ThePickards
standards, accessibility, and ranting and general stuff by the web chemist

When I posted the other week about not really knowing what to talk about, someone suggested that I update you all with what’s been happening on the Wii lately.

Well, lately, nothing.

I nearly bought a new game yesterday, but I didn’t. I’m absolutely desperate to get a new game. The only problem is which one to get. Apparently, Tomb Raider is being developed for the Wii, but I’ve got a sneaking suspicion “under development” means “may be available late 2008, if you’re lucky”, which means that with any luck I can be thinking of getting another game by the time that comes out.

On Wii sports, my favourite game is the tennis one, and I believe there is apparently a Wii ‘Tennis Masters’ game due for release in August. Whether it actually is released in August is debatable, since I can’t find so much as a screenshot for it anywhere. If the game comes out, and if it looks good, I might go for it.

The Wii Sports tennis is a cartoonish doubles, best of 5 games event. No sets, no tie breaks, no tournaments, no different surfaces. I want a tennis equivalent to the Tiger Woods golf game: I want to compete in “real” tournaments, against “real” players, try and improve my world ranking and play in Wimbledon and the French Open. I want to take part in a tie-break, play singles and take part in a 5-set match.

If Tennis Masters looks half decent, and can give me that, I’ll be first in the queue.

I’m not going to hold my breath though, because I heard there was a football game coming out, and it turned out to be some sort of Super Mario cartoon thing with Super Mario characters, power-ups, balls that catch fire and the ability to fire six shots at once. That’s not football. That’s something like the Overtime Multi-Ball in the Budweiser adverts where they pretended to show us how they would improve football, before finishing with the slogan “you do the football; we’ll do the beer”.

Nice adverts. Crap idea for a game.

When I want a football game, I want 11-a-side. I want formations, tactics; kick-off 2 or sensible soccer style: I can maybe put up with this newer games at a push, but not 5-a-side, not cartoon animals, and most certainly not Super flipping Mario.

So what games have I been looking at then? Well, the serious decision has been between Scarface: The World Is Yours — basically a gangster game where you have to go round killing people and being an all round bad sort until you’re Gangster No 1 (not that that’s a reference to the film). Alternatively, there’s Resident Evil 4, where you play an FBI agent (sheesh! why is it always an FBI agent? Can’t you be a traffic cop, or maybe a filing clerk for a change?) trying to … er … do something or other, but basically you’ve got to kill lots of baddies.

I read a very appreciative review of Scarface somewhere but I’ve been drifting more towards Resident Evil 4 because to my eye the graphics look more polished, it looks more atmospheric, and well, I’d rather be a good guy. Except in this case the FBI agent is female, so it’s a good gal, but what the heck…

So, I nearly bought Resident Evil 4 yesterday. One of the things that put me off however, was the location of my Wii.

It’s in the front room, which means I only really get to play with it when no-one else wants to watch the telly. This isn’t bad for some games — I could play tennis in half-hour bursts, for example — but for something more involved, I’d need a longer chunk of time. Also, Resident Evil 4 is likely to contain violence and gore, so I’d not want to play that in front of the kids.

Although my three year old probably sees more gore watching Hugh Laurie as House, which he watches religiously. I would have imagined he’d find it disturbing, but no. Seemingly he wants to be a doctor…

So, should I move my Wii into my study? It’s quiet, it’s spacious enough, it’s not in front of the children, and I’d be able to leap about to my heart’s content without breaking anything — or more importantly anyone — but unfortunately my telly in the study is too small. It’s got something like an 8 inch screen.

No, I’m not joking, it really is a miniature telly, you can run it off a car battery, and I’ve had it for at least 15 years. But trying to use any pointing device with any great degree of accuracy with it — always assuming you can see the damn thing you’re meant to be aiming at in the first place — is always going to be a non-starter.

So no, I’ve not been playing with the Wii much lately. And unless someone generous benefactor has heard my pitiful sob story and would like to buy me Resident Evil 4 and a nice big telly to play it on, this may be the case for some time yet. No, I didn’t think so either…

This entry was posted on Sunday, July 15th, 2007 at 8:48 am and is filed under Gaming, The Pickards, Life. You can follow responses via my RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your site.