Penny Arcade have been doing a pretty good job of plugging the attractiveness of Skylanders: Spyro's Adventure, and they piqued my interest enough to check it out. After learning more about the game, and with my daughter's 7th birthday coming up, I thought "This is the perfect gift for her!"
R i i i i i i ght. For her. S u u u u r e it is.
Yes, you're right. It would make a better Christmas present for my 11 y/old son.
Riiiii... Okay, okay! Enough! Yes! I wanted it, too.
So what if the boy doesn't know it exists? When he does learn about it, he will want it. This, I know.
Last Sunday the cat woke me up early, as she does most mornings (even on my days off. Stupid cat. Don't you know it's Sunday?) so I got up, retrieved the Times from the doorstep (Hooray for early delivered papers) fed the cat, made myself breakfast, then sat down to read the paper. Which for me means separating the comics and mountain of catalogs from the rest of the sections, reading comics, then browsing the more important of the catalogs, Big 5, Best Buy, Toys R Us, etc.
And I saw that Toys R Us were running one of their "Buy Two, Get a Third Video Game/Accessory Free" deal, with a big "We have Skylander figures!" plug at the bottom of the page.
The Skylanders' Starter Pack retails for $70, which might seem a little expensive except that most new, full-price games sell for $60, so that's only $10 more, and you also don't get just the game in the Skylanders' Starter Pack. Included is a Skylanders Portal, which being somewhat (absolutely) necessary to play the game one could argue it should be included anyway at no additional charge (and I'd agree with you).
You also get three game figures (yes, actual figurines) which are also necessary to play the game. However, Activision could have done the bare minimum and included just one figure in the Starter Pack and still charged $70 for it, so if you factor in that those two figures would normally cost you $8 each now you're getting two "bonus" figures at a 33% discount. And I'm okay with that.
When placed on the Skylanders Portal those figures appear in the game as your playing character, and as each character has different powers they do add value & variety to even a single-player game. Additionally, there are numerous 'bonus' areas in the game which cannot be accessed unless certain characters are present. You can play through to the end of the game and beat The Final Boss using just the 3 characters in the Starter Pack, but you'll have to skip certain areas along the way because you won't be able to access them. Long story short, each figure/character belongs to one of eight different Elemental Groups, and certain areas can only be unlocked by characters from a specific Elemental Group. You don't need a figure from each Elemental Group to beat the game, but if you want to complete it 100% you will.
In addition to being your playing character, the figures serve additional purposes. They come with a memory chip inside them, and everything you achieve in the game for that character is automatically saved to the figure itself. As your character levels up & gets stronger & finds/buys new weapons, etc., those changes get saved to the figure's memory chip. And for the first time that I'm aware of (and I've been around for some time) these figures are cross-platform compatible, meaning you can take your figure to your friend's house, pop it on his Skylander Portal, and even though you've been playing on your Wii and he has a PS3, it doesn't matter; your character will appear in his game. Also by visiting your friend's house with your Skylanders' figures, or vice versa, you can help each other unlock those otherwise inaccessible areas.
Because I recently won the Office Weight Loss competition and picked up $400 for my trouble I had some extra cash burning a hole in my wallet, so with my mind made up I trotted off to Toys R Us and picked up the Skylanders' game. Because they had the Awesome! "Buy 2, get 1 Free" deal I also added two 3-character packs to my cart, saving myself $20 and reducing the price per figure to a shade over $3.
So now the Skylanders' game and nine figures/characters are waiting for a lucky young boy to open them on Christmas day. Except he doesn't know about Skylanders yet.
(And in case you're wondering I took my daughter on a shopping spree at Toys R Us. I am not a bad father.)
This weekend after a family outing we found ourselves at the local Mall, and while the wife went shopping the kids and I wound up at Dave & Busters. After playing several games and "winning" a bunch of tickets we cashed them in and entered the prize room. My daughter picked out one of those plastic echo-micophones but my son decided he wanted to save up his tickets. D&B also have a small selection of video games available at the checkout counter and while waiting for the cashier I was surprised to see they had a copy of Skylanders, for the Wii no less.
It was at the end of their glass cabinet so we could see the back side of the box, and my son's eyes lit up when he saw it. It's a big box, maybe 12"x18" in size, and it's colorful graphics are very eye catching. It is a boy magnet. It was also 15,000 tickets and we have just half that. The cashier took the box out of the cabinet so we (the boy ;) could look at it a little more closely. She also said she thought it looked pretty cool (or maybe she was just being a good salespeon), and said how much fun we would have playing the D&B games together and saving our tickets up.
To his credit the boy was financially savvy enough to recognize that buying the game outright was a better deal than paying $20 every few weeks to "win" 1,000 tickets. He was also sharp enough to notice that while the game box contained 3 figures, the pictures on the box showed a whole lot more.
We stopped at Gamestop on the way out of the Mall and after viewing the small display they have there (it has nothing on the wall of figures and adventure packs at Toys R Us) the hook was well & truly set. The boy knew Skylanders existed, and he wanted them. Like I knew he would.
Later I told Liz that the boy had seen his Christmas present, he just didn't know it. Then again he's pretty smart. Maybe he does ;)
He'll also possibly talk Skylanders up among his friends. Some of who may get it before Christmas, some for Christmas, and some may miss out altogether. I'm anticipating it to be a hot-ticket item this Christmas, in demand not just by young boys but those young-at-heart, and from talking to salespeons in both TRU and Gamestop that IS what I'm hearing, that 20-30 y/old gamers are buying it for themselves. This 42-year old gamer did...sort of :P
If Skylanders is the hot potato that I expect it to be, come Christmas time demand for the cross-platform compatible figures alone is going to be through the roof. And in the weeks after Christmas, maybe even more so.
"Daddy! There's a locked room in my game, Daddy! I can't get in without a Fire Skylander! Daddy! I need a Fire Skylander! DADDY! I WANT FIRE SLINGER, DADDY!!!"
Well played, Activision. Well played, indeed.
Showing posts with label Wii. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Wii. Show all posts
Monday, October 24, 2011
Tuesday, July 19, 2011
Wii down! Wii down!!!
A few years ago we got our Wii and while it's not an XBox or a PS3 it's still a lot of fun, and aside from a couple of glitches which never required anything more than a reboot to resolve we never had any problems with it. Until this weekend.
So a few weeks ago my office decided to have a Weight Loss competition.
Wait! Weren't we talking about your Wii?
Yes, we were. We'll get back to that.
So my office weight loss competition is being held over 3 months with a $20/month fee, and the winner & Biggest Loser takes all at the final weigh-in on October 5th.
Last year I lost almost 30 pounds in a couple of months, going from 210 down to 180, simply by watching what I ate (and watching less of it ;), and using my Wii and Wii Fit Boxing. I got down to 180 but then stopped working out as diligently, and my weight slowly crept back up. Fortunately it never went over 190, which is healthy for a 5'11", 41 year old guy who doesn't work out that much, but I could do better. According to my scales I've got approx. 20% Body Fat, so let's do some math, shall we? No? I don't care. My Blog, my rules.
I was 210 lbs with 25% Body Fat. That equates to ~52.5 lbs of fat. Last night I weighed 183 lbs and my scales told me I was at 20% Body Fat. That equates to 36.6 lbs. Doing the math we see that I've lost approx. 16 lbs of fat, but my weight has dropped by 27 lbs. How did I lose that extra weight? Muscle mass. I lost approx. 9 lbs of muscle. But that's okay. I'm a big guy but I don't need to be. I don't play any sports other than golf, and I work in an office, not on a construction site. I don't mind losing a little bit of muscle. However, I don't want to lose too much, either, because muscles burn calories. Even just sitting still, if you're a buff guy, you naturally burn more calories than the flabby guy next to you. The more muscle I shed the less muscle I have to burn calories, which is one of the reasons people hit a plateau when they're trying to lose weight. They don't just lose fat, they lose muscle; lose enough muscle and the calorie deficit you created (aka "diet") has just been negated. Now you need to work out even more to continue losing weight. But unless you know exactly what you're doing and are consuming sufficient protein and carbs and essential fats you're going to lose muscle along with the fat, making it harder & harder to lose more & more weight.
And in order to win this weight loss competition I need to lose weight.
I don't necessarily want to add bulk because muscle, being denser, weighs more than fat. Sure, I can tone up and get lean by working out, shedding fat, and adding muscle, and I'd look great, but I'd still weigh 185 lb, if not more. I'd look great, but I want those Benjamins, so I need to accept that some of the weight I'm going to lose will be muscle. I'll lose fat, sure, but I'm going to lose muscle, too, and if I want the money there's nothing I can do about that.
Our initial weigh-in was 3 weeks ago, on July 6th, being right after July 4th, and the wife had already mentioned that uncle was having a BBQ at his house. So that was a great opportunity to stack the scales in my favor by stuffing my digestive system full of yummy, bbq goodness, then holding onto it until Wednesday. Sorry. TMI?
Watching "The Biggest Loser" a couple of months ago I'd also stumbled across a trick to gain a lot of weight really, really quickly, and in a manner much akin to how you can lose weight really, really fast. H2O aka Water. One 16oz bottle of water weighs 1 lb. Two 16 oz bottles of water weighs? Yes, 2 lbs. And so on.
I weighed 190 lbs. I was 20 lbs lighter than last year, but that's the easy weight to lose. Oh sure, I knew I could get down to 180 fairly easily, but anything past that would require a seriously dedicated effort. What to do? Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we diet. And so I did. I ate a lot during the week or so leading up to the weigh-in, and on the morning of the weigh-in? I drank. Of course you can only drink so much water without suffering the natural, foregone conclusion of being sufficiently hydrated, if not overly so. Fortunately my boss got in early so I was able to check in with her and my official starting weight was duly observed by a credible witness. With a bursting bladder I weighed in at a staggering 199.6 lbs. And about 10 minutes later I'd lost my first 3-4 lbs :P
Precisely one week later we had our second weigh-in, and knowing I'd already lost a decent amount of weight I again drank a couple of bottles of water prior to weighing in. Don't want to lose too much too fast and scare off the competition. In one week I "lost" 3.51% of my starting weight. One other guy in the office lost 3.54% and I would later learn that he also waterloaded prior to his first weigh-in. The things people do for money ;)
Just like last year I'd been working out with the Wii and Wii Fit Boxing, but this weekend I hit a snag.
Friday afternoon the boy was playing Super Smash Bros. Brawl, and when I went to join in the Wii crashed on us. I actually forgot it did that, but as I mentioned earlier it wasn't the first time, and as it was almost time for the boy's swimming lesson I turned the Wii off and thought nothing more about it. I wouldn't use the Wii again until Sunday but when I turned it on and inserted the Wii Fit disc nothing happened. The Wii started up, the Wii Home menu appeared, but the disc refused to load. I tried a couple of other discs to no avail. None of them would load. This did not look good. I know my way around the inside of a PC, but a Wii? Sure, it's a computer, but Nintendo do not make it easy to get into them. And even if I did get it open, it's not like I would have the spare bits & pieces lying around like I do with my PCs.
