Do you Wii?

[Alinestra Covelia]

Quick note: Purple coins challenge with Luigi is really really annoying.

[DrSpike]

I would say it's a good console, but if you're a serious gamer, you won't want to limit yourself to just this one. The grand troika of games on it are good enough to justify getting the console, especially given its affordability, but if you're into gritty games with mature plot themes, you'll want to get an XBox360/gaming level PC as well.

If your SO likes any of the three game franchises, it's well worth it. I've also had good fun with the Mario Party series, Mario Kart, and the Smash Bros game, which further its living-room party features. (I do not own Mario Party though.)

XBox360 is a great console for immersive single player games with great graphics - I've done Fallout 3 and Bioshock and I'm about to start Mass Effect. It's also great for online play - I play a few games online against my cheeky brother. But the only "living room party" game that we routinely play on that is Rock Band. Wii comes out of the box with a collection of games that's good fun for casual living room play.

Overall the console's current line up features a handful of really good games by anybody's standards, and the rest seem to fall more into the "capture the casual gamer or beginning gamers demographic" mindset. The amount of third party support this console's gotten is troubling - it's even worse than when N64 went mostly first- and second- party games.

My brother had his Wii a lot earlier than I did, and he blew through a lot of the games faster. He says he rarely ever touches the Wii right now and cites a lack of compelling software releases as the reason. This may be something that Nintendo may solve with more high-profile releases later in the console's life. Even if it isn't, the current lineup is enough for me and for my bro'. He occasionally plays Wii with his wife (who is not a serious gamer and who is currently playing through their library of games) and both of them have DSes.

So it helps if you're a fan of the game franchises on the console. If you aren't, and if you have a significant backlog of PS2 games to get through, then I'd say stick with that and see how the Wii's game lineup looks when you're done.

A very fair summary.

[Alinestra Covelia]

Now if only they would port System Shock 2 to the Wii...

[Alinestra Covelia]

So I'm playing Super Mario Galaxy. I've gotten all 120 stars as Mario, which unlocks Luigi to play the game.

Luigi is much harder to play as. He jumps higher and farther than Mario, but his handling is truly atrocious. He must be wearing teflon shoes, he skids around so much. (This is identical to the old Super Mario 2 in Japan, better known in the West as "Super Mario Bros.: the Lost Levels", where Luigi jumps higher but handles like a lubed-up banana peel on frozen Vaseline.)

So, I'm at 99 stars as Luigi and to be honest I can't see myself getting much further with him before the game feels more like a chore than actual recreation. So I've set myself a new challenge.

Find a P.O.O. in the game.

P.O.O. stands for "Perpetual-Orbit Object". As Luigi, your long jump takes you much farther than Mario's does, and you often long jump off of things and go into orbit. Eventually, all the things I jump off of will suck me back down to surface, but I've found one or two things that allow for quite a number of orbits before this happens.

1. The missile-shaped platform in Revenge of the Topman Tribe in the Dreadnought level, just before you go on the pull-star minefield. 2.5 to 3 full orbits as Luigi.

2. The green bouncy planetoid on Bowser Jr.'s Armada. This is found in the "Kitchen" area. Jump into the first cannon you see and aim carefully to the lower right - it's populated by hostile Goombas. I think I managed 4 or 5 full orbits before hitting surface again.

3. Some of the discs in the Battlerock level also let you grab a lot of airtime if you long jump off them.

That's all for now.

[snoopy369]

SO and I are trying out Wii Fit, partially just for fun and partially to see if it can actually help us lose weight (we suck at exercising, particularly because of our disparate schedules and the fact that neither of us like working out around other people). The Wii Fit Age thing is silly, it has me at 5yrs younger even though i'm not remotely in shape (30lbs overweight probably, and mediocre balance). But whatever. The minigames are sort of fun; particularly the skiing one, I could do that all day (and it's a good workout because I actually ski, so I stand properly with my knees bent and thighs doing a lot of work; makes me do the game better, and hurts like **** afterwards).

The yoga part is sort of dorky, particularly as it has no real way to judge your skill at it except the balance part. I do it horribly (not very agile) but get fine scores anyway because I am somewhat balanced (and not even that much...)

The strength training bit is probably the best, that and aerobics, in terms of actual benefit; though I learned just how much I dislike step Pushups with side stretching things in between are hard, but probably in a good way...

Also tried the snowboarding game (Shaun White something or another) at a friend's house (that also uses the balance board). Fairly decent game, actually, and somewhat of a workout as well (constantly shifting balance and bending and such)... might work that into the wii fit rotation, and alternate or something so I don't get bored too easily. I suppose the effectiveness will be judged by whether I lose weight (and whether I stick to it), or not