The inevitable spinoff of avatar!'s thread.

There are quite a few interesting looking games, but Lost Winds is easily my most anticipated title.

What games are you looking forward to gaming?

Not too much so far, but Lost Winds, Eternity's Child and World of Goo all look enticing at this point.

On the other end of the spectrum...

DO NOT support My Life As a King in any way shape or form. It's the most expensive out of the gate, with only a fraction of the content available unless you pay EXTRA on top of it. If you pay any amount for this, you're only encouraging them. Don't even consider it unless you're prepared for the mother of all stink-eyes.

No idea.  Nintendo doesn't seem to think we might actually want to know release dates or prices for anything on Wii Ware, so it doesn't exist as far as I'm concerned.

I'm going for Lost Wind, Defend Your Castle, and Shantae whenever it (hopefully) comes out.

Agreed on all counts. I had my doubts about My Life as a King even before the announcement of micropayments.  They seem to have buried all evidence of working on a REAL Crystal Chronicles game for the Wii and are instead giving us this totally uninteresting looking town building sim.  I mean, those are fine, but now they're milking a SUB-franchise?  The FFCC name has come to mean for me a fun multiplayer RPG-light, not a universe in which I walk around town and tell people to go to combat and don't do it myself.  Ugh.  And guess what, you have to pay more money to do more nothing, but with different costumes!  Yaaaaaay.

The only WiiWare I'm AWare of is the Pokemon Farm. Have they made any announcements for more games (actual games)?

So I grabbed 3000 points to try some of these out.

LostWinds came first, at 1000 Points. It kind of plays like Klonoa would if it relied on Okami's Paintbrush instead of ear-flapping and enemy-springboarding. For instance, the the way one gets across a double-wide gap would be to run and jump, hold down A to slow time while he's in mid-air, then quickly draw a line through the boy toward where you want him to land. Very shortly thereafter you gain the ability to double up your puffing (i.e. puff him skyward, slow time, puff him further skyward with a loop), direct water and flame (again  a la Okami), and so on. The ingame tutorial works fine at teaching most of this, and it plays like a dream. The story is also told well with short cinemas, but there may be finer details to the plot I'm missing right now, since for some damned reason you need to connect online to read the full manual (come on). But yeah. This one's a keeper.

I didn't expect to grab Defend Your Castle right away, but when I read the details and found that the central play element was picking up and throwing people, my mind was made up. The title screen is amusing - EPIC DRAMATIC MUSIC plays while your stick-figured would-be destructors romp along in massive numbers. In the game proper, you control a cursor shaped like one of those things that's supposed to hold a breadbag closed but never does, pinch your attackers and throw them. At first I spent a few minutes merely throwing them backwards, which does nothing but invite a few "OOF"s. Then almost by accident I threw one upward, and he landed with a sickly GOOSH, a scream, and disintegration. This was when I decided I loved this game, too, and proceeded to massacre happily.

When I was done with these, I had 1500 points left over. So I thought, what the heck, and sprang for...Mario Kart 64 and Lunar Pool. How's that taste, Square Enix?

SonicPanda, I think you may have sold me on those two Wiiware games.  Otherwise, I was just goign to wait for Dr. Mario.

Someone else on here tried to sell me on Pixel Monsters (or whatever) back when it was on sale... I regret not listening to that person.

Well, I bought FFCC.

The DLC everyone is upset about is...pretty useless. I guess the extra dungeons may be interesting later but that's the only thing I *may* care about later on. The game is not crippled or incomplete. Get the extra dungeons if you want to prolong the fun, otherwise NewGame+ it and start again.

It's one of the most addicting games I've played in a couple years.

I have no interest in any of the upcoming Wiiware titles, so I'm going to save my money unless something truly amazing comes along.

.

Lost Winds looks pretty cool, so I may kill $10 and check it out.  Apparently the "sequel" is pretty far along.  I'm using the quotes there because a part of me wonders if they just made a bigger game and then cut it up so they could either dodge the size limiations, get more cash, or both.

I picked up Lost Winds today with the remaining Wii points I had.  Am SO glad I did.  I've only played a bit so far, but it is truly "something amazing" and I'd recommend it to anyone on the fence.  I can't wait to get back to it!

If it helps some of you, some Wal-Marts are clearing out their Christmas stock---a friend's wife got a Nintendo lunchbox for $14.  They had some DS games (Elite Beat Agents, Polarium, and some golf game) bundled with some carrying case for $14.  They had these silicon gloves for the classic controller bundled with a classic controller for $14, or you can get a glove with a 2000 point card for $14.