Nope. A malfunctioning video game console is bad news to all but the most experienced tech geek. Fortunately the Wii did tell me that it couldn't read the disc, and as it couldn't read any of my discs I figured it was either a dirty laser lens reader, or...something more serious :P Also fortunate was that Nintendo sell a Laser Lens Cleaning Kit for $10 plus S&H, which is usually another $10-$15.
Hmm, they must sell these things in Toys R Us though, right?
No, they don't.
Best Buy?
Nope.
Target? Walmart? Gamestop???
Nope.
A few clerks knew what I was talking about but their replies were all the same: We haven't carried them for a few months now.
I see. To this paranoid conspiracy theorist it appeared that Nintendo stopped supplying the brick & stone stores with these Kits in order to maximize their profit on them. Probably because people bought them, used them, then returned them. Which may not be that far from the truth. Now I wouldn't necessarily have done that, not unless it didn't work. But without it being available in my local brick & stone store I didn't even have that opportunity to see if cleaning the laser lens might solve my problem.
We've had the Wii for almost 4 years now, which is a pretty good run for a console, even though our Gamecube works just fine, as does the N64 (after a spot of blowing on the cart and in the slot ;), but that means the Wii is well & truly out of its warranty period. I went online, and initiated a repair request via Nintendo's website. $75 for the repair, plus tax, plus S&H, for a total cost of $92. IF I could buy a new Wii I could probably get one, just the Wii, for approx. $100. But Nintendo don't sell just the Wii. They bundle them with Mario Kart, or Donkey Kong, or Mario Bros., and they retail them for $150. I'm not spending that much on a new Wii, and the wife said "Screw that!" to their $92 repair charge. Instead we borrowed the in-laws Wii and promised to return it for the weekend when the kids come to visit.
In the meantime I went online and started researching Wii problems, specifically how to disassemble a Wii and clean the laser lens. I found a Youtube video where the guy didn't pull his Wii apart, instead, he used an old CD and built a replica Nintendo Lens Cleaning Kit, which is essentially nothing more than a disc with an absorbent pad for applying cleaning solution, and a handle so you can both remove the disc from the Wii's disc slot, but also use the handle to jiggle the disc around to clean the laser lens. That's what Nintendo wanted me to pay $25 for; a plastic disc with a cleaning pad and a handle.
More useful was that the video creator said that a month after he used his homemade lens cleaning disc and got his Wii reading discs again, it stopped working, again, and this time no amount of cleaning got it working. So he put in a ticket to Nintendo and told them he had been playing Super Smash Bros. Brawl when it stopped reading the disc, and Nintendo offered him a free repair inc. free S&H! Now that's a price not even the wife could turn down.
And that's when my son reminded me that the Wii had crashed on us Friday afternoon while he had been playing Brawl.
I went online. I put in a ticket to Nintendo. I reported that the "failure to read disc" error was attributed to Brawl. And this time Nintendo offered me a free repair, inc. free S&H.
The only caveat was that along with the Wii, I had to include our copy of Super Smash Bros. Brawl. I told the boy that Nintendo would repair the Wii for free, but we had to send them our copy of Brawl, as well.
"Will we get it back?" he asked.
"Of course!" I reassured him. "And if we don't, there will be hell to pay!"
On Nintendo's website was a quote from a happy customer who claimed he got his Wii back within a week of sending it in for repairs. Nintendo themselves say to allow up to 8-10 business days. Let's see what happens.
So a few weeks ago my office decided to have a Weight Loss competition.
Wait! Weren't we talking about your Wii?
Yes, we were. We'll get back to that.
So my office weight loss competition is being held over 3 months with a $20/month fee, and the winner & Biggest Loser takes all at the final weigh-in on October 5th.
Last year I lost almost 30 pounds in a couple of months, going from 210 down to 180, simply by watching what I ate (and watching less of it ;), and using my Wii and Wii Fit Boxing. I got down to 180 but then stopped working out as diligently, and my weight slowly crept back up. Fortunately it never went over 190, which is healthy for a 5'11", 41 year old guy who doesn't work out that much, but I could do better. According to my scales I've got approx. 20% Body Fat, so let's do some math, shall we? No? I don't care. My Blog, my rules.
I was 210 lbs with 25% Body Fat. That equates to ~52.5 lbs of fat. Last night I weighed 183 lbs and my scales told me I was at 20% Body Fat. That equates to 36.6 lbs. Doing the math we see that I've lost approx. 16 lbs of fat, but my weight has dropped by 27 lbs. How did I lose that extra weight? Muscle mass. I lost approx. 9 lbs of muscle. But that's okay. I'm a big guy but I don't need to be. I don't play any sports other than golf, and I work in an office, not on a construction site. I don't mind losing a little bit of muscle. However, I don't want to lose too much, either, because muscles burn calories. Even just sitting still, if you're a buff guy, you naturally burn more calories than the flabby guy next to you. The more muscle I shed the less muscle I have to burn calories, which is one of the reasons people hit a plateau when they're trying to lose weight. They don't just lose fat, they lose muscle; lose enough muscle and the calorie deficit you created (aka "diet") has just been negated. Now you need to work out even more to continue losing weight. But unless you know exactly what you're doing and are consuming sufficient protein and carbs and essential fats you're going to lose muscle along with the fat, making it harder & harder to lose more & more weight.
And in order to win this weight loss competition I need to lose weight.
I don't necessarily want to add bulk because muscle, being denser, weighs more than fat. Sure, I can tone up and get lean by working out, shedding fat, and adding muscle, and I'd look great, but I'd still weigh 185 lb, if not more. I'd look great, but I want those Benjamins, so I need to accept that some of the weight I'm going to lose will be muscle. I'll lose fat, sure, but I'm going to lose muscle, too, and if I want the money there's nothing I can do about that.
Our initial weigh-in was 3 weeks ago, on July 6th, being right after July 4th, and the wife had already mentioned that uncle was having a BBQ at his house. So that was a great opportunity to stack the scales in my favor by stuffing my digestive system full of yummy, bbq goodness, then holding onto it until Wednesday. Sorry. TMI?
Watching "The Biggest Loser" a couple of months ago I'd also stumbled across a trick to gain a lot of weight really, really quickly, and in a manner much akin to how you can lose weight really, really fast. H2O aka Water. One 16oz bottle of water weighs 1 lb. Two 16 oz bottles of water weighs? Yes, 2 lbs. And so on.
I weighed 190 lbs. I was 20 lbs lighter than last year, but that's the easy weight to lose. Oh sure, I knew I could get down to 180 fairly easily, but anything past that would require a seriously dedicated effort. What to do? Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we diet. And so I did. I ate a lot during the week or so leading up to the weigh-in, and on the morning of the weigh-in? I drank. Of course you can only drink so much water without suffering the natural, foregone conclusion of being sufficiently hydrated, if not overly so. Fortunately my boss got in early so I was able to check in with her and my official starting weight was duly observed by a credible witness. With a bursting bladder I weighed in at a staggering 199.6 lbs. And about 10 minutes later I'd lost my first 3-4 lbs :P
Precisely one week later we had our second weigh-in, and knowing I'd already lost a decent amount of weight I again drank a couple of bottles of water prior to weighing in. Don't want to lose too much too fast and scare off the competition. In one week I "lost" 3.51% of my starting weight. One other guy in the office lost 3.54% and I would later learn that he also waterloaded prior to his first weigh-in. The things people do for money ;)
Just like last year I'd been working out with the Wii and Wii Fit Boxing, but this weekend I hit a snag.
Friday afternoon the boy was playing Super Smash Bros. Brawl, and when I went to join in the Wii crashed on us. I actually forgot it did that, but as I mentioned earlier it wasn't the first time, and as it was almost time for the boy's swimming lesson I turned the Wii off and thought nothing more about it. I wouldn't use the Wii again until Sunday but when I turned it on and inserted the Wii Fit disc nothing happened. The Wii started up, the Wii Home menu appeared, but the disc refused to load. I tried a couple of other discs to no avail. None of them would load. This did not look good. I know my way around the inside of a PC, but a Wii? Sure, it's a computer, but Nintendo do not make it easy to get into them. And even if I did get it open, it's not like I would have the spare bits & pieces lying around like I do with my PCs.
Nope. A malfunctioning video game console is bad news to all but the most experienced tech geek. Fortunately the Wii did tell me that it couldn't read the disc, and as it couldn't read any of my discs I figured it was either a dirty laser lens reader, or...something more serious :P Also fortunate was that Nintendo sell a Laser Lens Cleaning Kit for $10 plus S&H, which is usually another $10-$15.
Hmm, they must sell these things in Toys R Us though, right?
No, they don't.
Best Buy?
Nope.
Target? Walmart? Gamestop???
Nope.
A few clerks knew what I was talking about but their replies were all the same: We haven't carried them for a few months now.
I see. To this paranoid conspiracy theorist it appeared that Nintendo stopped supplying the brick & stone stores with these Kits in order to maximize their profit on them. Probably because people bought them, used them, then returned them. Which may not be that far from the truth. Now I wouldn't necessarily have done that, not unless it didn't work. But without it being available in my local brick & stone store I didn't even have that opportunity to see if cleaning the laser lens might solve my problem.
We've had the Wii for almost 4 years now, which is a pretty good run for a console, even though our Gamecube works just fine, as does the N64 (after a spot of blowing on the cart and in the slot ;), but that means the Wii is well & truly out of its warranty period. I went online, and initiated a repair request via Nintendo's website. $75 for the repair, plus tax, plus S&H, for a total cost of $92. IF I could buy a new Wii I could probably get one, just the Wii, for approx. $100. But Nintendo don't sell just the Wii. They bundle them with Mario Kart, or Donkey Kong, or Mario Bros., and they retail them for $150. I'm not spending that much on a new Wii, and the wife said "Screw that!" to their $92 repair charge. Instead we borrowed the in-laws Wii and promised to return it for the weekend when the kids come to visit.
In the meantime I went online and started researching Wii problems, specifically how to disassemble a Wii and clean the laser lens. I found a Youtube video where the guy didn't pull his Wii apart, instead, he used an old CD and built a replica Nintendo Lens Cleaning Kit, which is essentially nothing more than a disc with an absorbent pad for applying cleaning solution, and a handle so you can both remove the disc from the Wii's disc slot, but also use the handle to jiggle the disc around to clean the laser lens. That's what Nintendo wanted me to pay $25 for; a plastic disc with a cleaning pad and a handle.
More useful was that the video creator said that a month after he used his homemade lens cleaning disc and got his Wii reading discs again, it stopped working, again, and this time no amount of cleaning got it working. So he put in a ticket to Nintendo and told them he had been playing Super Smash Bros. Brawl when it stopped reading the disc, and Nintendo offered him a free repair inc. free S&H! Now that's a price not even the wife could turn down.
And that's when my son reminded me that the Wii had crashed on us Friday afternoon while he had been playing Brawl.
I went online. I put in a ticket to Nintendo. I reported that the "failure to read disc" error was attributed to Brawl. And this time Nintendo offered me a free repair, inc. free S&H.
