbon, and the controlling is fun. It's a great game, but if you can, wait it out for the next NFS, which will hopefully have online play.
