Happy New Year everyone!

Karin and I did manage to blip over to Valley Fair Mall to check out the "Wii Tour" that Tony had mentioned in my previous post complaining about Wii playable kiosks. I'm still unimpressed overall with the demo experience and the final consensus was "Meh."

At Valley Fair they have six kiosks - one running Excite Truck, one running Wii Sports Boxing (and ONLY Boxing), one running Rayman Raving Rabbids (but only one game - a western shootout thing that uses the "nunchuk" attachment), two running Wii Sports (no nunchuks so you can't play Boxing, but you can play Golf, Tennis, or Bowling), and one running Zelda. The Zelda station was monopolized by a couple of pre-teens the whole time I was there, and I didn't feel like arguing with them about it. Karin played some Bowling and the Raving Rabbids game, I played a few frames of Bowling, a match of Tennis, and the same Rabbids game.

The kiosk has tethers on the controllers (naturally enough) but they are far too short. Karin complained about it on both games, and it was visibily screwing up her bowling follow-through. I had a couple of shots on Tennis where it pulled my swing short. That's just poor execution, but I guess it's a relatively minor point. I don't really think that Karin would have enjoyed it MUCH more with a longer tether, but it's difficult to say for certain.

I noticed one thing about Wii Bowling - Karin kept doing something that caused it to stop the game and give her a tutorial screen about how to bowl. (I think she may have been not releasing the trigger in time, but I'm not certain.) Anyway, when it happened the game would stop, pop up an entirely static screen and wait for her to push 'A' to continue. The only clue as to what was needed was a little A button icon in the lower right corner. As a gamer I understood it, but it was a far cry from the whole "everyone loves the Wii" angle that Nintendo is pushing (and the media for the most part regurgitates). The kiosk staff were quick to come over and tell her what to do, which indicates to me it was a fairly regular problem. I watched after that and saw two other people do the exact same thing in just 5-6 minutes of watching. It's a remarkably poor UI decision on Nintendo's part and I think it really hurts in a game that is so focused on an immersive experience.

The end result was that it didn't change my Wii analysis any. Karin enjoyed it, but not enough to play it regularly if we had one. I was underwhelmed by the single-player experience on Wii Sports - it's an interesting novelty, but it wouldn't last a week before I was tired of it. The Raving Rabbids demo was just poor - I didn't find the game demoed that interesting and there was something definitely wrong with the tracking. I don't know if it was bad lighting, or some sort of calibration issue or what but I wasn't pointing the remote where the aiming cursor was. It was playable, but it felt like driving a mouse cursor around, not like I was "really" aiming a reticule. Frankly I'd vastly prefer dual analog sticks (or a mouse and keyboard natch) for FPS controls. Maybe it works better in a home situation, and maybe Raving Rabbids has a bunch of other mini-games that are more entertaining than the one I played. Still, it was a poor showing.

It still comes down to you either feel paying $300 for Zelda is a good deal, or you have enough interest in setting up a party system (in which case the cost drives up pretty quickly as you buy more controllers) to warrant it. Neither describes me. If the WarioWare game gets really good reviews I might reconsider the system (Karin really liked the first WarioWare), but man - after that it's a wasteland. Name the next good Wii title coming out. People will say Mario Galaxy or Metroid - but I'd bet we aren't going to see those until Q4 2007 (say September or later - and I'd be willing to put money on one of those two titles slipping out of 2007 altogether).

At the end of the day, I'm still unconvinced that third parties are going to support it with quality stuff, and frankly Nintendo's first party support for the Cube was so erratic as to call into question whether they still have "the touch" that used to make picking up a Nintendo console a no-brainer.

If Karin had walked out wanting one I would have started looking for one. But she didn't, and it didn't push me any further towards wanting one. If Zelda is the biggest draw than I'll go ahead and just rent the Gamecube version.

technorati tags: gaming, Wii, demo, kiosk, Nintendo

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My copy of Battlelore finally arrived last Friday, and I took a few shots up on my Flickr feed. I've gotten to play it three or four times now and I like it quite a bit. I think I probably like it better than Memoir '44, which is saying quite a bit. There are several reasons for that.

This is the first scenario (Agincourt) set up. The camera is on the English side.

1. The Command deck. I feel like the deck allows you to move more units than the Memoir deck. Ordering three units seems the standard, and it's not that uncommon to get to move even more. I like Memoir, but it feels like things in happen in slow motion sometimes - especially when you're playing the Allies and you are trying to deploy up the beach, one or two units at a time.
2. Increased melee importance. I've played the first three scenarios, and the only ranged elements in those are longbows. They work and they can be decisive if used right, but it's very different from Memoir where everything has a range and there's a lot of nattering about with "at that range I can roll one die" lucky stuff.
3. The morale rules. In Memoir you almost never want units bunched up because of the retreat rules. (If you've never played Memoir there are special dice rolled to resolve combat and one die face is a retreat flag. When an attacker rolls dice each flag means the defender has to retreat one hex back toward their side of the board. There are only two hexes to choose from and if they are both blocked the retreat counts as a hit. So you have to be careful to not block a unit's retreat lines with other units.) Battlelore has the same retreat rules, but units adjacent to two other units are Bold. Bold units ignore the first flag rolled, which is great. Even better is that if a bold unit holds their ground they may counterattack right then. So while bunching units can occasionally cause retreat issues the battle back thing is well worth it. A clump of units on a hilltop can cause major headaches for an attacker. As it should.
4. The theme. I probably prefer fantasy over WWII anyway, but Memoir '44 is much more limited than WWII (without the expansions anyway). The basic Memoir is pretty much just D-Day and related campaigns. So you have a beach, and the Germans have some fortified positions and the Allied forces charge up the beach. It's a fine game, but BattleLore has more variety in the first few scenarios.
5. The chrome. It's a minor detail, but the figures with the flags are just cool. I mean Memoir's figures are cool, but I think the BattleLore pennants win.

I'd still love to play more Memoir '44, but I quite like BattleLore. And I haven't even gotten to the advanced scenarios with the Lore Council, Lore Deck, and Creatures yet! (I did play the first scenario with non-human units - the goblinoid forces. I have yet to play the one with dwarves.)

I think there are enough Memoir sets in my local gaming crowd (I know of three sets, counting mine, plus now I have BattleLore) that I may try to host a "Command and Colors" Gaming Day after the Holidays. It will get less turnout than the more casual Game Day, but maybe there's enough interest to support both flavors.

technorati tags:BattleLore, gaming

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There are two areas where I find Amazon's inventory lacking: video games, and board games. I was poking around on Funagain's web site looking for a way to save games I wanted to buy later. They have a Shopping List function, and it turns out that you can make a list public. Thus, I now have a Funagain Wish List. Probably too late for Christmas, but I promise to keep it up to date with stuff I want :-)

It's not like Amazon though - as far as I can tell you just have to have the URL. So I'll post it here for posterity: http://www.funagain.com/control/viewShoppingList?shoppingListId=21220

technorati tags:gaming, shoping

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