The only caveat was that along with the Wii, I had to include our copy of Super Smash Bros. Brawl. I told the boy that Nintendo would repair the Wii for free, but we had to send them our copy of Brawl, as well.
"Will we get it back?" he asked.
"Of course!" I reassured him. "And if we don't, there will be hell to pay!"
On Nintendo's website was a quote from a happy customer who claimed he got his Wii back within a week of sending it in for repairs. Nintendo themselves say to allow up to 8-10 business days. Let's see what happens.
Monday, April 12, 2010
Wii: MySims Agents
After quickly checking out a video review on my phone (you might think I'm crazy, but if you really believe we're not fast approaching The Singularity then I say you're the delusional one, so there :P) I decided MySims Agents was worth 10,000 of our 27,000 Dave & Buster points and having played it for several hours over the weekend, including watching both my kids play it (5 y/old daughter, 9 y/old son) I'm still in agreement with my earlier decision. This game is definitely worth getting, and not only if you have youngsters. Apparently you can pick it up new for $20 but we already had the D&B points so it was sort of like it was free. Either way it's good value.
The first mission, determining the owner of a dog, teaches you the basics without feeling too much like a Tutorial. You talk to people, get leads from them and make 'notes' in your Notebook, which you can review if you get lost or have to Save & Quit and can't return for a while so forget where you were at (which is more likely). You also interact with items in the game world like prying open boxes with your Crowbar, fixing/repairing/salvaging items with your Wrench, or finding clues/footprints, etc, with your magnifying glass. All three tools get upgraded over the course of the game, gradually allowing you to perform a greater variety of tasks like moving boxes around to create steps to access new areas, picking locks, repairing broken items, or analyzing items of note. All of these activities are completed in minigames by you, the player, not automatically by your avatar, which makes this more than just a simple, point & click adventure game.
You pick locks in a manner very similar to the puzzle game 'Rush Hour' and while the first couple of puzzles were easily solved, as I expected they would they quickly ramped up in difficulty. Nothing taxing, yet, but I'm only halfway through the game. (Actually I'm halfway through as far as Missions go, but last night's Mission took me several hours to complete compared to the first which was solved in barely an hour. I did do a lot of exploring and I'm sure I could do that Mission a lot faster now that I know what's going on, but if the Missions continue to get more involved I'd hazard a guess that I'm maybe only a third of the way into the game.)
Repairing broken items is a basic (so far) version of the classic PC game The Incredible Machine, and requires you to get the 'colored' parts on the board moving, using a limited number of pieces to connect batteries and wires with cogs and belts.
Analyzing items could best be described as a Molecule builder game. Sometimes you start with an empty board, sometimes you'll have a couple of atoms already in place. In either case you'll also have a 'bank' of atoms that all need to be placed on the board, some of which will only connect to 1 other atom while others will connect to 2, 3 or 4 atoms, and this is the mini-game that has been the most challenging so far.
The mini-games serve to both involve the player in the game, and make it more than just a case of walk around, talk to everyone, click on everything, now see if anyone has new dialog. Considering that's what even the most hardcore point & click adventures often boil down to, that's not necessarily a negative for those who like this type of game. If you're looking for action, you've come to the wrong town. This game requires to stop, read, & think about what to do or where to go next. And while you do have your Notebook and could just skip through the dialog ("Yeah, yeah. Kill 10 rats. Got it! Shut up already!") and consult that, unlike your quests in an MMO there is no end game in MySims Agents; the Journey IS the game, so I see no point in rushing through the game (it's short enough as it is!) Yes, it is a short game, but at $20 it's also a cheap game. Without a doubt you could rent it and beat it in a weekend if you cared to, so to add longevity they've included a 'collection' game, of sorts.
Scattered throughout the game are chests, boxes, and various 'easter eggs', and finding/opening these rewards you with clothing, accessories, or costumes for your Agent, or furniture or decorations for your Headquarters.
What's the deal with decorating your HQ?
Each of the items comes with a bonus to one or more of five attributes (off the top of my head, Science, Charisma, Nature, Sport, & Paranormal), and when placed on one of the four floors in your HQ (five including the lobby, but you can't decorate that) those bonuses increase the appropriate stat/attribute of the Team you have housed there.
The Team? Isn't this a game about your Secret Agent?
Well yes, it is, but as you play the game and complete Missions you'll meet various characters, and when a Mission is over you can recruit some of these characters, who will also have a combination of one or more of the five attributes. Some of them are fairly well-rounded and will have 1 to 3 points in 2 to 3 attributes (5 points total), some will be more specialized and will have 3, 4, or even 5 points in a particular attribute. Assigning similar characters to the same floor (maximum of 3 characters per floor) creates a team strong in one or two areas (and naturally weak in others), so placing items that enhance that team's dominant attribute will make for a team very strong in one or two areas.
But why Teams?
Because you can send these Teams out on Missions of their own, and their chances of success are based on how relevant their skills are to the particular mission, from Poor to Excellent. Successfully completing these Team Missions unlocks harder Team Missions and also rewards you with new items.
The Teams also don't just go out on their own, they'll check in with you from time to time, and often at an annoyingly inconvenient time, ("I'm walking across an I-beam 3 stories up here! You think you could call back later? No? Fine, what is it?") requiring you to make decisions possibly (still not sure if it's random or not) affecting the outcome of their Mission. For example, one Mission has your Team trying to get a Client to the movies (exciting stuff for Secret Agents, I know) and the battery on their phone is running out (so they called you and drained their battery even further. Smart Team you've got there.) They have enough power to check movie times or traffic conditions, and they want to know what to do. (Pop Quiz, Hot Shot! What do you do? What. Do. You. Do?) In my case I told them to check the traffic, so what happened? They called back to say "The traffic looks fine." Now I was worried that I should have checked the movie times in case there was a later showing, but I worried for nothing because they made it on time. Well of course they did, because they didn't encounter any traffic problems.
You're not really micromanaging your Teams on their missions. Usually you'll make 2-3 decisions per Team Mission at most, but when you've got 4 Teams out on Missions that adds up to 8-12 decisions you might have to make. Throw in that the Teams will often call in just to let you know there are no problems, and you literally can be balancing on an I-beam when a call comes in. "Everything is fine? That's great! Can I get back to trying not to fall 40-feet to my death now? I can? Thank you!"
Actually you can't die, at least not that I've found. So if you ever do fall off a rafter, I-beam, etc, you'll either land on the ground below or miraculously reappear at the beginning of your rafter, I-beam, etc. This is a MySims game, after all. It's designed for the kids, but it's sufficiently well done that it has a lot of 'grown-up kid' appeal, too. It doesn't have flashy graphics or gratuitous cleavage shots, there's occasional clipping in the animation, and it can be rather linear, but it's still a very well done adventure game that's fun for the whole family (except maybe 13-year old Jimmy who'd rather be playing Soul Caliber, and I can't fault him for that ;)
The first mission, determining the owner of a dog, teaches you the basics without feeling too much like a Tutorial. You talk to people, get leads from them and make 'notes' in your Notebook, which you can review if you get lost or have to Save & Quit and can't return for a while so forget where you were at (which is more likely). You also interact with items in the game world like prying open boxes with your Crowbar, fixing/repairing/salvaging items with your Wrench, or finding clues/footprints, etc, with your magnifying glass. All three tools get upgraded over the course of the game, gradually allowing you to perform a greater variety of tasks like moving boxes around to create steps to access new areas, picking locks, repairing broken items, or analyzing items of note. All of these activities are completed in minigames by you, the player, not automatically by your avatar, which makes this more than just a simple, point & click adventure game.
You pick locks in a manner very similar to the puzzle game 'Rush Hour' and while the first couple of puzzles were easily solved, as I expected they would they quickly ramped up in difficulty. Nothing taxing, yet, but I'm only halfway through the game. (Actually I'm halfway through as far as Missions go, but last night's Mission took me several hours to complete compared to the first which was solved in barely an hour. I did do a lot of exploring and I'm sure I could do that Mission a lot faster now that I know what's going on, but if the Missions continue to get more involved I'd hazard a guess that I'm maybe only a third of the way into the game.)
Repairing broken items is a basic (so far) version of the classic PC game The Incredible Machine, and requires you to get the 'colored' parts on the board moving, using a limited number of pieces to connect batteries and wires with cogs and belts.
Analyzing items could best be described as a Molecule builder game. Sometimes you start with an empty board, sometimes you'll have a couple of atoms already in place. In either case you'll also have a 'bank' of atoms that all need to be placed on the board, some of which will only connect to 1 other atom while others will connect to 2, 3 or 4 atoms, and this is the mini-game that has been the most challenging so far.
The mini-games serve to both involve the player in the game, and make it more than just a case of walk around, talk to everyone, click on everything, now see if anyone has new dialog. Considering that's what even the most hardcore point & click adventures often boil down to, that's not necessarily a negative for those who like this type of game. If you're looking for action, you've come to the wrong town. This game requires to stop, read, & think about what to do or where to go next. And while you do have your Notebook and could just skip through the dialog ("Yeah, yeah. Kill 10 rats. Got it! Shut up already!") and consult that, unlike your quests in an MMO there is no end game in MySims Agents; the Journey IS the game, so I see no point in rushing through the game (it's short enough as it is!) Yes, it is a short game, but at $20 it's also a cheap game. Without a doubt you could rent it and beat it in a weekend if you cared to, so to add longevity they've included a 'collection' game, of sorts.
Scattered throughout the game are chests, boxes, and various 'easter eggs', and finding/opening these rewards you with clothing, accessories, or costumes for your Agent, or furniture or decorations for your Headquarters.
What's the deal with decorating your HQ?
Each of the items comes with a bonus to one or more of five attributes (off the top of my head, Science, Charisma, Nature, Sport, & Paranormal), and when placed on one of the four floors in your HQ (five including the lobby, but you can't decorate that) those bonuses increase the appropriate stat/attribute of the Team you have housed there.
The Team? Isn't this a game about your Secret Agent?
Well yes, it is, but as you play the game and complete Missions you'll meet various characters, and when a Mission is over you can recruit some of these characters, who will also have a combination of one or more of the five attributes. Some of them are fairly well-rounded and will have 1 to 3 points in 2 to 3 attributes (5 points total), some will be more specialized and will have 3, 4, or even 5 points in a particular attribute. Assigning similar characters to the same floor (maximum of 3 characters per floor) creates a team strong in one or two areas (and naturally weak in others), so placing items that enhance that team's dominant attribute will make for a team very strong in one or two areas.
But why Teams?
Because you can send these Teams out on Missions of their own, and their chances of success are based on how relevant their skills are to the particular mission, from Poor to Excellent. Successfully completing these Team Missions unlocks harder Team Missions and also rewards you with new items.
The Teams also don't just go out on their own, they'll check in with you from time to time, and often at an annoyingly inconvenient time, ("I'm walking across an I-beam 3 stories up here! You think you could call back later? No? Fine, what is it?") requiring you to make decisions possibly (still not sure if it's random or not) affecting the outcome of their Mission. For example, one Mission has your Team trying to get a Client to the movies (exciting stuff for Secret Agents, I know) and the battery on their phone is running out (so they called you and drained their battery even further. Smart Team you've got there.) They have enough power to check movie times or traffic conditions, and they want to know what to do. (Pop Quiz, Hot Shot! What do you do? What. Do. You. Do?) In my case I told them to check the traffic, so what happened? They called back to say "The traffic looks fine." Now I was worried that I should have checked the movie times in case there was a later showing, but I worried for nothing because they made it on time. Well of course they did, because they didn't encounter any traffic problems.
