That's not the first hands-on that's left the reviewer wondering if the Wii really is the second coming of gaming. I'll be surprised if the Wii remote delivers the kind of immersive experience that the trailers have led us to believe, waving that thing around is just another method of hitting up/down/left/right, it's not actually translating your freestyle movements on screen is it? It's still waiting to receive your u/d/l/r instruction like any other pad, it's just that you're inputing those commands in a more extravagant and physical way with the Wii. With Red Steel you're not going to be virtually sword fighting, but rather trying to hit the pre-programmed sweet spots that trigger a command, and so on.
I really think the expectation and hype is going to far outweigh the reality of using it. No one has really questioned the Nintendo Wii hype machine, but the doubts are clearly starting to appear now.
That's not the first hands-on that's left the reviewer wondering if the Wii really is the second coming of gaming. I'll be surprised if the Wii remote delivers the kind of immersive experience that the trailers have led us to believe, waving that thing around is just another method of hitting up/down/left/right, it's not actually translating your freestyle movements on screen is it? It's still waiting to receive your u/d/l/r instruction like any other pad, it's just that you're inputing those commands in a more extravagant and physical way with the Wii. With Red Steel you're not going to be virtually sword fighting, but rather trying to hit the pre-programmed sweet spots that trigger a command, and so on.
I really think the expectation and hype is going to far outweigh the reality of using it. No one has really questioned the Nintendo Wii hype machine, but the doubts are clearly starting to appear now.
The controller itself is definitely capable of handling this 1:1 movement, but as of yet, games haven't really taken advantage of things. Bowling received such high praise in this blog because it gave the impression that your movements were being directly translated into the movement of the ball. It's not a technical limitation, more a lack of imagination.
Rod_S wrote:
I really think the expectation and hype is going to far outweigh the reality of using it. No one has really questioned the Nintendo Wii hype machine, but the doubts are clearly starting to appear now.
I think that, like anything, it's going to appeal to some more than others, and regardless of the controller paradigm, the immersivity of each and every game is still going to depend on the developer and solidity of game-concept.
So long as Wii Sports is a) fun and b) easy to play for most people, grannies included, then it will have achieved its objective, and I for one am glad that exact arm movements aren't being translated for these games, because that would make them absolutely unplayable. In fact, if any of the Wii Sports were anywhere near as difficult as their realworld counterparts, most of us would severely suck at them
The vid has the same areas we've all seen before, there's a bit of fishing in the beginning and the rest is a walkthrough of the dungeon area. The difference to most videos around is that this guy can play. Check.
In the end there's a small clip of Rayman as well.
The game just looks amazing - my most anticipated Zelda since OoT.
*this zelda fanboy jumps up and down in excitement*
Seriously considering picking up a Wii on launch day now. Need that widescreen gorgeousness.
As for controller woes, I don't really care if it's not 100% faithful to reality. The controller and nunchuck look versatile enough to me to offer up all sorts of new game ideas, and that's far more important to me. The DS touch screen was very badly shown off by Nintendo at launch with Super Mario DS' attempt at using it as an analogue joystick. As long as Wii has lots of great 1st and 3rd party games like the DS, that don't fit in the same old tired FPS/racing/fighter mould, i'll be a happy bunny...and that certainly looks like it will be the case.
Deckard wrote:Edge seemed to have nothing but praise in the latest issue and Im surprised that a lot of the popular press are so positive at the mo as well.
Yeah. Maybe IGN have had long enough with Wiisports now to start seeing its limitations, it is meant to be a 'you, your younger brother, your parents and your grandparents, too.' title, after all. I don't think any real depth was ever really expected. It is disappointing that Wii Tennis and Wii Baseball are so dumbed down, but they are trying to design a control scheme that everyone can use, from a small child to right up to an elderly relative with the fine motor control and coordination of a stunned herring.
For us more experienced cooly-yo digsford hippity people, Wiisports probably won't take long to grow deathly bored of, but that's also hardly news.
