You're not being reasonable

Ever since it came out, it seems like Wii Play has been somewhere on top of sales charts and even managed to be the #2 top-seller of 2007 in the US. Let's be clear about this: even if it looks like a good deal, being only $10 above the price of a standalone Wiimote, it really isn't. It would be a good deal *if* Wii Play itself was worth $10, which it isn't by a very large margin (i.e. at least $10). As a matter of facts, if you gave me $10 to play this thing (which I refuse to call a game), I would decline. And I want the fifteen minutes I spent trying to play it back.

The only person in the family who found this of any interest was my daughter but that's probably because she was 3 years old at the time. By buying this, you're sending the following message to Nintendo: "I'll buy anything from you, so please make more mini-pseudo-games that most sane persons would refuse to play if they were free internet Flash games".

Do yourself a favor: don't buy this thing and just go for a standalone Wiimote instead. And while you're there, pick up a copy of Super Mario Galaxy. Now that's a real game.

Archived comments

  • Not this time said on Saturday, February 16, 2008

    I apologize in advance for this comment. It is not directed at you in any way, you've just been caught in the crossfire. With all the "how is this relavant", "how am I learning from this post", "this isn't what the main feed is for", why are we still seeing posts like this from anyone in the main feed? I'm fine telling new people, hey you're back from vacation, keep it from the main feed please, but then I feel the same standard should be applied to all posts in the main feed. It's ok to post OT if you've been around, but new people must walk-the-chalk? IMHO, Not cool, not cool at all. I too think we have a lot of new users and some of them may be green, but we aren't welcoming them very well. "Do as I say, not as I do"
  • Mike said on Saturday, February 16, 2008

    OK, so what don't you like about the Wii Play?
  • Brian Donahue said on Saturday, February 16, 2008

    Here, here! My theory is that Wii Play were the original test games for the Wii and they considered bundling them with the Wii, until someone(s) reminded them how stupid they were. That said, my 5 yr old gets a kick out of some of them, so it does get some spins on our Wii. But compared to Wii Sports (let alone the better "real" games) it's really pathetic.
  • lfriend said on Sunday, February 17, 2008

    I have to agree with you, Super Mario Galaxy is one of the best games I've played for years! It seems easy at first as it introduces you in to the gameplay and the use of the Wii Remote, but after a few plays the difficulty level certainly goes up.
  • Bertrand Le Roy said on Monday, February 18, 2008

    "not this time": what "main feed" are you talking about? My posts are always carefully tagged, so that organizations that choose to syndicate my contents can filter out the contents they're not interested in. It's MY responsibility to tag (and I'm doing it), and it's THEIR responsibility to select the tags that are relevant to them. So if you see a post that you think is not relevant to whatever syndicated feed you're reading, please complain to the owner of the feed, not to the author of the post. Mike: everything. Not being fun at all being the main complaint.
  • Jonah Dempcy said on Thursday, May 8, 2008

    The only game worth playing on Wii Play is Tanks and it's debatable whether or not that's worth $10. Tanks is fun because it is super simple yet very challenging, just like the arcade games of yore. In fact, there even was a classic game called "Tanks" that was very similar. It's simple but the controls are responsive and aiming is intuitive with the Wiimote (just point and click). Agreed about the rest of the games being pretty much throwaway. There were a couple quirky ones and the PONG type game wins for style/soundtrack but overall the disc is quite boring. So what _are_ good games on Wii? I've already played Mario Galaxy, Metroid, Zelda, Smash Bros, Mario Kart ... Are there any good games for Wii that are _not_ made by Nintendo? I've enjoyed Zack & Wiki quite a bit, although it is rather kiddie. But the puzzles are fun.
  • Bertrand Le Roy said on Thursday, May 29, 2008

    @Jonah: good exclusive games on Wii? I would cite pretty much the same as you. There are good third party games though: out of the top ten Wii games on Metacritic, five are third party. It's less than on Xbox (seven) or PS3 (eight) but still not as bad as you'd think.