This Christmas I really wanted a Nintendo DS and a copy of Mario Kart. Having received both of those items this holiday season, you could easily guess how eager I was to try Nintendo's new online service for gameplay. Much to my surprise, I was a bit disappointed.
The first thing you'll notice when going online with Mario Kart is how slow it takes to try and locate three potential competitors for you to race with. Once you've found someone to race against, it's smooth sailing from there! Mario Kart's biggest upset with online play is that you are limited to racing only! Not only is it impossible to select the gameplay mode, but you also cannot configure any CPU players to compete against. Don't get me wrong. Having human competition is by far the way to go, but it would be nice to be able to do a balloon battle rather than racing over and over again and again. Head-to-head play makes up for this by allowing you to configure the gameplay mode, difficulty, and even a few other rules.
Next on my list of grievances is Animal Crossing. Being a huge fan of this game for Nintendo GameCube, I was thinking that this game could have no flaws what-so-ever. However, tonight I wanted to go online and have a virtual meet-up in my brother's town. We could not, for the love of Tom Nook, get our connections to work properly! My town's gatekeeper kept telling me something along the lines of, "This isn't working right now, so you can try again, but it's probably not going to work, so maybe you ought to find something else to do with your time, like writing about how bad the Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection sucks with Animal Crossing!" Lo and behold, you're reading about that now.
At any rate, despite the early frustrations, Nintendo's Wi-Fi Connection seems promissing. The limitations are a deliberate attempt to prevent bad people from messing with you, your children, or chopping down all of your fruit trees. I have nothing but faith that future Nintendo releases that utilize the wi-fi connection will be fine. I'm ranting just to rant.
It's interesting to think that it's late December, nearing the middle of winter, and I'm writing this in shorts, a t-shirt, and sandals. You may think it's because I live in New Mexico, but it seems like it has never been this warm this time of year. I'm wishing below-freezing temperatures and a few inches of snow for the rest of the winter, but at this rate, I may never go snowboarding! And finally, I wish it would get cooler so I can wear the new peacoat that Kristen bought me without having to sweat my butt off.
Winter! Where are you!?