You're not really micromanaging your Teams on their missions. Usually you'll make 2-3 decisions per Team Mission at most, but when you've got 4 Teams out on Missions that adds up to 8-12 decisions you might have to make. Throw in that the Teams will often call in just to let you know there are no problems, and you literally can be balancing on an I-beam when a call comes in. "Everything is fine? That's great! Can I get back to trying not to fall 40-feet to my death now? I can? Thank you!"
Actually you can't die, at least not that I've found. So if you ever do fall off a rafter, I-beam, etc, you'll either land on the ground below or miraculously reappear at the beginning of your rafter, I-beam, etc. This is a MySims game, after all. It's designed for the kids, but it's sufficiently well done that it has a lot of 'grown-up kid' appeal, too. It doesn't have flashy graphics or gratuitous cleavage shots, there's occasional clipping in the animation, and it can be rather linear, but it's still a very well done adventure game that's fun for the whole family (except maybe 13-year old Jimmy who'd rather be playing Soul Caliber, and I can't fault him for that ;)
Saturday, April 10, 2010
Hacked
More than once I've tried to log into WoW and got the 'incorrect password' message, and a chill always runs up my spine at seeing that, but when I re-type my password slowly (and correctly) I always get in.
This time I fired up WoW to log in and instead of 'incorrect password' I see 'Please enter your authenticator key'.
My what now? But I don't have an Authenticator!
And that's how I knew I'd been hacked.
I immediately retrieved the two emails I'd just deleted which, like the ones I've been getting every day for a month or two now, tried to warn me that I'd been hacked. When I moused over the URL in one of them it showed Blizzard's real URL. I actually had been hacked.
I called Blizzard and got "We're experiencing a high volume of calls right now. All operators are busy and we cannot take your call. Please try again later. *click*"
What the fuck???
They're so busy taking calls I can't even wait On Hold for the next available Operator?
To me that says they've got a majorly serious problem.
Here's the rub.
The password I use is not one I've used for anything but World of Warcraft.
The only person who has access to my WoW account is my wife and my 9 y/old son, and that's via my PC.
My PC is also pretty much used for nothing but WoW. Ok, there's the checking of email, Facebook activities, reading Blogs, etc, but for the most part I play WoW and that's about it.
I do visit sites like WoWWiki, WoWHead, Thotbott (or however it's spelled) but I'm also a security freak and have numerous anti-spyware programs like NoScript, AdBlock, AVG, Spybot S&D, etc.
I also doubt anyone could call Blizzard pretending to be me and satisfactorily answer my Security questions, not unless they're someone who knows me really, really well. And no, my wife wouldn't do this. That's not her style. She'd just log in on my account and Delete my characters. And she wouldn't clean out my sister's Guild Bank like this person did.
I don't have a keylogger on my computer because the software I listed above is not all that's in my arsenal, I have others, some specifically designed to find keyloggers, and all scans came up blank.
This means it was not someone close to me who hacked my account, and it (most likely) wasn't a case of me being hacked/keylogged.
In my opinion this was an inside job from someone inside Blizzard, and this is apparently what many people who have been hacked have claimed for a long time. Of course nobody has any proof because the only proof is an absence of proof (as in once you eliminate the impossible, all that remains, no matter how improbable, etc etc etc...) and that's not good enough. Not for court. It's good enough for me and for those who have been hacked but it still brings you no satisfaction. If anything it makes you wonder what's the point of playing Blizzard's game when they can't protect you from themselves.
After calling back numerous times I finally got into their automated help line and was able, eventually, to talk to someone who removed the Authenticator from my account and got me back into my account. The Rep also informed me that the hacker apparently had access to my email account, so when I got in I not only changed my password but I created a brand new email account and linked my WoW/Bnet account to it, rather than my old email.
I will be very curious to see if this email account receives any sort of Phishing emails and if so, how? If it's a brand new email account, not used for anything but accessing WoW, and so the only record of it being a WoW-related email is within Blizzard's own database...how do the Phishers know to target it? We'll see if that that happens.
Finally I logged into WoW, and this is what I saw...
That's a far cry from the character model I displayed a week or so ago...those Spaulders are the Heroic badge-bought shoulders. They're worthless as far as vendoring which is why I still had them. I also had the badge-bought necklace I'd picked up literally a day or two before but everything else was gone, including most of my badges (& I was 2 Frost badges or one Heroic away from getting my new Libram!).
I logged in and my Pally immediately began falling, falling, falling. A window popped up with Accept or Cancel but there was no message accompanying it. I wasn't going to Accept anything without knowing what I was accepting. I fell for several seconds until being automatically zoned out and re-appearing on a ledge in Sholazar Basin, naked. Well not quite naked. I still had my Badge-acquired Shoulders and a Mining Pick. As a Miner/Skinner I used to carry a Gnomish Army Knife which the Hacker vendored (for 22-silver. Wow.) opting for the cheaper Pick. They then went Mining, on my character. They sold all of my bags bar my original Pack and one other, and both were almost full of Ore & Gems. When my character raided their Guild Bank my sister put in a ticket to a GM that I'd been hacked, and eventually my account was closed down. The hacker had been caught in the middle of Mining run.
Fortunately, with Pets and Mounts now being built into the paper doll and not carried like inventory, I was able to fly back to Dalaran where I checked my bank and saw it had been stripped, too. I put in a ticket to a GM to (hopefully) get my gear restored, then with trepidation logged out to check my other characters. My old toons on Kilrog (Kwazimoto & Co.) had also been stripped. I returned to my sister's server and clicked my Bank Toon. He was still clothed but none of the Auctions I'd listed before going to bed last night were up, nor was there any Gold waiting in the Mailbox for me...or in my inventory. And every other character was the same. Many still had random items in their packs but practically no Gold to their name.
I am willing to start all over again but I'd rather not if I don't have to. Naturally I'd like to get my gear restored and get my sister's stuff back, but I have no idea how long that will take. Do I just play a low level Alt for a week until Blizzard do something? What if it takes them several weeks to restore my gear. What if they won't restore it, or only partially restore it?
And then my own security measures got the best of me. I forgot my new WoW password. And I forgot the password to my new email WoW-only email account. And to be ultra security conscious I'd used my work email as the secondary email and I can't access that until Monday. So this weekend has been a sad, WoW-less weekend.
Fortunately! The kids and I went to Dave & Busters on Friday and I ended up cashing in 10,000 points (the boy and I save them up for the BIG prizes) and getting MySims Agents for the Wii. You can apparently buy it for $20 but it's not likely we'll save up our points for the 85,000 X-Box, so why not spend some of the points on a game for a system we already have.
It's a cute, point & click-style adventure game with a bunch of mini-games (puzzles) to play as your Sim Agent gathers evidence to crack each case. There's also things to find if you're prepared to look around, like new outfits and decorations for your HQ. It's a fairly typical MySims game with lots of customization available, but the way it's presented with you as a Special Agent solving cases means you need to actually think as you play. And I like that. I'm giving it an 8/10. It's not the perfect game but it's well done and is a lot of fun :)
This time I fired up WoW to log in and instead of 'incorrect password' I see 'Please enter your authenticator key'.
My what now? But I don't have an Authenticator!
And that's how I knew I'd been hacked.
I immediately retrieved the two emails I'd just deleted which, like the ones I've been getting every day for a month or two now, tried to warn me that I'd been hacked. When I moused over the URL in one of them it showed Blizzard's real URL. I actually had been hacked.
I called Blizzard and got "We're experiencing a high volume of calls right now. All operators are busy and we cannot take your call. Please try again later. *click*"
What the fuck???
They're so busy taking calls I can't even wait On Hold for the next available Operator?
To me that says they've got a majorly serious problem.
Here's the rub.
The password I use is not one I've used for anything but World of Warcraft.
The only person who has access to my WoW account is my wife and my 9 y/old son, and that's via my PC.
My PC is also pretty much used for nothing but WoW. Ok, there's the checking of email, Facebook activities, reading Blogs, etc, but for the most part I play WoW and that's about it.
I do visit sites like WoWWiki, WoWHead, Thotbott (or however it's spelled) but I'm also a security freak and have numerous anti-spyware programs like NoScript, AdBlock, AVG, Spybot S&D, etc.
I also doubt anyone could call Blizzard pretending to be me and satisfactorily answer my Security questions, not unless they're someone who knows me really, really well. And no, my wife wouldn't do this. That's not her style. She'd just log in on my account and Delete my characters. And she wouldn't clean out my sister's Guild Bank like this person did.
I don't have a keylogger on my computer because the software I listed above is not all that's in my arsenal, I have others, some specifically designed to find keyloggers, and all scans came up blank.
This means it was not someone close to me who hacked my account, and it (most likely) wasn't a case of me being hacked/keylogged.
In my opinion this was an inside job from someone inside Blizzard, and this is apparently what many people who have been hacked have claimed for a long time. Of course nobody has any proof because the only proof is an absence of proof (as in once you eliminate the impossible, all that remains, no matter how improbable, etc etc etc...) and that's not good enough. Not for court. It's good enough for me and for those who have been hacked but it still brings you no satisfaction. If anything it makes you wonder what's the point of playing Blizzard's game when they can't protect you from themselves.
After calling back numerous times I finally got into their automated help line and was able, eventually, to talk to someone who removed the Authenticator from my account and got me back into my account. The Rep also informed me that the hacker apparently had access to my email account, so when I got in I not only changed my password but I created a brand new email account and linked my WoW/Bnet account to it, rather than my old email.
I will be very curious to see if this email account receives any sort of Phishing emails and if so, how? If it's a brand new email account, not used for anything but accessing WoW, and so the only record of it being a WoW-related email is within Blizzard's own database...how do the Phishers know to target it? We'll see if that that happens.
Finally I logged into WoW, and this is what I saw...
That's a far cry from the character model I displayed a week or so ago...those Spaulders are the Heroic badge-bought shoulders. They're worthless as far as vendoring which is why I still had them. I also had the badge-bought necklace I'd picked up literally a day or two before but everything else was gone, including most of my badges (& I was 2 Frost badges or one Heroic away from getting my new Libram!).
I logged in and my Pally immediately began falling, falling, falling. A window popped up with Accept or Cancel but there was no message accompanying it. I wasn't going to Accept anything without knowing what I was accepting. I fell for several seconds until being automatically zoned out and re-appearing on a ledge in Sholazar Basin, naked. Well not quite naked. I still had my Badge-acquired Shoulders and a Mining Pick. As a Miner/Skinner I used to carry a Gnomish Army Knife which the Hacker vendored (for 22-silver. Wow.) opting for the cheaper Pick. They then went Mining, on my character. They sold all of my bags bar my original Pack and one other, and both were almost full of Ore & Gems. When my character raided their Guild Bank my sister put in a ticket to a GM that I'd been hacked, and eventually my account was closed down. The hacker had been caught in the middle of Mining run.
