The BeoWii excites me!

I’m surprised at a few of the seeming oversites in your cons list. How unfortunate. I got a chance to play the Wii over the weekend while we were crunching at the office. One of the guys had one at his desk.

I have to say that my overall impression after 15 minutes of Twilight Princess was that I’m old.

1) I guess I have some weird wrists, because that little rumble on the keyboard screens instantly aggravated my wrist, like a sudden onslaught of carpal tunnel. I think it was to do with the frequency. If it was much more low-frequency, more of a wiggling than a buzzing, I probably wouldn’t mind.

2) So low res! I love low res. I’m always playing with things like Pixelblocks, or making little pixel-art things, or loving up on Colecos and Ataris, arguing about how stupidly highres games have gotten, like a crotchety old man remembering the good times. I even turn the graphics way down on newer games, because I don’t at all mind 640×480, and in fact kind of prefer it. When the games are so high res, I’m bothered by the sharpness of the polygon edges, whereas the lower res blurs that into – for me – a more realistic experience; one in which I can forget about the polys, and just concentrate on the overall gameplay. To me it makes the polys look more like sprites, which I like.

That said, it seemed unintelligibly blurry to me. I kept squeezing my eyes shut, opening them wide, blinking, and looking at other things to see if it was just me. It might’ve been the TV, but it seemed more like there was some kind of filter in effect, maybe to simulate a higher resolution, or add in a sense of the ethereal.

3) Man was I bored playing that game. Part of it could’ve been the stress of working all the extra hours, feeling like I just didn’t have any time for this stuff right now, but I just don’t think I even have the patience in my world these days to keep reading new information everywhere I turn, while trying to escape in the world of the game. All the newer Zeldas are pretty bad for that – they require constant game-stops to read signs, people’s speech balloons, how to use everything, etc. My feeling on that is "GET THE #*#@$@* out of my way I’m trying tp play this game already!" :)

I think I will need another go at maybe some other games before really passing any judgements. I still do applaud them making something slick, innovative, playful, and affordable, and I appreciate them doing it without all the machismo and angst of the other two consoles. I feel like the rest of the folks – those who aren’t hardcore gamers have been given something respectable to enjoy.