It only arrived on monday so I’ve not really spent too long on it, the delivery went well the Wii Fit was dispatched from Amazon 2 days before my new black Wii was even released then sat on a shelf at the Home Delivery Network’s depot, thne after a failed delivery to work on Saturday of just the Wii they brought both on Monday, yay

So onto ease of set up, everything was in the box, even batteries and theres pretty much nothing to worry about to connect it up to your tv, as all the plugs are shaped so no chance of getting that wrong, then its pretty much press the power n you’re good to go. Never tried the other consoles but can only assume they’re as easy.

Connecting to the internet was just as easy but I’d definitely prefer using a keyboard to enter details rather than the controller. The Wii shop’s pretty disappointing in terms of freebies but being able to buy old Nintendo games is good for building a collection of old games as its fully backward compatible with the previous consoles.

Graphics wise, its not really the most impressive on the market, but that’s expected and its not made for good graphics, if I want that I have my PC

The games that ccame with it Wii Sport, Wii Spot Resort, and Wii Fit Plus, all the games in the lot are really simple fun games made to make the most of the motion detection in the controllers and balance board.

The wii fit games, are pretty much all shifting your balance and waving the controllers in the right way to complete a task and get points the idea being to get you active and using most your body to get into the games, a few examples are the juggling, you have to balance on a ball and juggle the balls thrown at you, you move the ball by shifting your weight n juggle the smaller balls  by flicking the controllers at the right time.
Generally they’re all similar in principal but different enough that theres variation. The Rhythm Boxing you step punch and dodge, theres ones its just shifting your balance, others you walk/run on the spot, jump(without leaving the board) or just swing the controller for the golf game.
The games are broken down into Aerobic where you’re most active, Balance which focus on using your balance, and training plus which is just a collection of new games they added for the Plus version.
The other parts are the yoga and muscle training sections, both are to rain up the strength of specific muscles, the yoga being the more gentle as its all stretches and balance.

Could you get fit from just a wii fit, maybe if you spend long enough on it, but its really not going to compare to a trip to the gym or going out and doing the exercises for real, but for someone that isn’t very active a game that gets you active is a good start n better than nothing.

The games in the wii sport resort aren’t made with fitness in mind, but the few I’ve tried you can get into fully, the Sword play you get to swing a sword, its a two hander on screen so its just natural to make full swings standing and step into them for balance, be even better with a sword addition (or lightsaber, think there’s a star wars duel available isn’t there?) . Archery you aim the bow, draw back and release, its just seems right to stand and do it like you would for real, only without the strain of holding a bow string at its full draw weight.

My view is that the Wii and its games that come with it adnd the Wii Fit are good fun, they get you active which for someone that sits at a computer all day then plays games on one too is a good thing as the games get you up on your feet moving about, its definitely good for a group or party game as you can all get together compete or just take turns, and some of the games you do look pretty stupid so everyone can have a laugh. But playing on your own the games are still fun and any exercise is better than none.

I’m not sure what the whole game selections like, but I’m sure there are plenty to play aimed at single player rather than competing, but really the play station or x-box have that covered and they have excellent graphics too, or there’s all the games on my pc if I just want to sit still n kill stuff.

Cheaper than a gym membership and still a chance of getting fit depending on what you do and how much time and effort you put in.

So the games them selves are set in the Warhammer 40,000 universe, in the original and sequel, you take control of space marrines and eliminate the enemies of the empire. or something like that, who cares, far as you’re concerened you’re the good guys n they’re the bad n need killing. There’s a story to why you’re killing them, this unfolds while you play the campaign, its not just wipe them out, then wipe out more, there is a reason.

The differences in the games are obvious, firstly Dawn of War looks pretty dated when you watch the story telling cut scenes, but in game it isn’t as obvious, but still not the best possible, as you’d expect from a game a few years old. Dawn of War II does away with the base building part of the first and rather than building your space marine squads you start each mission with a few, your task being to keep them alive while you dispatch the enemy, graphically its more up to date and looks much better as you’d expect.

I’m no where near far through he games, but am enjoying Dawn of War II more than the original as its just more challenging on the normal difficulty setting.  In the original you build your base, then units after you’ve built a big enough force, attack the enemy, as with most RTS even with a squad and vehicle cap, the equivalent of a tank rush still works, and you can defeat your enemies with superior numbers and firepower. With Dawn of War II you have limited numbers and only a few ways to reinforce if some die so tactically positioning your units is key to overcoming your enemies.

With Dawn of War II as you complete objectives, missions and kills your squad leaders gain experience similar to RPG s (games not grenades). As your leaders level up you can unlock skills and change their gear to improve their performance. This can only be done between missions, so that nice new piece of armour you just picked up can’t be equipped until you’ve finished or lost the current mission. There’s also extra optional missions not bassed on the main objectives that can help you turn the tide of the war, or so far in my case make very little difference to it.

Anyway loving my new games go buy them for yourself!

It looks like it follows from Diablo 2, after the destruction of the worldstone, that I’m sure I did

Things to expect new classes, better interface, upgraded graphics, and destructable environments, yay can knock down walls n stuff

looks good anyway

Clicky…Diablo III:

Yes its the MMORPG World Of Warcraft, when I set up the trial it took me 3 days of downloading (not 72 hours but 3 days of online time) to get even the basic install before another hour of patches. That was over 6 months ago.

Now it took 3 hours just to install the original game + the expansion pack, 9 CDs worth of data, and there’s still patches do get, about 2 hours worth of downloads (according to the Blizzard downloader) before you can play. Maybe a DVD copy will take less time to install but still its a very long time for a game.

I get the impression to keep load times down all textures and models are pre installed to your hard drive which explains the size of the game as the worlds massive, not to mention 10 races, various skins clothes and weapons.

I know the games huge but for a first time install this is probably too much, especially if its for a trial, you only get 10 days and if your downloading all that content, there’s a good chance your gonna waste a good chunk of your trial account before you even get round to playing.

If you can, find a friend with the full game and a spare afternoon (hard to find as they’ll be playing) and have them install and update the game before you even consider registering your account to play.

Oh and if you’re downloading updates the blizzard downloaders great for the smaller ones but it might be worth searching for the officail patches from a less offical source as I’ve found you get a better download rate. I use Xfire its made for gamers has the patches and the download rates pretty good, and best of all Blizzard know about them and had a competition running with them some time ago so I suspect the patches are authorised, even if they’re not they’re safe or there’d be a lot of angry gamers that use it.

Don’t get me wrong I’m not saying you should avoid WoW because of the install time, just be prepared for a long wait before you can start playing, but compared to that amount of game time there is, a few hours installing it’s pretty insignificant.