I believe in the Wii, I really do. I don’t care that it’s basically a GameCube with a white case and fancy controller. I don’t care that the graphics made the original Xbox look l33t. I just wish they would put out some decent games. And believe me, I’ve played most of them. And here’s what I think so far. And if, after reading this, it seems like there’s something wrong with every game, that’s because there is something wrong with every game.
Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess I may have found a bunch of pieces of something called Forged Darkness, but I’d gladly trade it for the last 100 hours of my life back, please.
Super Paper Mario Read, read, read, jump, read, read, read, flip, read, read read, power off.
WarioWare: Smooth Moves Is it just me, or was half of this game made using Corel Paint in Windows 95?
Trauma Center: Second Opinion No matter how hard I try, I can’t properly stitch up a wound.
Raymen Raving Rabbids: After approximately 4 hours of trying to slam the same privy doors shut, I give up.
Wii Sports The stripped-down version baseball actually makes me yearn for Bases Loaded.
Elebits After a few plays, this game was playing hide and sneak in my drawer.
Metal Slug Anthology There is absolutely no reason I should have to shake my hand to toss a grenade.
The Godfather: Blackhand Edition The lengths they go to try to tie the game into every iconic scene from the movie are just implausibly ridiculous. Seriously, why on Earth would somebody kill 10 people while sneaking into a house just to leave a horse’s head in their bed?
Dragon Ball Z: Budokai Tenkaichi While I didn’t understand a word of what anybody in this game was saying, I was able to win fights by randomly shaking my hands.
Mario Party 8 For a minigame game, it’s awful hard to find the minigames.
Red Steel Annoying racial stereotypes don’t make a game bad, repetitive motion disorder does.
Cooking Mama: Cook Off This should have been one minigame in WarioWare: Smooth Moves. The end.
TMNT Run, jump, flail arms around wildly, stop playing out of boredom.
Shrek The Third I honestly couldn’t figure out how to get out of the very first room in this game. Seriously, and I tried for about 30 minutes. Considering I’m about 15 years older than the target audience, that is a very bad sign.
Bionicle Heroes How is it that a game can make absolutely no sense, yet be unforgivably easy at the same time?
Wing Island Not quite PilotWings.
Happy Feet Half of this game felt like Dance Dance Revolution played on a controlpad, the other half I didn’t bother playing.
There you have it. Flame on.
Seth Porges writes on future technology and its role in personal electronics for his column, The Futurist. It appears every Thursday and an archive of past columns is available here.