Wii Are Playing!!!
Friday, January 04, 2008
I arrived home from my 4 day cruise with my natal family to discover that we got a Wii!!! Dan got lucky at the mall and wandered into a Game Stop that had just received its morning shipment. This would be the second gaming console he has bought us. (The first was the XBox360 for our wedding.) Thanks, DS!
Congratulations!
While Metroid, Super Mario Galaxy, and Twilight Princess are the obvious top priorities for games to pick up (and RE 4, if you haven’t already played it on another system), you might also check out Zack and Wiki. The animation is extremely Japanese, in a bad way (You turned a door knob! Yay! 80 billion points! annoying dance), but the puzzles you have to solve are really good.
I haven’t played it yet, but I also want to check out NiGHTs 2. The original used its own motion sensitive controller on the Sega Saturn, and was supposedly the best game on the system.
And, holy sh*t, its snowing outside my window…
Thanks for the recommendations. You’ve had your Wii for over a year now, right? Did you play Zelda? What is RE 4? Are you at home in Alaska right now?
We might take a cruise through Alaska’s Inner Passage this summer. Have you ever gone?
I’m back in Oregon now. I got my Wii at Christmas of ’06, but left it in Alaska with my brother. I brought it home with me this time, though. Unfortunately, I don’t currently have a TV, so I’m not playing it yet.
RE4 = Resident Evil 4
I played through most of Twilight Princess last year, but didn’t quite finish. I beat everything except for the last dungeon and made an unsuccessful attempt at the Cave of Ordeals (I died on floor 49 of 50). The game is really good, on par with Ocarina of Time. My biggest complaint was that Midna, the spirit girl that helps you, gives hints too early and too often, spoiling some of the puzzles. You should have been able to turn hints off.
Southeast Alaska is pretty much the only part of the state I haven’t been to. I’d encourage you to see it, but I’m generally against cruises. (I had friends that worked on the cruise ships during the summers.) You see the scenery, but you don’t really get any experience of the culture. Whenever the ships dock, they route you through the gift shops they own and sights they want you to see. At that point, I think you’d be better off watching an <span class="caps">IMAX</span> movie about alaska and saving yourself a lot of time and money.
That said, most of the things that make alaska really interesting are mostly only accessible to people that are local or at least knowledgeable about the area, so I think you’re best off meeting up with people you know there, or staying at hostels and getting tips from the people you meet. So a cruise would be more relaxing, backpacking would be a lot more memorable. I guess it depends what you want.
One other piece of advice: Alaska is not cooperative with schedules and planning. Weather predictions are entirely meaningless. So maybe you allot 3 days to see Mt. McKinley and Denali National Park, but for a week straight there’s rain and fog so thick you cant see the fingertips of your outstretched arm. The day after you leave, the sky is cloudless from horizon to horizon. Or maybe it starts to hail. You never know. So… unless you have the entire summer to travel, don’t be too ambitious about trying to see everything. Make a long list of lots of options that would interest you, and then decide when you get there which of those make the most sense.
Dave ordered a second Wii controller from Amazon over the weekend. So far it’s just been him playing Wii Sports. We don’t have any other games yet, so I haven’t quite warmed up to our new Wii yet, despite the excited tone of my post. =P
Well, if we go to Alaska this summer, it will be with Dave’s parents, and they definitely would not be up for backpacking. My mom went on Princess Cruises last May through the Inner Passage and she thought it was very relaxing and beautiful, and that it really makes you appreciate the landscapes, especially knowing that it might not be there for much longer due to climate change or whatever.
It’s so annoying how cruise lines funnel you through their stores and activities. We took a tour through Ensenada, Mexico on our New Year cruise, and it all felt so pre-arranged and contrived, especially the shopping and the “free acid test for silver” demonstration at the Royal Caribbean booth. I guess some people like it and they cater to it. It was still a good way to spend time with family though, which is the ultimate goal of vacations I suppose.
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