Fortunately, with Pets and Mounts now being built into the paper doll and not carried like inventory, I was able to fly back to Dalaran where I checked my bank and saw it had been stripped, too. I put in a ticket to a GM to (hopefully) get my gear restored, then with trepidation logged out to check my other characters. My old toons on Kilrog (Kwazimoto & Co.) had also been stripped. I returned to my sister's server and clicked my Bank Toon. He was still clothed but none of the Auctions I'd listed before going to bed last night were up, nor was there any Gold waiting in the Mailbox for me...or in my inventory. And every other character was the same. Many still had random items in their packs but practically no Gold to their name.
I am willing to start all over again but I'd rather not if I don't have to. Naturally I'd like to get my gear restored and get my sister's stuff back, but I have no idea how long that will take. Do I just play a low level Alt for a week until Blizzard do something? What if it takes them several weeks to restore my gear. What if they won't restore it, or only partially restore it?
And then my own security measures got the best of me. I forgot my new WoW password. And I forgot the password to my new email WoW-only email account. And to be ultra security conscious I'd used my work email as the secondary email and I can't access that until Monday. So this weekend has been a sad, WoW-less weekend.
Fortunately! The kids and I went to Dave & Busters on Friday and I ended up cashing in 10,000 points (the boy and I save them up for the BIG prizes) and getting MySims Agents for the Wii. You can apparently buy it for $20 but it's not likely we'll save up our points for the 85,000 X-Box, so why not spend some of the points on a game for a system we already have.
It's a cute, point & click-style adventure game with a bunch of mini-games (puzzles) to play as your Sim Agent gathers evidence to crack each case. There's also things to find if you're prepared to look around, like new outfits and decorations for your HQ. It's a fairly typical MySims game with lots of customization available, but the way it's presented with you as a Special Agent solving cases means you need to actually think as you play. And I like that. I'm giving it an 8/10. It's not the perfect game but it's well done and is a lot of fun :)
Thursday, September 11, 2008
Wii Fit, an update
A few weeks ago I weighed in at just shy of 200 pounds (or 90kg), then we got the Wii Fit. After playing it for a combined 100 minutes (about 3-4 nights) I unlocked the basic Rhythm Boxing exercise.
Rhythm Boxing is not unlike Step Boxing. Lots of stepping and punching, and stepping back & blocking (hold both Wiimote & Nunchuk together in front of your face), in different combinations, for three minutes. After doing the Basic level a few times you unlock the Advanced level (or maybe it's Expert) which is more of the same, just with some slightly trickier combinations, repeated for 6 minutes.
Do that a few times and you unlock the Expert (or maybe it's Advanced) level, which is even trickier combinations repeated for 10 minutes. The Wii actually credits you with 13 minutes played for the highest level, so it's obviously counting the down-time between each combination when your Trainer shows you the next combination.
Your Trainer is a standing Heavy Bag (or maybe it's the Boxer who demonstrates each Combo prior to you doing it), and after each routine, i.e., 13 minutes for the highest level, you're given 15 seconds to throw as many punches as fast as you can, which can really tire you out if you throw serious punches.
Once I unlocked Rhythm Boxing it was pretty much all I did. Ok, I did trounce the High Score tables on Ski Jump, Slalom, Soccer, etc, but that was playing. For pure exercise, nothing beats the Rhythm Boxing if you do it properly and force yourself to actually work out. My daily routine is two sets at the highest level for 26 minutes, followed by a couple of Yoga/stretching routines for a couple more minutes. That's 30 minutes, daily, of aerobic exercise and stretching. Not too bad, really.
As I said earlier, prior to getting the Wii Fit I weighed in at approx. 200 pounds, but last night the Wii calculated my weight at 191. Admittedly I've been trying to eat a little healthier, such as no pastries when I get my daily Soy Latte. I used to get at least one Latte per day, if not two, but most days I can resist the urge and I'll have brewed coffee from the breakroom, which is not only less calories, but cheaper, too. If I get a snack from the cafeteria I resist the fatty snacks and get a bag of nuts or some fruit. But the Wii Fit still deserves a lot of credit.
It's convenient. It's right there in the family room. It takes just a minute or two to put on a pair of shorts and start working out, as opposed to getting my gym kit ready, getting into the car, driving 10 minutes to the gym, etc, etc.
It's also fun and interactive, a lot more so than an exercise DVD or a treadmill. With Rhythm Boxing if you get the timing of your punches spot on, the explosion from your glove hitting the bag is a lot bigger and louder, and you get extra points. Your Trainer also eggs you on, "Nice Punch! Nice Block! Watch your footwork!"
At 5'11 and 191 pounds, I'm still in the archaic BMI's "Overweight" category with a score of 26.6, but considering I'd need to drop to 178 pounds, or 80kg, just to have a high but Normal BMI, I'm not too fussed by that. Where the archaic BMI really falls on its face is thinking I'd need to get down to 160 pounds, or 72kg, to be in the middle of the Normal range. I think if I were to get down to 160 pounds, my family would probably start planning my funeral. Even in High School when I rode my bicycle everywhere I weighed 180 pounds, and I looked skinny at that weight. Well, more trim than skinny. If I can get back down to even just 185, I'll be happy.
Finally, remember in my initial review how I said the Wii Fit can be insulting? The bunny played it the other night, and when you start each session it sometimes asks you how another registered User is looking, and in this case it asked my daughter how I was looking.
One of the choices was "Toned", so I selected that.
The Wii Fit's response was one of disbelief. "Oh? Toned? Well, I...guess that's possible."
For a lump of plastic and circuit board, it sure can be sarcastic.
*EDIT - Cooling down from my Workout last night I did a couple of Ski Jumps. On one set of jumps I landed a 180+m jump.
"Don't mess up the second jump," I told myself, but of course I choked and finished with a combined score of barely 310 metres.
At the High Score screen Liz asked me who had the Top Score.
I do, I said, scrolling up...and my jaw dropped when I saw my wife's name was in the number one spot. She'd pipped me by about 3 metres.
Well done, dear :)
Rhythm Boxing is not unlike Step Boxing. Lots of stepping and punching, and stepping back & blocking (hold both Wiimote & Nunchuk together in front of your face), in different combinations, for three minutes. After doing the Basic level a few times you unlock the Advanced level (or maybe it's Expert) which is more of the same, just with some slightly trickier combinations, repeated for 6 minutes.
Do that a few times and you unlock the Expert (or maybe it's Advanced) level, which is even trickier combinations repeated for 10 minutes. The Wii actually credits you with 13 minutes played for the highest level, so it's obviously counting the down-time between each combination when your Trainer shows you the next combination.
Your Trainer is a standing Heavy Bag (or maybe it's the Boxer who demonstrates each Combo prior to you doing it), and after each routine, i.e., 13 minutes for the highest level, you're given 15 seconds to throw as many punches as fast as you can, which can really tire you out if you throw serious punches.
Once I unlocked Rhythm Boxing it was pretty much all I did. Ok, I did trounce the High Score tables on Ski Jump, Slalom, Soccer, etc, but that was playing. For pure exercise, nothing beats the Rhythm Boxing if you do it properly and force yourself to actually work out. My daily routine is two sets at the highest level for 26 minutes, followed by a couple of Yoga/stretching routines for a couple more minutes. That's 30 minutes, daily, of aerobic exercise and stretching. Not too bad, really.
As I said earlier, prior to getting the Wii Fit I weighed in at approx. 200 pounds, but last night the Wii calculated my weight at 191. Admittedly I've been trying to eat a little healthier, such as no pastries when I get my daily Soy Latte. I used to get at least one Latte per day, if not two, but most days I can resist the urge and I'll have brewed coffee from the breakroom, which is not only less calories, but cheaper, too. If I get a snack from the cafeteria I resist the fatty snacks and get a bag of nuts or some fruit. But the Wii Fit still deserves a lot of credit.
It's convenient. It's right there in the family room. It takes just a minute or two to put on a pair of shorts and start working out, as opposed to getting my gym kit ready, getting into the car, driving 10 minutes to the gym, etc, etc.
It's also fun and interactive, a lot more so than an exercise DVD or a treadmill. With Rhythm Boxing if you get the timing of your punches spot on, the explosion from your glove hitting the bag is a lot bigger and louder, and you get extra points. Your Trainer also eggs you on, "Nice Punch! Nice Block! Watch your footwork!"
At 5'11 and 191 pounds, I'm still in the archaic BMI's "Overweight" category with a score of 26.6, but considering I'd need to drop to 178 pounds, or 80kg, just to have a high but Normal BMI, I'm not too fussed by that. Where the archaic BMI really falls on its face is thinking I'd need to get down to 160 pounds, or 72kg, to be in the middle of the Normal range. I think if I were to get down to 160 pounds, my family would probably start planning my funeral. Even in High School when I rode my bicycle everywhere I weighed 180 pounds, and I looked skinny at that weight. Well, more trim than skinny. If I can get back down to even just 185, I'll be happy.
Finally, remember in my initial review how I said the Wii Fit can be insulting? The bunny played it the other night, and when you start each session it sometimes asks you how another registered User is looking, and in this case it asked my daughter how I was looking.
One of the choices was "Toned", so I selected that.
The Wii Fit's response was one of disbelief. "Oh? Toned? Well, I...guess that's possible."
For a lump of plastic and circuit board, it sure can be sarcastic.
*EDIT - Cooling down from my Workout last night I did a couple of Ski Jumps. On one set of jumps I landed a 180+m jump.
"Don't mess up the second jump," I told myself, but of course I choked and finished with a combined score of barely 310 metres.
At the High Score screen Liz asked me who had the Top Score.
I do, I said, scrolling up...and my jaw dropped when I saw my wife's name was in the number one spot. She'd pipped me by about 3 metres.
Well done, dear :)
Monday, August 25, 2008
The Wii Fit
Friday I stopped by Sears/K-Mart on the way home on the off-chance they'd just received a Wii Fit or two, but they hadn't. Not only did they have not have any in stock, but the girl said they'd received four units at release (late May), and that was it. Now I knew this thing was in high demand but I didn't realize just how limited its supply really was.
That night Liz and I went out for sushi. We stuffed ourselves, so Liz wanted to stop by Marshall's and do some shopping, to "walk off the full tummy". Next to the Marshall's is a Toys R Us, so I said I'd pop in while Liz parked the car, just on the off chance they had a Wii Fit in stock.
I found the Wii Fit display stand and lots of Wii Fit peripherals and accessories. Wii Fit Towels, Wii Fit Yoga Mats, Floor Mats, carrying cases. You name it, Nintendo had it...all except for the Wii Fit itself. I looked around. Mucho units of Guitar Hero for every console. Rock Band? Check! But no Wii Fit. Then the sales girl approached and asked if she could help me.
I smiled, assuming I already knew the answer, and said "I don't suppose you have any Wii Fits in stock?"
She smiled back and said, "Actually we do."
I stopped and stared. "Really?"
"We just got some in," she said.