Not bad to save $6 on a $20 Wii point card just to get extra garbage...

LostWinds looks amazing - whoever said "Klonoa" just sold me on it!

FFCC will probably end up getting my money because I am a consumer whore. 

...however I won't be playing much for the next month except PixelJunk Monsters: encore.  They just released it on the PSN for 6 bucks and my wife and I are hooked again!  New island?  Hell yes!!  That, and the bonus for beating "encore" is one of the best in awhile:  SPOILER ALERT you get a level editor => infinite replay value!!

I picked up Lost Winds last night.  It's pretty good, but I have do have two criticisms: you do a lot of backtracking in this game and an in-game Metroivania style map would be helpful.  Other than that, it's pretty cool.  The celestial brush style powers are nice and it's interesting to discover the best ways to slash at enemies in order to kill them faster.

Wiiware's been getting a lot of love from me. I got totally hooked on MLAAK. I must have thrown in 20 hours playing the game the past week. It has this really addictive "just 10 more minutes" thing going for it...even though essentially, it's not a particularly compelling and deep game.

Now it's time to get started on Lost Winds.

The "just 10 more minutes" thing has ended up being 2-3+ more hours for me more than once.
Damn addictive.

I finished Lost Winds last night.  Total time was just under three hours with 17/24 of the collectibles (GameFAQs doesn't even have an entry for the game, so no luck there).  The game is pretty good, but seems kinda thin for being one of the more expensive Wii Ware titles.  It basically ends after you beat the first boss.  I guess this is episodic gaming.  I remember a decade ago when El Dorado Gate and Shenmue were supposed to show the world what episodic gaming was.  Now it's here, and it's nothing like that.  :-)

http://www.gamefaqs.com/console/wii/game/945044.html

Well, let that be a testament to the shit quality of the GameFAQs' search engine.  I put in "Lost Winds" and absolutely nothing came up.  Didn't know it had to be "LostWinds."  Thanks for the link.

I figured a bump was deserved given the amount of WiiWare titles coming out. While I haven't used this much (read: at all), I might have to change that soon. Apparently Gradius Rebirth was released today!

So, which games have you purchased if any and were they fulfilling experiences?

Whoops. I totally forgot that I even had a Wii. Obviously I use it often.

Would this be a bad time to get all juvenile again on the whole "Wii" naming convention?

Wii-Wii!...I mean, oui, oui, Mademoiselle...

...

Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles ~ My Life As King
Lost Winds
Rockman 9
Strong Bad Episodes 1~5

That's about it.

Thinking about turning my attention to some of those virtual console titles after I asked y'all sometime ago for recommendations, but I think I'll save my $$$ for all the good, new Wii games that're coming out this year.

Rotohex is boss and Orbital is solid fun. It's too bad the Art Style games tanked, despite costing only 600 points a piece.

As of right now, both WiiWare and Virtual Console are basically irrelevant as far as I'm concerned.  I bought a Wii at launch and to date have bought all of one Virtual Console and one WiiWare game.  By contrast, I've had PSN for less than a year, and I've already bought five games that I can think of.  The only upcoming WiiWare game I currently plan to buy is Cave Story (if it ever comes out), and possibly FF4 The After, but only if it's not released for PSN.

I can totally respect Nintendo's wanting to limit the number of WiiWare releases to keep it fresh, but Virtual Console should be like iTunes and just have a huge back catalog.  They could stimulate demand with featured demos or sale items.  The one new VC game a week thing is a sick joke, especially when they're just random Sega games or the 20th different version of Wonder Momo.

Thanks for the tip on Gradius ReBirth being out now, I just dled it today.

If the Final Fantasy IV: The After on WiiWare rumor pans out, I'm all over that.

Wow, "Bit.Trip Beat" is freaking awesome

Retro C64/Atari graphics,
gameplay like Pong/Arkanoid,
rhythm based beats like Rez/Lumines,
and level ups and downs like Border Down.

FREAKING SWEEEEETT  ^____^

oh, and it's all tilt-motion controlled, no D-pad needed, which makes it all the more fun. 
VERY RECOMMENDED, the first play made me feel like a kid again.

For those who wished they could launch their virtual console games directly from the SD Memory Card, yesterday's Nintendo Channel Update now enables that. 

So Nintendo did listen to the complaints afterall.

Also, please tell me that SOMEBODY else has gotten Bit Trip Beat from Wiiware...
Playing that is like reawakening those pure, Primal Gaming Instincts, and I wouldn't bullshit you about that.