More than you wanted to know about my Wii

Dawn and I started playing Alien Syndrome this weekend, or I should say, we started playing Alien Syndrome for the second time this weekend. We had tried to play the game once before a couple of weeks ago….and we hated it. We were surprised when we kept hearing positive reviews of the game from our friends. So we gave it a second try.

Our second experience with Alien Syndrome was more positive. I think the difference was being awake for the second attempt. This is not a game you should try and learn while half dazed. It’s just different enough to cause all sorts of confusion. I think the initial troubles arose from all the experience Dawn and I have with action RPGs. We know the formula and how they ought to work. When confronted with something not in the formula our reaction was, “oh no, they got it wrong.”

Our second playing revealed that Alien Syndrome has done something that seems to be difficult to do on the Wii. Make a game that uses the Wii’s new controller scheme that isn’t plain stupid. Too many Wii games seem to make you shake things or point at things for no damn good reason other than the designers felt obligated to take advantage of the new controller’s ability.

Alien Syndrome’s controller scheme makes good use of the Wii’s new abilities without being frivolous. It’s actually forcing us to develop some new coordination skills that haven’t been honed since the advent of the PlayStation. Bully for you Wii.

There are some issues with the game. It appears easy to unbalance a party. Dawn choose a character that uses energy based weapons. Her damage output is very modest, but she never runs out of ammo….or is not firing her gun. One time she put her controller down in order to take care of something else in the room and it struck me that the constant screeching of her laser fire wasn’t actually part of the games background noise. My character on the other hand uses exploding shells. I deal massive amounts of damage but have to worry about running out of ammo, except ammo plentiful in the game. However, I do have to occasionally hold back and let Dawn catch up in experience otherwise I’d get a couple of levels ahead of her. So our game sounds like a constant screeching of lasers punctuated with the staccato of bombs.

Fortunately there is no friendly fire, or we have it turned off. If there was friendly fire our game wouldn’t last very long. One of my weapons is called a “mine layer” and it drops little metal boxes on the ground that eventually explode. Dawn, the consummate looter, is drawn to any metal box on the ground with flashing bling on top. The little drama of Dawn finding a piece of loot that she can’t pry off the ground only to have it blow up in her face is acted out over and over again.

I’m looking forward to future playings of Alien Syndrom.

On an unrelated note, I finished Super Paper Mario last night. It was the first Mario game I’ve played since Super Mario 3 on the original Nintendo. Over all I thought it was done pretty well. There are some good levels and they made good use of their “flipping into 3D” gimmick.

What I really wanted to mention is if anyone is looking for a pretty kick-ass, albeit obscure, Halloween costume let me recommend the bad guy from the game, Count Bleck. All you’d need is a white top hat, white cape (with stars on the inside), white gloves, a monocle and a cane. The great thing about the costume is you can totally use all that stuff year round!!!