Nintendo Wii

From Frikipedia

On balance, slightly better than Lee Carvallo's Putting Challenge.

Overview

Fourth (or fifth. maybe sixth?) generation games console from Japanese crazies, Nintendo.

The main lure of the Wii is the mad new control system, which forces overweight persistent gamers to get off their fat backsides and bound about the place, waving their motion sensor wands with gleeful abandon.

The Positives

Are numerous:

• Playing games with mates now becomes six billion times more fun, as you titter at their rubbish golf swing, chortle at their overblown bowling action, or resolve to talk to them about their underlying rage as they angrily fell an opponent in a boxing bout.
• Although the controls are motion sensitive, they are not too motion sensitive. If Friki were to attempt it's lurid supercar driving technique or it's mad golf swing in real life, it would probably end up dying (or just losing at golf), but enough of the controls are automated to cancel out all but a small amount of natural lameitude. Enough to persist and improve, but not too much to get frustrated and give up.
• If the motion sensitive controls fill you with fear, you can buy normal controllers for it, still making it a millionty times cheaper than a revoltingly expensive PS3 behemoth or an XBox Microsoft Moment. And yes, the graphics are worse and moan, moan, I'm a big geeky geek geek. But shut up.
• The idea of soon-to-be-released Wii Mario Kart makes Friki go all gooey.
• You can design yourself as a character and play as yourself in all the games. And using the interweb, you can send yourself on a trip to another person's Wii to challenge them to a game. And look how cute you look in Wii-cartoon getup. And Friki knows it should find this all far too crap for words, but loooooooook!

The Negatives

Are less numerous:

• You feel like a complete prat playing single-player games of any note. More than once, Friki has been playing a round of Tiger Woods Golf and suddenly noticed a man in the street pointing and laughing at Friki.
• This being a Nintendo console, 80% of all the games released are cutesy, nonsensical Japanese cartoon brain-farts. Witness the level in one such game, "Wario Ware", where you are tasked with pulling a nose hair(?) from an oversized nose. Upon successful completion of the task, a banana(!) flies out of the nose(!!) with an accompanying "krazy" sound effect (!!!).
• Wii Sports Baseball is rubbish. Really really rubbish. Though this is probably a sign that the game is very true to real life.

Friki Verdict

Of course, the Wii won't be everybodys cup of tea. Obviously some would rather have the depth of games of the XBox 360, or the decadant exclusivity of a PS3/Betamax thing, or the constant need to upgrade that PC gaming offers, or a Mac and, erm, what they have. But for the small cost of buying one, a Wii makes the option of staying in for an evening loads more entertaining. Plus Friki is now the demon at bowling that it never could be in the real world.