Walking Wounded

Where are the Wii games? They are all coming, and they are not here. Don’t get me wrong, I love my Wii and I disagree with people who say their Wii is collecting dust and should get rid of it. I would say my Wii is collecting these past couple months but I would also say it has an amazing line up coming.

Maybe Nintendo is waiting until it can make more consoles available to release it’s games that will really start selling consoles. I think Wii Sports and Wii Play are still selling systems, but those of us who have had our consoles for a while have well worn out those games unless we have friends over. Zelda was awesome but I can’t replay a Zelda game until a couple years after I beat it the first time.

I got Resident Evil 4 Wii Edition when it came out and that was a nice filler for a couple weeks. It also showed how much more accurate the wii-mote can make a game then using a tradition control set up. The game was tons easier on the Wii just because of the controls but still awesome.

So I haven’t really used my Wii in months. I’d like Mario Strikers but it’s not a must have and I don’t want to spend $50 on it. They really needed to put out a must have title these past couple months, rather then having a bunch of must haves of the next few months. Here is my list of games I’m interested in.

08/27 Metroid Prime 3: Corruption (MUST HAVE)
09/25 DDR: Hottest Party (MIGHT WANT)
10/08 Donkey Kong Barrel Blast (Might WANT)
10/16 Zack & Wiki: Quest… (MUST HAVE)
10/28 Guitar Hero III: Legen… (Multi platform)
10/29 Battalion Wars 2 (MIGHT WANT)
11/05 Fire Emblem: Goddess o… (MIGHT WANT)
11/06 Lego Star Wars: The Co… (MIGHT WANT)
11/06 Geometry Wars (MIGHT WANT)
11/12 Super Mario Galaxy (MUST HAVE)
11/13 Soul Calibar Legends (MIGHT WANT)
11/13 Trauma Center: New Blood (MIGHT WANT)
11/13 Resident Evil Umbrella Chronicles (MIGHT WANT)
11/20 Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games (MIGHT WANT)
12/03 Super Smash Bros. Brawl (MUST HAVE)
JAN 08 Wii Fit (MUST HAVE)

I think I would have spaced out the big hits better. I mean, Mario and smash within 3 weeks of each other! Then with the new Mario & Sonic game in the middle! Talk about overshadowing a potential huge title. If all these games had been spaced from June to December rather than August to December, I think they wouldn’t have hit the dry spell like they did.

Well, with that out of the way, I have to say, “holy crap how will I afford all these games!” I almost hope that some of the might want games aren’t any good so I won’t want them. I’m going to go from Wii Starved to Wii Stuffed. If Smash is online, I could see playing that game for years. There is a fully fleshed out single player adventure mode though! I can’t wait!

The closest coming must have title is Metroid Prime III in just a couple weeks. I already have it pre-ordered. I’m expecting the title to be decent but no where near the caliber of Mario Galaxy or Smash. I’m sure I’ll enjoy it, but hopefully I’ll be surprised and blown away. It is really hinging on the controls for me.

Last thing I want to talk about is Wii Fit. I’m really excited about this game despite most gaming sites not being impressed (general media loves it though). I think the idea of exercising with video games is long overdue in being well done. Others have tried and other than DDR nothing has really been popular. I think Nintendo can really pull it off. They do need some more work on the use of that balance board. It’s a great idea but when they demoed it at E3 there we many glitches.

I wrote this review a while ago and came back across it. I remembered how much I loved this game and thought I’d post the review. Sorry to spoil the ending of my review but this is the best game out for the DS right now. Of course I have to limit that to games I’ve played.

There have been a number of hand held Castlevania games and I have only played the 2 DS ones. Though I have played the NES Castlevania I, II, and III and some of Castlevania IV on the Wii virtual console. Those classics may attribute to my love of this game.
I am so thankful for hand held gaming because without it 2D games would be close to dead. However, they are thriving on the portable. Castlevania is kind of a 2D hack n’ slash dungeon crawler. However it has a lot of RPG and adventure elements to it.  In my opinion it is a perfect combination of the two.

I love how they handled the difficulty level.  If you level up far enough then anything can become pretty easy for the casual gamer.  But once you beat the game there are options to limit your max lvl and it really makes the game challenging.   Also, once you beat the game there are other characters to play through the game as.  One of those teams in completely controlled by touch screen.  It’s obvious that feature wasn’t very fleshed out but it really showed a lot of potential for future games.  It made some difficult enemies very easy and some of the easy ones near impossible, so it was cool to have to use new strategies to beat the same enemies.

One thing I really liked about this game was upgrading skills by using that particular skill.  I like this form of improving a skill as to some of the other ones as it makes the most sense.  Another cool feature was once you fully master a skill it gets a special power.  For example your javelin may double in size or you will through 3 darts instead of just 2.

If you like side scrolling platformers at all then you have to pick this game up.  You should be able to find the $20 greatest hits version which makes it a steal.