The Wii: Afterwards

Those of you who wanted a Wii probably have one. Those of you who didn't, don't. Either you don't care about consoles or there's some stigma the Wii has that you just can't wrap your brain around, or you're so hardcore you think to yourself "I'll finish Zelda in a week - then what?"

Here's my review.

The Wii: Still a Hit
The system is a hit, it gets played every week, normally every day that my daughters aren't hit hard by school work from Saint Mary's Academy in Saint Mary's, Kansas (distance education, it's a traditional Catholic boarding school, and the curriculum is tough). They are allowed 2.5 hours a day maximum, or spankings will ensue for every daughter, regardless of whodunnit.

To this day, they've never hit that mark, although my firstborn dared see how close she could come and hit 2 hours and 30 minutes exactly, not 2 hours and 31 minutes. She does stuff like that to prove she can control her fear of Papa, and I love it. She obeys me, but she has to let me know "I'm not doing it because I'm scared." Lovely, smart children.

We use the system as a reward. A's in school earn a weekend with no time limit, since the neighborhood is rough and they can't go outside and play with the other kids. A black neighbor tried that and two of her sons were approached by teenage drug dealers, literally.

Rayman and the Raving Rabbids
Rayman still gets a lot of mileage, and it's the game I hate most of all. The only thing I like is the music beat minigame, and the rail shooting game. Somehow Maria, my firstborn, beat it. I refuse to multiplay this game except those two minigames, which basically means I don't play, because my daughters love to mix it up.

Wii Sports
Wii Sports gets played, but not so much anymore. From the Wii logs, I see it gets used every 3rd or other day. Zelda gets played every day, and Rayman almost every day.

Zelda: Twilight Princess
Zelda is currently the Queen game. Even my 7yo plays it, and she's starting to understand what to do. This RPG is just glorious to my girls - Maria will warp back to her home town just to hang out, fish, and chase chickens. I showed her some online guides, but they were terse. I bought her a $20 guide book, and she loves it - she mainly uses the map, not the book, because she doesn't like spoilers, but likes knowing what basic area to look for things in. Knowing a heart container is in an area and actually finding it is two different things.

The Wii Remote and Nunchuck
The controllers have not worn thin. For my children, it's all they want. Maria and Dulce refuse to play their old favorites on my Playstation 2 because, as Maria said "I just can't go back to that old controller."

Damn. That's harsh, but true.

They liked to run around on Shadow of the Colossus or play several strategy RPGs I bought them for the system, or play Fable on the XBOX. None of these are played now, ever, at all. The games are still good, so I really have to assume what she said is true - they just don't want to play with old analog / thumbstick controllers.

David's Adult Take
As for myself, I play my games on Pharra, my PureXS, one of the last of its kind since All American Computers went under, fortune to Kyle Felstein and his wife in their future.

The Wii controllers have never worn thin on me, though I can't use them when I'm sick - playing the Wii while sick makes you more sick. Zelda wore thin on me because I'm such a jaded gamer, I've played far too many RPGs, and some of the tedium of figuring stuff out just kills the game for me, that and the restricted game world.

Shadow of the Colossus gave me a real horse with real horse skeleton movements and an open world that never loaded and wasn't full of small areas unexplainably cut out in the middle of a canyon to avoid distance views.

Oblivion gave me, well, freedom, and an open overworld, and tons of shops, and things to do, and classes.

So, no, Zelda doesn't appeal to me, but my daughters love it. It's the first Zelda game they've played, and I think it will make as lasting an impression on their hearts as the original Legend of Zelda has on mine.