October 15, 2011

#nintendoenthused wii game night

so a couple weeks ago, brand about town was looking for a few hosts in the DC area. i volunteered to participate not entirely knowing what i was getting myself into. a couple emails and a skype call, i was moderately prepared for a night with the new wii play motion :)

look it!
conveniently, i'd scheduled to have last friday off. (i was going to take neal to see adele in jersey, but tickets were sold out in seconds! mega boo). so i was home when my packages of awesome arrived at the apartment. i can't even tell you how surprised i was when the fedex man showed up at my door with two HUGE boxes in tow. it was like christmas at chez schoon and neal's. one box had all the party goodies; the other had the adorable party favors. i spent an hour oohing over everything and setting up (a whole day early cause i was that excited). BAT is no joke, people. i received all sorts of stuff for one fabulous sundae bar

check my mad skills. bam!
i had looked at a few of the games beforehand and was already looking forward to trying them. i was all about pose mii plus because i thought you had to actually pose lol. not quite. you basically have to turn the controller in different directions to maneuver your mii into position. briah and i played a few rounds, getting progressively better each time. and i still did a little posing. i just couldn't help myself ;)

there are 12 mini games, and we played them all. only took us four hours ;) none of us anticipated how difficult some of these games would be. skip skimmer was the least fun of the bunch until chris started getting special rocks with dolphins, music notes, frogs and more. treasure twirl, star shuttle and flutter fly only got one play through since chris kept kicking juli's ass. then she shot me in trigger twist hahahah. they're supposed to save the miis from alien invasion, ninjas and dinosaurs; she also forgot she and chris were on the same team and tried to block him. trigger twist was really fun (minus killing vegetarian dinosaurs - he was coming right for us!). any game in which you throw ninja stars at parachuting ninjas is a win in my book. the hard part is remembering enemies come from all directions. those jerk dinosaurs snuck up from behind and ate us (or bit very severely)

best games of the night were veggie guardin and cone zone. veggie guardin is basically whack a mole, except sometimes the moles wear masks and sometimes it's actually miis. the more moles you whack, the more gigantic and powerful your mallet can become. it was hard to control the mallets when more than two people played (sensor can get erratic), but that didn't overshadow the awesomeness. cone zone is a stacking/balance game (and the inspiration for the sundae party). briah and neal were able to get 28 scoops before bonking into each other. however, neal and chris got up to 40 and made quite a few balancing saves when they played together. it was hilarious to watch. swirl mode was also fun despite its one playerness. your cone is huge, and so are your mii's eyes as the cone fills hahah

the hardest game in the pack? spooky search. you have to hunt ghosts and put them in a containment box. it's very ghostbusters without the obnoxious, slimey pet ghost. too bad we couldn't get past the first round no matter how many times we played. there are ghosts you have to trap as a team, but they can (and do) break free. part of the problem was my controller. i'd try to lock on to the ghost with everyone, but i wouldn't show up on the screen until the ghost broke away. or i'd be the only one who couldn't lock onto it when it was "in the air". uber frustrating. i still had fun though wrestling with the spooks

i want to live in jump park! there are walls and floors made of bounce mats; you jump all over the map collecting jewels and awesome accessories, like wings. plus, in two player, you take turns directing the jump. it gets a little confusing when the jump space is short or you're moving crazy fast. i like to think that briah and i kicked ass at this and pose mii plus. we're a good team ;) ...teeter targets and wind runner fell in the middle of the pile on difficulty and fun. teeter targets is kinda brick breaker meets pinball; wind runner is mary poppins style mario kart :)

nintendo sent over an additional copy of the game and a controller to be given away. since half the guests bailed at the last minute, i decided to make it easy to win: classic rock paper scissor (best two out of three). it was juli versus briah, and juli won after a thrilling minute and a half :) the whole night was super fun, and i was exhausted when it was over. i only partially blame the cold stone ice cream sugar high. some ridiculously hilarious things were said through out the night, and i got some silly photos. i highly recommend this game (with or without the sundae smorgasbord :)) for anyone's game night. fun for all ages so go get it! 

[my favorite photos from the party & photos from all the dc area parties]
my camera sucks, but my friends are awesome