I promptly called Liz and told her to bring the $20 Gift Card she had with her in the car.
"I'll be right there," she said, hanging up on me, and almost seconds later she was.
Thoughts of Marshall's and clothes shopping were thrown out the door.
We were getting a Wii Fit!
As we paid for it I asked the girl, "Is this the last one? Do you have any more?"
"Why do we want another one?" Liz asked me.
"Shh," I replied, "it wouldn't be polite to say in front of the sales girl that we planned to sell the second one on eBay."
Liz did not let me buy a second one :P
In the car I said to Liz, "Do you think Nathan wants one? I'm going to call him."
Nathan didn't want one. And we didn't go back and buy a second one, either.
So now, without further ado, I give you my review of Wii Fit.
* * * * *
THE WII FIT
Is it fun?
Yes, it is, and it has a few "Easter Eggs" as well. It's also rather rude. When you "register" your Mii at the Wii Fit Plaza, it asks for your height and age, then it calculates your BMI, which I disagree with. The BMI is archaic and fails to take into account that some people have a slender frame, while others, such as myself, are built rather solidly with broad chest & shoulders. But that's a problem with the BMI, not with the Wii Fit.
The Wii Fit then conducts its first Body Test where it measures your Center of Gravity (CoG) to determine if you stand with your weight more on one side of your body than the other. Most people probably do. You then play your first "mini game" of sorts where the Wii Fit asks you to shift your weight from one side of the Balance Board (BB) to the other, in varying increments. You're presented with two bars showing how much of your weight is being distributed to either side of your body, and a target line where you have to shift your weight to the left (but not all of it) to get the measurement bar to hit the target bar...and keep it there, for three seconds.
Easy enough the first time because the target bar is rather large, but the Wii Fit then repeats the test with you needing to shift your weight to the right, and now the target bar is smaller. Shift too much of your weight and you go past the target bar and need to shift your weight back a bit, but just a bit! Now hold it for three seconds...and...shift your weight back to the left, to hit an even smaller target bar. Do this five times in total, with the target bar getting smaller each time, and do so within 30 seconds.
(What I liked is that during almost every event there is a mini-map in the top right corner, which shows where your CoG is on the BB. This plays an important role in some of the mini-games.)
After the tests the Wii Fit adjusts your Mii avatar per the archaic BMI, and because I have a 27.9 BMI I'm on the heavier side of overweight, so my avatar got a substantial beer gut. Then because I failed the Balance Test I got told my balance is not so good and I probably trip over a lot when I walk.
Yeah. Thanks a lot. How much did I pay for this thing, only to be insulted by it?
I will admit that later, when Liz went through the same tests only to receive the same results and insult, it was a lot funnier :D
We each "played" on the Wii Fit for half an hour or so and I actually worked up a sweat, doing the Hula, running on the spot, then doing some Yoga and strength-building exercises.
Saturday we slept in and the Wii Fit stayed in its cubby (it fits quite neatly into one of the alcoves in our entertainment unit). We did some cleaning around the house, watched some TV, then I got ready for the Cub Scout camp that night.
Sunday when we returned home JE couldn't wait to fire up the Wii, so Liz showed him what to do, but when she logged in with her Mii she got insulted again. Sort of.
Too lazy to work out yesterday? it said.
Wow! Such impudence coming from a video game, even a $90 one. I can't recall if it said the same thing for me when I logged in, it probably did.
JE played the Wii Fit, a lot. Liz said that she'd been unable to adjust JE's height, so his Mii was about a foot & a half taller than he really is, which meant he was actually underweight. His Mii avatar was rather skinny when standing next to Liz and my own.
JE loved the running, and he scored pretty high on it, too. When I did it the first time I got about a 40% Burn Rate, JE scored in the 60s, I think because he managed to "run" at a more consistent rate than I did. During the "running" event your Mii chases his Trainer, and you can pass them if you "run" fast enough but then you get told off. I put "run" in quotation marks because if you just shake the Wiimote, your Mii still "runs", so you don't really need to run to make your on-screen avatar run around the Island. Yes, Island. Your Mii actually runs around an Island, which is kind of neat. The view is First Person so if your TV was at eye-level it would almost be like running around a cartoon island, complete with village, beach, rock tunnel, etc.
There were two Easter Eggs in the running event. The first was discovered by inappropriate use of the Wiimote, by which I meant we shook it, rapidly, which caused our Mii to run flat out for several seconds then fall flat on his face, complete with thud and grunt. It was amusing enough to do it several times, even if we did get told off for running too fast :P
The second Easter Egg was discovered by running fast enough to pass the Trainer at just the correct time. Now this could be construed a Spoiler so don't read this paragraph if you want to discover everything yourself...and there might not be much more to discover. By passing your Trainer just after a Dog passes him, you would stop auto-following your Trainer and begin Auto-following the Dog. By following the Dog you can visit/unlock other parts of the Island. If you run faster than the Dog when another Dog passes the first Dog, you start Auto-following the second Dog, and can take a different route yet again.
JE loved passing the Trainer and chasing the Dogs.
The Ski slalom was fun, but it wasn't really like real Skiing. For one the controls need to be reversed. If you know anything about real Skiing you know that to turn left, you shift your body weight to put more weight on your right foot, and vice versa. So if Wii Fit's Ski Slalom were like real Skiing, putting weight on your right foot would actually make you turn left, but it does not, it makes you turn right. This is a minor annoyance and can apparently be changed in the Setup, if you want to bother with that sort of thing. What was neat was that leaning forward shifts your weight forward and makes you go faster, and putting a lot of weight on one foot made the turn to that side really sharp, whereas just a little weight to one side made for a gradual turn. I'm sure if you practice enough with the Slalom you'll get the hang of it and belt out some really fast times. After a few runs I nailed every gate and recorded the fastest time, but I hadn't been going overly fast so my time was still in the 30-second range. While my time was listed as "professional" level I still only got two stars instead of the maximum possible four.
And what would Skiing be without the Ski Jump! When the gate opens make sure your weight is centered, and forward, and get down low! Using the Minimap get the CoG marker forward of center and onto the sweet spot for an extra burst of speed then at the end of the jump, stand up, quickly! Don't jump, just quickly stand up and your avatar will jump by himself. Now stay balanced for maximum flight time. After some fitful starts we all managed to get in some respectable jumps, but we discovered we had to use our own Avatars, which meant backing out to the Menu and the Wii Fit Plaza each time we wanted to switch over. If I tried to use JE's avatar, my extra weight was more than enough to "fool" the BB into thinking JE (who was supposed to be Skiing) had straightened up and 'jumped', so my avatar would jump way too early.
In the Ski Jump we discovered, not necessarily an Easter Egg, but amusing extras nonetheless. Failing to jump in time, or landing while off balance, causes your Mii to take a tumble and roll down the hill. Now a rolling stone may gather no moss, but a rolling Mii Ski Jumper does gather snow, and you end up with a comical snow ball with skis sticking out, rolling down the hill. Like forcing your Mii Runner to take a dive, this was also amusing enough to repeat a couple of times.
Does the Wii Fit have longetivity?
I would say Yes. When you just start "playing" you have a limited number of minigames/exercises to play, but as you accrue Time Played (& it does track how long you spend playing each day) you unlock more minigames. Some of the minigames take quite a bit to master, but are fun nonetheless, so you'll find yourself coming back to replay them and beat your highest score, which leads to unlocking new minigames which you may play as well, thus unlocking even more minigames.
Will it help me lose weight?
Are you going to cheat like you always do? When was the last time you went to the Gym? Still keeping the membership current though, right?
The Wii Fit is not a serious piece of exercise equipment like a treadmill, but it's a heck of a lot more fun to run through a cartoon village than stare at the wall of your bedroom for half an hour. And go to the gym? That means getting my gym bag together, and driving to the gym, then waiting for the elliptical machine or the treadmill (I can see your Timer, you know. I can tell you've been on that thing for an hour. Hey! Don't go hitting reset and starting over just because your 30 minutes are up! There's people waiting here, you know!) Or you could use that Stair Master thing in the corner that nobody seems to use, and after 5 minutes on it now you know why. (I can't feel my legs! How long have I been exercising? 5 minutes? That's it? No Fucking Way! The Timer must be broken! Uh oh. I think I'm going into cardiac arrest...or having an asthma attack, and I'm not asthmatic!)
What the Wii Fit will do is get you up and moving, and maybe even get your heart pumping a little more, and what it will also do is keep track of your progress, so you don't have to. Instead of sitting on the sofa for an hour, you're up and jumping around, you're doing windmills, twirling imaginary hula hoops, maybe even doing push ups. Any exercise, no matter how limited, is better than sitting on your arse all evening.
That's what the Wii Fit will do for you, and how often do you get to exercise naked? Can't do that at the gym now, can you? Actually I don't really use the Wii Fit naked...Liz makes me put socks on.
That night Liz and I went out for sushi. We stuffed ourselves, so Liz wanted to stop by Marshall's and do some shopping, to "walk off the full tummy". Next to the Marshall's is a Toys R Us, so I said I'd pop in while Liz parked the car, just on the off chance they had a Wii Fit in stock.
I found the Wii Fit display stand and lots of Wii Fit peripherals and accessories. Wii Fit Towels, Wii Fit Yoga Mats, Floor Mats, carrying cases. You name it, Nintendo had it...all except for the Wii Fit itself. I looked around. Mucho units of Guitar Hero for every console. Rock Band? Check! But no Wii Fit. Then the sales girl approached and asked if she could help me.
I smiled, assuming I already knew the answer, and said "I don't suppose you have any Wii Fits in stock?"
She smiled back and said, "Actually we do."
I stopped and stared. "Really?"
"We just got some in," she said.
I promptly called Liz and told her to bring the $20 Gift Card she had with her in the car.
"I'll be right there," she said, hanging up on me, and almost seconds later she was.
Thoughts of Marshall's and clothes shopping were thrown out the door.
We were getting a Wii Fit!
As we paid for it I asked the girl, "Is this the last one? Do you have any more?"
"Why do we want another one?" Liz asked me.
"Shh," I replied, "it wouldn't be polite to say in front of the sales girl that we planned to sell the second one on eBay."
Liz did not let me buy a second one :P
In the car I said to Liz, "Do you think Nathan wants one? I'm going to call him."
Nathan didn't want one. And we didn't go back and buy a second one, either.
So now, without further ado, I give you my review of Wii Fit.
* * * * *
THE WII FIT
Is it fun?
Yes, it is, and it has a few "Easter Eggs" as well. It's also rather rude. When you "register" your Mii at the Wii Fit Plaza, it asks for your height and age, then it calculates your BMI, which I disagree with. The BMI is archaic and fails to take into account that some people have a slender frame, while others, such as myself, are built rather solidly with broad chest & shoulders. But that's a problem with the BMI, not with the Wii Fit.
The Wii Fit then conducts its first Body Test where it measures your Center of Gravity (CoG) to determine if you stand with your weight more on one side of your body than the other. Most people probably do. You then play your first "mini game" of sorts where the Wii Fit asks you to shift your weight from one side of the Balance Board (BB) to the other, in varying increments. You're presented with two bars showing how much of your weight is being distributed to either side of your body, and a target line where you have to shift your weight to the left (but not all of it) to get the measurement bar to hit the target bar...and keep it there, for three seconds.