I think it's simply that wii sports is meant as an introduction-to-wii kind of game, and thus the motions in the more complex games are *deliberately* simplified. Most people, after all, could have a fair go at bowling (and here the guy says that the controls are fine), but if the other sports were more realistic then they'd likely be over-difficult for entry-level day 1 users. No doubt individual games of the other sports will emerge and I expect that you'll find their controls are much more involved than with the simple gimmes in Wii Sports. It's meant to be a party game rather than a set of sports sims.
I certainly don't think it's any kind of basis for dismissing the Wii idea in general, and the only other reviewer I've seen so far who didn't like it much was that chap who just seemed overly concerned about how he looked whilst gaming, which didn't make for a convincing review, TBH.
Yak wrote:I think it's simply that wii sports is meant as an introduction-to-wii kind of game, and thus the motions in the more complex games are *deliberately* simplified. Most people, after all, could have a fair go at bowling (and here the guy says that the controls are fine), but if the other sports were more realistic then they'd likely be over-difficult for entry-level day 1 users. No doubt individual games of the other sports will emerge and I expect that you'll find their controls are much more involved than with the simple gimmes in Wii Sports. It's meant to be a party game rather than a set of sports sims.
I certainly don't think it's any kind of basis for dismissing the Wii idea in general, and the only other reviewer I've seen so far who didn't like it much was that chap who just seemed overly concerned about how he looked whilst gaming, which didn't make for a convincing review, TBH.
Perhaps with a download Nintendo could include some form of upgrade for more advanced controls for these types of games or it could be automatic as you got better.
Rod_S wrote:That's not the first hands-on that's left the reviewer wondering if the Wii really is the second coming of gaming. I'll be surprised if the Wii remote delivers the kind of immersive experience that the trailers have led us to believe, waving that thing around is just another method of hitting up/down/left/right, it's not actually translating your freestyle movements on screen is it? It's still waiting to receive your u/d/l/r instruction like any other pad, it's just that you're inputing those commands in a more extravagant and physical way with the Wii. With Red Steel you're not going to be virtually sword fighting, but rather trying to hit the pre-programmed sweet spots that trigger a command, and so on.
I think you're spot on here - it's clearly not going to be the gameplay revolution that some people are expecting it to be. It'll suit some games better than a joypad, but it definitely won't be better suited than a joypad for most games. So long as a game responds to some sort of symbolic input, the core part of the game remains unaffected by the Wii controller.
So do you think Nitty will do their normal handheld trick of releasing a modified model about a year after the original?
GBA -> GBA-SP
DS -> DS - Lite
Wii -> ???
I dunno. They released the Panasonic Q only in japan, didn't they?
I'm not so sure about the Wii SP/Lite thing, they didn't do it with the Snes, N64 or cubie so there's not really a precedent for it. Sony did it with the PS2, though, so who knows?
I think people are missing the point by saying that using the Wii controller is necessarily worse than just using a regular joypad. Even if the controller actions map onto similar in-game triggers as a conventional, joypad controlled game, I think the point of the Wii controller is that it's less haptically dissonant to make a swinging motion for a sword, and a pulling motion for a grapple, than it is to have to internally map those actions onto button-presses. Sure, you *can* so map them, and we've all grown accustomed to doing so for years, but removing a little of that abstractionm and allowing those controls to be performed via actions that have more physical simiarity to the action you're trying to perform in-game, is what will hopefully make us feel a little more "connected" to the game.
I mean, you *could* play Guitar Heroes off a joypad, but it wouldn't be as effective as the guitar controller, would it? The guitar controller allows one to make motions closer to those that you see on the screen. It's not the same as playing a real guitar, but it's better than a joypad, isn't it?
Likewise with Tempest - I can map the left/right of the analog stick so that it provides the same degree of control as a spinner would, but most people would prefer a spinner - because it's less haptically dissonant. It feels better.
I think the point of the Wii controller is that it allows for controlling motions to be closer to the actual, physical motions that one might make if performing some actions in real life. It doesn't *matter* hugely that they map to equivalents that could be performed on a joypad. Getting hung up on that aspect of it is to misunderstand what they are trying to do, I think. I'm guessing that the "feel" of Wii games will be down to not having to perform that constant internal translation to pressing A, B, X and Y that we currently have to do on everything.
