WiiWare first impressions

June 27, 2008 in Electronics, Gadgets, Gaming, Geeky Stuff, Wii
Tags: games, star soldier r, video, Wii, wiiware

Ok, so WiiWare has been around for over a month now but I hadn’t really had a play with it. The other night I took the plunge and dropped £7 on a title – Star Soldier R. What did I think of it?

• It’s a little bit expensive. SSR was at least. Maybe LostWinds and Final Fantasy: My Life as a King are longer and even have more replay value. SSR was 800 points, most other titles seem to be 1000 (FFMLaaK is 1500).
• However, the concept is good – original content in addition to the Virtual Console, and some titles look promising, paticularly LostWinds and the Final Fantasy spin-off. In general, reviews look promising.
• I feel Nintendo would probably sell more than twice the volume of VC/WW titles if they cut the cost of Wii points by a third or even half. I’d imagine this is dictated more by the game publishers than Nintendo themselves, but wouldn’t it also attract more customers to the platform?
• There seems to be a mixed reaction from commentors at Wii Fanboy. A common opinion is that demos would be really nice. Currently you can only watch demo videos, which aren’t ideal.
• SSR itself is a fun game, if it were cheaper I’d recommend it. It would be nice to have a campaign mode in addition to the 2 & 5 minute modes, 2 player co-op would be epic. One thing that struck me is that it didn’t take much advantage of the Wiimote, although this is good as you can use a gamepad instead.

Anyway, heres a quick video of the 2-minute mode – an excuse to try out my sparkly new EasyCap USB2.0! (L@@k, only £12.99 including shipping!)