Easy enough the first time because the target bar is rather large, but the Wii Fit then repeats the test with you needing to shift your weight to the right, and now the target bar is smaller. Shift too much of your weight and you go past the target bar and need to shift your weight back a bit, but just a bit! Now hold it for three seconds...and...shift your weight back to the left, to hit an even smaller target bar. Do this five times in total, with the target bar getting smaller each time, and do so within 30 seconds.
(What I liked is that during almost every event there is a mini-map in the top right corner, which shows where your CoG is on the BB. This plays an important role in some of the mini-games.)
After the tests the Wii Fit adjusts your Mii avatar per the archaic BMI, and because I have a 27.9 BMI I'm on the heavier side of overweight, so my avatar got a substantial beer gut. Then because I failed the Balance Test I got told my balance is not so good and I probably trip over a lot when I walk.
Yeah. Thanks a lot. How much did I pay for this thing, only to be insulted by it?
I will admit that later, when Liz went through the same tests only to receive the same results and insult, it was a lot funnier :D
We each "played" on the Wii Fit for half an hour or so and I actually worked up a sweat, doing the Hula, running on the spot, then doing some Yoga and strength-building exercises.
Saturday we slept in and the Wii Fit stayed in its cubby (it fits quite neatly into one of the alcoves in our entertainment unit). We did some cleaning around the house, watched some TV, then I got ready for the Cub Scout camp that night.
Sunday when we returned home JE couldn't wait to fire up the Wii, so Liz showed him what to do, but when she logged in with her Mii she got insulted again. Sort of.
Too lazy to work out yesterday? it said.
Wow! Such impudence coming from a video game, even a $90 one. I can't recall if it said the same thing for me when I logged in, it probably did.
JE played the Wii Fit, a lot. Liz said that she'd been unable to adjust JE's height, so his Mii was about a foot & a half taller than he really is, which meant he was actually underweight. His Mii avatar was rather skinny when standing next to Liz and my own.
JE loved the running, and he scored pretty high on it, too. When I did it the first time I got about a 40% Burn Rate, JE scored in the 60s, I think because he managed to "run" at a more consistent rate than I did. During the "running" event your Mii chases his Trainer, and you can pass them if you "run" fast enough but then you get told off. I put "run" in quotation marks because if you just shake the Wiimote, your Mii still "runs", so you don't really need to run to make your on-screen avatar run around the Island. Yes, Island. Your Mii actually runs around an Island, which is kind of neat. The view is First Person so if your TV was at eye-level it would almost be like running around a cartoon island, complete with village, beach, rock tunnel, etc.
There were two Easter Eggs in the running event. The first was discovered by inappropriate use of the Wiimote, by which I meant we shook it, rapidly, which caused our Mii to run flat out for several seconds then fall flat on his face, complete with thud and grunt. It was amusing enough to do it several times, even if we did get told off for running too fast :P
The second Easter Egg was discovered by running fast enough to pass the Trainer at just the correct time. Now this could be construed a Spoiler so don't read this paragraph if you want to discover everything yourself...and there might not be much more to discover. By passing your Trainer just after a Dog passes him, you would stop auto-following your Trainer and begin Auto-following the Dog. By following the Dog you can visit/unlock other parts of the Island. If you run faster than the Dog when another Dog passes the first Dog, you start Auto-following the second Dog, and can take a different route yet again.
JE loved passing the Trainer and chasing the Dogs.
The Ski slalom was fun, but it wasn't really like real Skiing. For one the controls need to be reversed. If you know anything about real Skiing you know that to turn left, you shift your body weight to put more weight on your right foot, and vice versa. So if Wii Fit's Ski Slalom were like real Skiing, putting weight on your right foot would actually make you turn left, but it does not, it makes you turn right. This is a minor annoyance and can apparently be changed in the Setup, if you want to bother with that sort of thing. What was neat was that leaning forward shifts your weight forward and makes you go faster, and putting a lot of weight on one foot made the turn to that side really sharp, whereas just a little weight to one side made for a gradual turn. I'm sure if you practice enough with the Slalom you'll get the hang of it and belt out some really fast times. After a few runs I nailed every gate and recorded the fastest time, but I hadn't been going overly fast so my time was still in the 30-second range. While my time was listed as "professional" level I still only got two stars instead of the maximum possible four.
And what would Skiing be without the Ski Jump! When the gate opens make sure your weight is centered, and forward, and get down low! Using the Minimap get the CoG marker forward of center and onto the sweet spot for an extra burst of speed then at the end of the jump, stand up, quickly! Don't jump, just quickly stand up and your avatar will jump by himself. Now stay balanced for maximum flight time. After some fitful starts we all managed to get in some respectable jumps, but we discovered we had to use our own Avatars, which meant backing out to the Menu and the Wii Fit Plaza each time we wanted to switch over. If I tried to use JE's avatar, my extra weight was more than enough to "fool" the BB into thinking JE (who was supposed to be Skiing) had straightened up and 'jumped', so my avatar would jump way too early.
In the Ski Jump we discovered, not necessarily an Easter Egg, but amusing extras nonetheless. Failing to jump in time, or landing while off balance, causes your Mii to take a tumble and roll down the hill. Now a rolling stone may gather no moss, but a rolling Mii Ski Jumper does gather snow, and you end up with a comical snow ball with skis sticking out, rolling down the hill. Like forcing your Mii Runner to take a dive, this was also amusing enough to repeat a couple of times.
Does the Wii Fit have longetivity?
I would say Yes. When you just start "playing" you have a limited number of minigames/exercises to play, but as you accrue Time Played (& it does track how long you spend playing each day) you unlock more minigames. Some of the minigames take quite a bit to master, but are fun nonetheless, so you'll find yourself coming back to replay them and beat your highest score, which leads to unlocking new minigames which you may play as well, thus unlocking even more minigames.
Will it help me lose weight?
Are you going to cheat like you always do? When was the last time you went to the Gym? Still keeping the membership current though, right?
The Wii Fit is not a serious piece of exercise equipment like a treadmill, but it's a heck of a lot more fun to run through a cartoon village than stare at the wall of your bedroom for half an hour. And go to the gym? That means getting my gym bag together, and driving to the gym, then waiting for the elliptical machine or the treadmill (I can see your Timer, you know. I can tell you've been on that thing for an hour. Hey! Don't go hitting reset and starting over just because your 30 minutes are up! There's people waiting here, you know!) Or you could use that Stair Master thing in the corner that nobody seems to use, and after 5 minutes on it now you know why. (I can't feel my legs! How long have I been exercising? 5 minutes? That's it? No Fucking Way! The Timer must be broken! Uh oh. I think I'm going into cardiac arrest...or having an asthma attack, and I'm not asthmatic!)
What the Wii Fit will do is get you up and moving, and maybe even get your heart pumping a little more, and what it will also do is keep track of your progress, so you don't have to. Instead of sitting on the sofa for an hour, you're up and jumping around, you're doing windmills, twirling imaginary hula hoops, maybe even doing push ups. Any exercise, no matter how limited, is better than sitting on your arse all evening.
That's what the Wii Fit will do for you, and how often do you get to exercise naked? Can't do that at the gym now, can you? Actually I don't really use the Wii Fit naked...Liz makes me put socks on.
Monday, October 29, 2007
Hmm, it would appear it wasn't me she was worried about.
Friday night, after the kids were at the in-laws, I again told Liz we really should set up the Wii, but she pretty much stuck to her guns and it didn't happen. Saturday we ran a few errands, exchanged JE's Tiger Cub belt for a Wolf Cub/Sub Scout belt, then ended up in Pasadena where we spent most of the afternoon. And when we got home Liz still wouldn't cave in and let me set up the Wii.
Sunday came around and our clocks which are supposed to set themselves by the Atomic Clock every morning around 2am decided Daylight Saving Time had ended and so set themselves back an hour, so my gut was right as I lay there in bed looking at the clock, thinking it felt later than 6am, but I didn't discover that until I got up at 6:45, which was really 7:45am.
Liz got up around 9am and I heard her pottering around downstairs, and shortly afterwards the aroma of something delicious was wafting throughout the house. It was the chocolate cake she was baking for the Halloween party, which she later decorated and it turned out very well. We dropped off the cake at the in-laws then joined Xinh, Drew & Amanda for lunch at Souplantation, where among other things, the conversation turned to the Wii, specifically because Guitar Hero III:Legends of Rock had been released that very day, and Amanda was keen to get her hands on a copy.
After lunch Liz and I stopped at Target where we found two copies of Guitar Hero III. Both GH3 boxes were slightly damaged, as if something heavy had been sat on them. They weren't crushed but the boxes were not in perfect condition, so we felt reasonably confident in buying the lesser damaged of the two though. This would be the deal breaker :)
At home Liz finally relented and let me set up the Wii and after a spot of bother synching the second controller (there's a synch button on both the controller and the Wii which both need to be pressed) everything was up and running and we were playing, I mean testing, testing the Wii. The Wii sports disc worked just fine, Liz and I played a few games of bowling just to make sure, then wii...I mean we played some Baseball. When Liz took a break I hooked up the nunchuk controller and fired up Wii Boxing. I knocked three opponents on their backs, the first two went down in the first round, the third guy lasted into the second round, and by that time the sweat was pouring off me. I know you really don't have to bounce around the room as you Wii box, I know you can just use little flicks of your wrist to fight your opponent, but it's so much fun (and a HUGE workout) to box in a more realistic manner.
I decided I'd better have a shower before breaking out the GH3 and unleashing my inner rock god, so it was a much refreshed (& cleaner) Capn John who took the stage, ripping through the first few songs in Career Mode, before his groupie, I mean Liz, sent me out to get her some dinner. Don't we have Roadies for stuff like that?
Liz told me to hurry because her parents were going to be bringing the kids home soon.
"Ok, shouldn't I pack up the Wii first then?" I asked. Yes, I was serious. I'd had my play and now knew the Wii worked ok, as opposed to setting it up on Christmas Eve for the kids to find Christmas morning, only to discover we'd got a DOA console. Unlikely, but sometimes I worry about these things.
"Just leave it out," Liz said, with a sheepish smile.
I see...it wasn't me Liz was concerned about at all. She knew that if we set up the Wii, that she would be the one who wouldn't want to put it away.
So I left Liz in charge of the Wii and Guitar Hero and headed out to Jack in the Box. I'd attempted to give her a crash course in how to use the guitar-shaped controller but she told me she'd work it out. And so it was that when I got back I found her trying to play the first song, and failing miserably, because she was hitting the Fret notes ok but she wasn't strumming at the same time, so she was missing the notes and failing the songs. It's like playing a one-string guitar. You can hold down the notes on the fret board, but unless you strum the string you won't get any sound. Liz's performance improved dramatically with that one little change to her playing style.
