Digital Trends

Nintendo Wii

November 15th, 2006 | by Scott Steinberg

Setup and Use Cont'd

Sorry, cinephiles: No DVD playback is offered, and sound is Dolby Pro Logic II (not true 5.1 surround). But hey, you do get a nifty controller complete with face-mounted buttons, including a gigantic "A" key, located next to an 8-way directional pad and near two secondary buttons labeled 1 and 2. There are also + and – keys (a.k.a. start and select), a button for shutting system power on and off, and a home key for easy menu sifting as well. And don’t forget that nifty B-trigger located around back, built-in rumble capabilities or an integrated speaker used for 3D positional audio effects like tracking an arrow's flight all the way from your bowstring to a bad guy's behind either. Happily, while a wrist-strap's necessary to keep the thing from flying off your arm during active play and having to buy AA batteries to power the beast won't amuse anyone, the gizmo's shocking responsiveness should endear the Wii-mote to newcomers and jaded vets alike, nonetheless. Added bonus: You can also tilt the sucker sideways and hold it like a traditional gamepad, wiggling your wrists to, say, manually send Excite Truck's off-road vehicles skidding down hairpin curves in place of traditional d-pad controls.

Relatively lightweight and fun to fiddle with, a bottom-mounted attachment port also legs you plug in supporting peripherals like the nunchuk secondary pad. A curved, C-/Z-trigger and analog joystick-sporting handheld device designed to be used in tandem with the Wii-mote, the gadget's a huge boon in adventures and first-person shooters, letting you quickly move characters around open environments or aim more naturally, with plenty of other useful applications in development. For example, in the The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, you can use the nunchuk's joystick to cause hero Link to run around and explore forests or dungeons, while simultaneously using the remote to initiate blade-slashing attacks or assault spiders and goblins with a handy slingshot.

Legend of Zelda and Excite Truck

An optional dual-joystick "classic" controller – similar to what videogame fans have gotten used to – will also be offered for use in certain titles. Additional remotes cost (yikes!) $39.99, with nunchuk and classic controllers priced at a more affordable $19.99. Best of all though, games themselves will run just $39.99-$49.99, or $10 less on average than those for competing platforms.

All of which combines to make the Wii a fairly monumental achievement, save for the fact that – like any newly-launched console, which developers haven't had time prior to ship date to maximize game performance on – its potential hasn't been anywhere near fully tapped. From Madden NFL 07 to Need for Speed: Carbon, Cars, Barnyard, Metal Slug Anthology and Rampage: Total Destruction, a large portion of the launch lineup simply consists of upgraded ports of games previously launched for other systems. (Even Twlight Princess is merely an enhanced take on a long-awaited GameCube outing.)

However, with widespread industry support from the likes of top publishers such as Electronic Arts, Activision, UbiSoft, Midway, THQ and Konami, expect the situation to change soon. As efforts like the original Elebits and Super Swing Golf prove, third-party enthusiasm is much greater for the machine than GameCube, and software makers are just getting started. Rest assured you aren't buying another pricey gewgaw destined to simply collect dust on a shelf. And that the future will bring even more interesting applications for the technology, given that any physical activity's now fair game for being turned into a virtual play mechanic. (Even something as simple as opening doors, which you'll twist and turn your hand to do in Metroid Prime 3: Corruption.)

Conclusion

Serious gaming enthusiasts can subtract about 0.2-0.5 points from our official review score for the first six months. But come late 2007, you can add that back and then some. A fantastic effort that you'll have to try firsthand to believe, the Wii finally sees Nintendo return to form. And, potentially, as the company's claimed it's planned on doing for quite some time now, light the spark that could ignite an entire game industry revolution.

Pros:

• Motion sensitivity
• User-friendliness
• Selection of games
• Third-party support
• Appropriate for all ages
• Free wired/wireless connectivity
• Backwards-compatibility
• Retro gaming emulation

Cons:

• Less powerful than rivals
• No true HDTV support
• DVD, HD-DVD and Blu-ray playback missing
• Sensor bar required
• AA-battery munching remotes
• Lacks a hard-drive, extensive online music/video downloads