Boredom-Fueled Blog

1. The Motion-sensing-Oriented Games
Examples: Wii Sports, Cooking Mama: Cook-Off
These kinds of games were very abundant during the early months of the Wii because everyone was interested in this ground-breaking technology, and game companies knew that people would pay big bucks to throw a virtual horseshoe.

2. The Mini-Game Games
Examples: WarioWare Smooth Moves, Wii Play
Personally, these are my least favorite kinds of games. Often they also utilize pointless motion-sensing tecniques. The general rule for these games is: the more minigames in one, the worse the game is going to be.

3. The Movie Games
Examples: Shrek the Third, Meet the Robinsons
Following in the steps of such terrible NES games as “Home Alone” and “Back to the Future Parts 1 and 2,” the tradition of making video games out of movies continues. These games could sometimes be good if they didn’t have some annoying character as the game hero.

4. The Hard-Core Sports Games
Examples: Madden NFL 07, Madden NFL 08, Madden NFL 09
Personally I’ve never been a big fan of these sports games, but I’ve never been a big fan of sports in general. I must say that I played a lot of “NFL Blitz 2000″ for the Nintendo 64 (it’s responsible for everything I know about football) and I enjoyed it, but in my opinion the “Madden” series of today is too complicated.

5. The Self-Bettering Games
Examples: Wii Fit, Big Brain Academy: Wii Degree
These games were marketed as games that were not only fun, but made you a better person. With Wii Fit you could try to balance on one foot and supposedly have fun doing it. Several minor categories of games fit within this major category including the “Games Based on Game Shows Games” category.

6. The War Games
Examples: Medal of Honor: Vanguard, Call of Duty: World at War
I think that these games have made gaming too mainstream. There are some gamers out there who can be perfectly happy playing Call of Duty or Mario Party, but I don’t know many people like that. “The War Games” have caused division… most of the people I know who play these games are people who, had “the War Games” never come along, would be beating up people who play games like Super Paper Mario and Wii Chess.

7. The Tie-In Games
Examples: Mario Kart Wii, Wii Fit
Ahhh… the tie-in… Is there any better way for an already rich company to get richer? Nintendo jacks up the price by offering some peripheral such as the Wii Wheel, the Wii Balance Board, or (for some versions of Animal Crossing: City Folk) WiiSpeak.

8. The Rockin’ Games
Examples: Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock, Rock Band 2, and to a lesser extent, Wii Music
Before GH III, Guitar Hero games were not allowed on a Nintendo system, but finally the rocker games came to Nintendo and it was all a landslide from there: Rock Band, Guitar Hero: Aerosmith, Guitar Hero World Tour, Rock Band 2, and several third-party rip-offs were soon to follow. (If you’re not into learning pretend guitar, you can always just shake your arm in Wii Music.)

9. The WiiWare Games
Examples: Mega Man 9, Dr. Mario Online Rx
WiiWare is to Nintendo as XBox Live Arcade is to Microsoft. WiiWare games are overall terrible games, but there are a few good games to be found, including Mega Man 9 which is a great continuation of the original side-scrolling Mega Man series.

10. The Good Games
Examples: Super Mario Galaxy, Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, Super Smash Bros. Brawl
Yes, amidst the clutter at your local gaming store or Wal-Mart you can actually find some games worth buying. These games never quite lived up to expectation, but they were still phenomenal games.

Nintendo Brawl, Guitar Hero, Mario Kart

Any old site can give you a review of how good or bad a game is, but only here can you get a review of how good or bad a game is several months after its release.
Replayability Reviews give you an idea of how good a game can be after you’ve stopped playing it for one reason or another. These reviews remind you of how good a game was, how bad it was, or how you should give that game a closer look.
For these reviews I started to replay old games that I hadn’t played in a while.

Super Paper Mario
Amount of time since I last played: eleven months
Reason I stopped playing: I got lost in the “Whoa Zone.”
Score: 8/10
Pretty good the second time around; didn’t get much better or much worse. I remembered how great this game was in the first place. Definitely worth giving it another go, even if you know all the secrets.

Wii Sports
Amount of time since I last played: roughly five months
Reason I stopped playing: better games came along
Score: 7/10
That opening music will always remind me of the first time I played Nintendo Wii. Wii Boxing: it’s kind of a shock and a relief that you don’t have to press any buttons when boxing, because I’m so used to pressing buttons from Super Smash Bros., and Mario Kart.

Super Smash Bros. Brawl
Amount of time since I last played: two months
Reason I stopped playing: Mario Kart Wii
Score: 7/10
The second time around I realized that the problem with this game is that the hype surrounding it was way too high. This is a fantastic game that every Wii owner should have, but it doesn’t even come close to what they made me believe through reading the “Smash Bros. DOJO!!” Great game though- if you’ve stopped playing it for one reason or another, it’s definitely worth giving it another chance.

Mario Kart Wii
Amount of time since I last played: about a month
Reason I stopped playing: frustration, jerks online running me over with their Bullet Bills
Score4/10
This was one of my favorite Wii games. I always enjoyed playing online, but then people started getting rather mean… it’s not that I’m one of those whiner types who can’t take being run over by a Giant Mushroom now and then, but it was happening once every five seconds… so I kind of gave it up. When I started playing online again, I found that the Wi-Fi players were just as unmerciful as ever. So, if you’re out for a nice lap around the track, play this again- just not online. If you’re completely hard-core and unmerciful, go online- you’re in for a treat.

Nintendo Brawl, Mario Kart, Paper Mario, Wii Sports

I’m sitting here looking at the hundreds of dollars I’ve spent on Wii games, and I was bored so I’m blogging about it.
First of all, honorable mention goes to Wii Sports, Twilight Princess, and The Simpsons Game.
5. Mario Kart Wii. This is the second most frustrating video game I’ve ever played after Spy vs. Spy for the NES. But the very fact that I continue to play it over and over again says something… Nintendo knows how to keep you coming back.
4. Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock. I think I spent more time playing this game than any other.
3. Super Paper Mario. Classic with a dollop of modern. Feels like the son of Super Mario Bros. 3.
2. Super Smash Bros. Brawl. If you’ve read my blog regularly you’re probably surprised that this isn’t number one, but I thought about this for a long time, and determined the main problem with this game is repetitiveness – too many of the characters are too similar. Sorry, Brawl but there’s one Wii game that takes the cake… or Mushroom as it were…
1. Super Mario Galaxy. This is like the grandson of Super Mario Bros. 3. There’s not one aspect of this game that I don’t like, from the overall gameplay to the background music. This game rocks!…

Nintendo Brawl, Guitar Hero, Lists, Mario Kart, Paper Mario, Super Mario Galaxy