Stunning. I've pretty much been playing from 10am till 7pm, with around 3 hours worth of breaks in between. I really love this system.
The Wii itself looks great ... small, shiny thing. The sensor is barely visible. The whole thing was a piece of cake to setup. Getting the thing to go online was a bit of trouble, but that was entirely my fault ... I forgot that I had MAC filtering on my router.
Once I configured my router right, setting up the online system was simple.
The Wiimote and Nunchuck felt very comfy in my hands. The buttons felt well positioned. Every finger does one thing ... A, B, C, Z, the analog stick all have their own fingers. The only thing that's a bit of trouble to get to is the direction pad (as you'll need to take your finger off A), but you don't really use it too often. Oh, and I guess 1 & 2 are out of the way, but they aren't really "primary buttons".
The controls itself is what everyone really wants to hear about, and really, there isn't much to say. It works. It just does. I can't understand what all the complaining has been about. I put the sensor on top of my tv, and told the Wii I did that. Other than that, it asked me for nothing ... no calibration or anything. And it just worked. Pointing at the screen felt intuitive, and it picked up my motions quite well. One thing to note is that you definitely want to sit at the same level as the TV when playing. When I started I was sitting on the floor, but it got kind of difficult to point at the screen since I was pointing up alot. When I sat on the couch, I just rested the Wiimote on my lap or the couch itself, and everything worked fine.
Zelda was the only game I bought, so after hooking the system up and playing around in the menu, I got to it. The opening scene was stunning ... goosebumps all over me. Anyway, I'm not going to talk about the game itself much, but the controls. The sword slashes are simple to do, "felt right", and registered fine. The slingshot is awesome! Hold down B (the trigger) "mouselook" your reticule, and release B to fire. Rinse and repeat. Like I said earlier, the best thing I can say about the Wii is that it just worked. After about 10 minutes of playing, I just stopped thinking about the Wiimote and let my subconsious do the controlling. And this means alot coming from a person who fumbles around with controls for an hour before "getting it", and spends more time looking at the floor than whats infront of him when using analog sticks.
Oh and as for what I thought about Zelda, it's really good. Like, really, Really good. That's what kept me glued to the screen for most of the day. The Wii controls feel right in the game too ... they certainly don't feel "tacked on". It is true that the whole thing could have worked without the Wii, but that doesn't mean the Wii doesn't make it a more fun, intuitive experience.
Anyway, after playing that for a couple of hours. I got to playing Wii Sports. And I kinda like it.
Tennis was fun, but I didn't feel like I was really influencing the game much.
Baseball I didn't try.
Bowling was lots of fun, and was the best of the bunch.
Golf was fun too. Sometimes the swing wouldn't register quite how I expected, but after I got used to the game it got better.
Boxing was entertaining, tiring even. Everything registered pretty well, but it missed stuff when I started punching too fast.
The only real disappointment for me was the online stuff. I tried using the Wii Shop and it felt a touch ... meh. Everytime I clicked on a button (to view games, or go back, or something) it would take a bit of time to load. I can't quite place my finger on it, but it didn't feel very well designed. I can confirm that the Wii does system updates, so hopefully this will be rectified in the future.
Anyway, as you can tell, I'm dead-impressed with the Wii.
