Looking for a Wii-nner

by ERIK LEIJON

This past week, I cleaned out my gaming room for the first time seemingly in ages. Necessitated by the putrid fumes emanating from the underbelly of an impressive pile of scratched game discs, broken controllers and torn freebie posters, I found numerous sterling relics of gaming history—all of which were encased in dust. I was shocked to find my Wii, in theory the most successful video game console in the world, in a similar state of neglect.

When was the last time I had a reason to Swiffer swipe my Wii? Things have been quiet concerning Nintendo. The many games with the prefix My- indicate something educational, so that’s a non-starter, and anything with the suffix -Fit suggests exercise, and any game that can’t be played while holding beef jerky in each hand isn’t worth playing. That leaves us with precious little worth cracking open a new package of batteries for, although unlike my failed gaming room search for my Neo Geo Pocket, I’m not going to give up on the Wii at the first sign of cobwebs.

CRUEL AND UNFORGIVING: Grand Slam Tennis

The first great-white-boxed hope is The Conduit (Wii/Sega, High Voltage), a sci-fi first-person shooter in the stylistic vein of Perfect Dark. By virtue of being a first-person shooter on the most FPS-unfriendly console known to man, The Conduit was fighting an uphill battle before the first blocky-looking alien was gunned down. Aiming your weapon with the Wii remote and walking with the nunchuk is a proven system that worked well with Metroid Prime, although, in truth, it works with The Conduit because the action is played at such slow, manageable speeds.

There are times in this aliens and rogue agents running amok in Washington D.C. title where the action is relatively hectic, but compared to the types of mammoth non-Wii FPSs we’re used to, The Conduit will feel lethargic and simple by comparison. The puzzles involving the all-seeing-eye, blue-light-esque viewing gizmo did bring a unique, Wii-specific flavour to the game. Still, The Conduit feels like a medium fish in a small pond.

Next on the docket was Grand Slam Tennis (Wii/EA Sports, EA Canada), and if the Wii has proven anything in its third year of existence, it’s that the world has an insatiable appetite for video game tennis. Compatible with the new Wii MotionPlus peripheral (which registers more precise movements than your simple Wii remote) and a roster of real-life tennis pros, Grand Slam Tennis promised to be the most realistic tennis game yet. Played without the MotionPlus, I found it impossibly difficult to repeat the movements necessary to appease the game. I would make a long, fully extended swing and my player would miss horribly. I would make short, compact swings and the balls would go sailing out of bounds. I tried every possible gesture until my wrist started seizing, yet nothing could elicit any sympathy from the cruel and unforgiving game.

Finally, I returned to the Wii’s more promising roots with Boom Blox: Bash Party (Wii/EA, EA Los Angeles), the sequel to the Steven Spielberg-designed masterpiece of block-moving physics. Bash Party is more of the same, meaning you’ll be using the Wii remote to throw baseballs and bombs at multi-purpose blocks, carefully removing blocks with surgical precision from near-toppling towers, Jenga-style, or razing massive structures with a slingshot. It’s one of the few new properties on the Wii that can’t be recreated on any other console—it’s brilliant, and reason enough to dust off the Wii every now and then.