When she sat down to eat her sandwich I took over, which is when the in-laws arrived. I went downstairs to meet them and we chatted for a couple of minutes as the kids went upstairs, and I could hear JE start chanting happily "We got a Wii! We got a Wii!" I'm sure the in-laws could hear him but probably had no clue what he was saying :D
After the in-laws left I joined my family upstairs and finished my GH3 set then turned it off so JE could play. He didn't want to play Guitar, he wanted to play Wii Sports. Specifically, Wii Boxing!!! So I again hooked up the nunchuk controller to the Wiimote, fired up Boxing, and JE began flailing away. Dancing in towards the TV he began throwing wild punches causing Liz some concern that we were about to experience our first Wii-accident.
I watched in amazement. I was sweating and tired after beating three fighters (total of no more than four 1-minute rounds), JE was still going somewhat strong after defeating his fifth opponent, and he wasn't pulling any punches, either. He had an uncanny knack of finishing his opponent off with a big, looping, overhand right that would almost take their head clean off. The ragdoll physics in Wii Boxing are a sight to see and when a boxer goes down he doesn't always go straight down. Often they will flip and spin and more than one boxer was dumped on his head by JE's overhand right KO punch. And JE kept on boxing. So much so that Liz told him he can't play Wii Sports in the morning because she doesn't want him going to school all hot & sweaty. I wonder how this will work in the afternoon as an incentive for him to finish his homework on time. With a Wii waiting upstairs, he just might be encouraged to do his homework a little faster.
After JE had boxed a bit the bunny wanted to play, so I fixed her up with the second Wiimote and nunchuk and she began trading punches with JE. Big Brother took it easy on her, until she landed a couple of big hits and then it was on and the bunny's avatar quickly found herself lying on the mat. When her toon got up the fight continued and JE was amazed to see his guy get knocked on his arse. But the foregone conclusion was inevitable, given JE's enthusiasm and boundless energy the bunny's avatar eventually went down for the count. Now sated she handed the controllers to me and went back to playing with her blocks while JE knocked around some more cartoon opponents.
I'll say this for it. The Wii is an awesome invention for letting kids (boys in particular) enjoy one of their most favorite activities, while still ensuring they get a lot of exercise. I'm sure JE slept well last night.
Anyway, I'm gonna finish off here. My arms and hands are a little sore. I think I'm out of shape. I think I need to train a little more ;)
Sunday came around and our clocks which are supposed to set themselves by the Atomic Clock every morning around 2am decided Daylight Saving Time had ended and so set themselves back an hour, so my gut was right as I lay there in bed looking at the clock, thinking it felt later than 6am, but I didn't discover that until I got up at 6:45, which was really 7:45am.
Liz got up around 9am and I heard her pottering around downstairs, and shortly afterwards the aroma of something delicious was wafting throughout the house. It was the chocolate cake she was baking for the Halloween party, which she later decorated and it turned out very well. We dropped off the cake at the in-laws then joined Xinh, Drew & Amanda for lunch at Souplantation, where among other things, the conversation turned to the Wii, specifically because Guitar Hero III:Legends of Rock had been released that very day, and Amanda was keen to get her hands on a copy.
After lunch Liz and I stopped at Target where we found two copies of Guitar Hero III. Both GH3 boxes were slightly damaged, as if something heavy had been sat on them. They weren't crushed but the boxes were not in perfect condition, so we felt reasonably confident in buying the lesser damaged of the two though. This would be the deal breaker :)
At home Liz finally relented and let me set up the Wii and after a spot of bother synching the second controller (there's a synch button on both the controller and the Wii which both need to be pressed) everything was up and running and we were playing, I mean testing, testing the Wii. The Wii sports disc worked just fine, Liz and I played a few games of bowling just to make sure, then wii...I mean we played some Baseball. When Liz took a break I hooked up the nunchuk controller and fired up Wii Boxing. I knocked three opponents on their backs, the first two went down in the first round, the third guy lasted into the second round, and by that time the sweat was pouring off me. I know you really don't have to bounce around the room as you Wii box, I know you can just use little flicks of your wrist to fight your opponent, but it's so much fun (and a HUGE workout) to box in a more realistic manner.
I decided I'd better have a shower before breaking out the GH3 and unleashing my inner rock god, so it was a much refreshed (& cleaner) Capn John who took the stage, ripping through the first few songs in Career Mode, before his groupie, I mean Liz, sent me out to get her some dinner. Don't we have Roadies for stuff like that?
Liz told me to hurry because her parents were going to be bringing the kids home soon.
"Ok, shouldn't I pack up the Wii first then?" I asked. Yes, I was serious. I'd had my play and now knew the Wii worked ok, as opposed to setting it up on Christmas Eve for the kids to find Christmas morning, only to discover we'd got a DOA console. Unlikely, but sometimes I worry about these things.
"Just leave it out," Liz said, with a sheepish smile.
I see...it wasn't me Liz was concerned about at all. She knew that if we set up the Wii, that she would be the one who wouldn't want to put it away.
So I left Liz in charge of the Wii and Guitar Hero and headed out to Jack in the Box. I'd attempted to give her a crash course in how to use the guitar-shaped controller but she told me she'd work it out. And so it was that when I got back I found her trying to play the first song, and failing miserably, because she was hitting the Fret notes ok but she wasn't strumming at the same time, so she was missing the notes and failing the songs. It's like playing a one-string guitar. You can hold down the notes on the fret board, but unless you strum the string you won't get any sound. Liz's performance improved dramatically with that one little change to her playing style.
When she sat down to eat her sandwich I took over, which is when the in-laws arrived. I went downstairs to meet them and we chatted for a couple of minutes as the kids went upstairs, and I could hear JE start chanting happily "We got a Wii! We got a Wii!" I'm sure the in-laws could hear him but probably had no clue what he was saying :D
After the in-laws left I joined my family upstairs and finished my GH3 set then turned it off so JE could play. He didn't want to play Guitar, he wanted to play Wii Sports. Specifically, Wii Boxing!!! So I again hooked up the nunchuk controller to the Wiimote, fired up Boxing, and JE began flailing away. Dancing in towards the TV he began throwing wild punches causing Liz some concern that we were about to experience our first Wii-accident.
I watched in amazement. I was sweating and tired after beating three fighters (total of no more than four 1-minute rounds), JE was still going somewhat strong after defeating his fifth opponent, and he wasn't pulling any punches, either. He had an uncanny knack of finishing his opponent off with a big, looping, overhand right that would almost take their head clean off. The ragdoll physics in Wii Boxing are a sight to see and when a boxer goes down he doesn't always go straight down. Often they will flip and spin and more than one boxer was dumped on his head by JE's overhand right KO punch. And JE kept on boxing. So much so that Liz told him he can't play Wii Sports in the morning because she doesn't want him going to school all hot & sweaty. I wonder how this will work in the afternoon as an incentive for him to finish his homework on time. With a Wii waiting upstairs, he just might be encouraged to do his homework a little faster.
After JE had boxed a bit the bunny wanted to play, so I fixed her up with the second Wiimote and nunchuk and she began trading punches with JE. Big Brother took it easy on her, until she landed a couple of big hits and then it was on and the bunny's avatar quickly found herself lying on the mat. When her toon got up the fight continued and JE was amazed to see his guy get knocked on his arse. But the foregone conclusion was inevitable, given JE's enthusiasm and boundless energy the bunny's avatar eventually went down for the count. Now sated she handed the controllers to me and went back to playing with her blocks while JE knocked around some more cartoon opponents.
I'll say this for it. The Wii is an awesome invention for letting kids (boys in particular) enjoy one of their most favorite activities, while still ensuring they get a lot of exercise. I'm sure JE slept well last night.
Anyway, I'm gonna finish off here. My arms and hands are a little sore. I think I'm out of shape. I think I need to train a little more ;)
Wednesday, October 24, 2007
We wanna Wii
After playing Wii (again) on the weekend, Liz finally caved in and Sunday night found her searching online for Wii consoles and packages. She found one site which claimed to run searches and tell you which stores had the Wii in-stock. Except it listed places like Gamestop.com and when we went there they were taking Preorders for a shipment expected in on Oct. 30...with a disclaimer that they may not get enough items to fill every order. The eBay price of the Wii was bizarre. Some people were listing them at $500 and up and getting bids, on a $250 console. After getting beaten on one console which went for $285 + shipping (about $320 all up) Liz just told me to call in to my local Gamestop on the way home from work Monday and see if they had any in-stock.
So Monday after work I found myself lining up behind a young fellow trying to return a game he was claiming didn't work on his console. The clerk was being very patient with the lad and realizing that helping him would take a while, he paused and asked if he could help me. It might be considered rude to help the second customer but if I'd had a simple question, like, "Do you have Heavenly Sword?" he could have pointed me in the right direction and gone back to helping the kid.
Instead I replied, "Silly question. Do you have any Wii consoles in stock?"
He thought for a second and said, "We might have one left. I'll check in a minute."
So he helped out the kid then went out to the back room and came back carrying a Wii console.
Wow!
After hearing about so many people having so much trouble trying to get a Wii, or spending far too much money to get one, I walk into my local store and walk out with the only Wii they have in stock.
Now there's just one problem. Liz wants our son to concentrate on his schoolwork and not have any more disruptions for the rest of the year, so I have a Wii at home, with Wii Sports, Zelda:Twilight Princess, and Mario Party 8 (we bought the games the next day) and I'm not allowed to play it :( It's tucked away in its box so I can't even play it after the kids go to bed.
Maybe when the kids go visit their grandparents this weekend I can talk Liz into breaking it out and having a play. Just to check that it works. I mean I'd hate to set it up Christmas Eve so it's ready for the kids first thing Christmas morning, only to "test play" it and find it doesn't work. Testing purposes, that's all. I'd hate to disappoint the kids Christmas morning. It's all about the kids, right ;)
So Monday after work I found myself lining up behind a young fellow trying to return a game he was claiming didn't work on his console. The clerk was being very patient with the lad and realizing that helping him would take a while, he paused and asked if he could help me. It might be considered rude to help the second customer but if I'd had a simple question, like, "Do you have Heavenly Sword?" he could have pointed me in the right direction and gone back to helping the kid.
Instead I replied, "Silly question. Do you have any Wii consoles in stock?"
He thought for a second and said, "We might have one left. I'll check in a minute."
So he helped out the kid then went out to the back room and came back carrying a Wii console.
Wow!
After hearing about so many people having so much trouble trying to get a Wii, or spending far too much money to get one, I walk into my local store and walk out with the only Wii they have in stock.
Now there's just one problem. Liz wants our son to concentrate on his schoolwork and not have any more disruptions for the rest of the year, so I have a Wii at home, with Wii Sports, Zelda:Twilight Princess, and Mario Party 8 (we bought the games the next day) and I'm not allowed to play it :( It's tucked away in its box so I can't even play it after the kids go to bed.
Maybe when the kids go visit their grandparents this weekend I can talk Liz into breaking it out and having a play. Just to check that it works. I mean I'd hate to set it up Christmas Eve so it's ready for the kids first thing Christmas morning, only to "test play" it and find it doesn't work. Testing purposes, that's all. I'd hate to disappoint the kids Christmas morning. It's all about the kids, right ;)
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