I got the automated girl robot call from EB on Tuesday night and was pleasantly surprised. I stopped by EB over lunch the next day and the manager was even more surprised when I expectantly said "I have an Elebits pre-order." She blinked at me. Their shipping catalog still had Elebits listed as dropping 12/19. But - because she's the awesome manager and not just a shlub kid who would have picked his nose and said "That's not in. Book says twelve nineteen." - she goes and looks it up. Turns out, yes, it was on the morning shipment that they had not even opened yet. I sort of imagine the box arriving warm, fresh from Konami's factory volcano.

I also received my random Elebits plush, which, as predicted, was the ugly blue common one. Interestingly, the game itself insists on calling it the green one.

This is the first Wii game that I was really excited about, since it's an all-new kind of game. I mean, Trauma Center is just a prettier DS game with adjustable difficulty so you might actually finish it and feel good about yourself. And I can take or leave Zelda, honestly. I know it's going to be a solid, lengthy, fun experience, which is why I dig it. But it's not a franchise that I fawn over.

Elebits, however, is brand new IP with Wii-specific controls and unique gameplay. It's getting favorably compared to Katamari, but only because they're both games that nobody can easily generalize in terms of other games, as reviewers are wont to do. Elebits is just about nothing like Katamari, except in the vaguest sense that you have to build up your power in order to affect items that you couldn't touch earlier in the level. The basic premise is that you're searching your house for the little electric goobers, using the remote as a zapper gun. The Elebits are known to hide in stuff, so the gun also lets you pick up items in the house in your search... which very naturally leads you to shaking things, tossing stuff around the room, and making a huge mess of everything. It's hilarious.

But I'm playing it last night and feeling like the controls suck. Specifically, every time I move the Remote off-screen, the cursor blips and jumps somewhere else. It's supposed to be an FPS, more or less. Your pointer is your mouse-look and the nunchuk controls walking... so I'm thinking, "Wow, this blows. I can't evenly pan around the room without the cursor glitching." What I had to do was just not get the cursor off-screen, which felt really stiff and limiting.

Then this morning, I read this story on Kotaku about how Christmas tree lights can screw with the remote. Which I thought was complete bullshit until I read some of the comments and considered my unappealling first night hunting Elebits.

And that's exactly what was happening. When I moved the remote off the TV screen, it was catching the tree positioned in the corner and the lights were freaking out the sensor. Tonight I turned off the tree and the game sang like a pretty bird on Free Worm Day.

So I feel a lot better about Elebits now.

Another Wii story, but this time with Twilight Princess spoilers, so back away now if you don't want to read about the reekfish. This isn't a suspense-killer though, just a story of me overlooking the obvious solution to a puzzle.

Everybody in the Zora village is talking about how the missing young Prince used to loooove fishing for reekfish, right? And they sure do wish he would return. Just so happens I know where the Prince is, but since I'm mute, I don't bother to tell them. Instead, I take that as a clue to talk to him, so I warp to Kakariko and look him up. He's at his mother's grave, but my presence inspires him to forge his strength and return to the Zoras. He gives me a special fishhook I can use to catch reekfish.

So I go fishing in the bottom of the pool where I'm told reekfish are plentiful. I catch one. The game gets all excited, it's a 27-incher and it smells bad. Blah blah. But I can't keep the fish. As soon as the text screen is done reminding me how the fish reeks, I drop the fish and it bounces along the dirt for a short time until it lands back in the water. It's leaving a visible cloud trail, which is, of course, the stink.

I try attacking the fish as it flops. I try clicking the A button. I try swinging an Empty Bottle (TM) in the air to catch the scent. I try to hit it with bombs, arrows, whatever silly crap is in my inventory. But every time it just leaps back into the water. I catch many reekfish, but it's the same story every time.

So I figure I must need some kind of fish-carrying item. A fish box. I head to the special lure fishing supply hut, but the girl there has nothing unusual to say. I talk to the Prince again, but he just repeats his final hint about where to find the fish. I ask Midna, but the game's pathetic built-in hinting system only provides "Gee, Link, maybe we should look at the reekfish for a clue!" Is there a Look button?!

Now, I really don't want to have to resort to looking this up online. I have not had to cheat yet in Twilight Princess and my goal is to beat the game on my own. So I go do some random exploring, figuring I'll run into the fish-box vendor sooner or later.

If you don't know the game, I should point out that Link, for some reason that I don't think has been explained yet, can turn into a wolf. I don't especially like being the wolf, but you have to briefly jump to wolf form to warp across the map. Usually, I wolf-warp someplace and then transform back to "human" right away. (Link is human, is he? Seems like a very non-fantastical word to use.) After a couple nights of screwing around and not finding the fish-box, I warp back to the Zora pond, but because I'm fed up with things, I don't morph back into Link mode right away.

And as I'm swimming through the lake as a wolf, it hits me: the wolf tracks scents.

I've already had to track about a half dozen other scents in the game. It's one of this game's big gameplay gimmicks. You, the wolf, must sniff the stink cloud then go into Magic Wolf Senses mode where you can track the scent like Wolverine did in the awful game he starred in when X2 came out.

So that makes me really stupid.