Weirdly, I have more Wii titles than I have for either my 360 or my PS3. Maybe my sentimental attachment to certain franchises keeps me from trading in titles even if I don't like them, like the new NiGHTS. Also, for whatever reason, I end up reviewing on Wii somewhat more often, even if it's only 1.5 times more often, than I do for the other two, so I own games I might not have necessarily bought.At any rate, I guess I hang onto Wii titles more often rather than trading them in because, looking at the ones I have, I might, maybe want to finish playing them or play them some more at some point - whereas I have completed my Xbox 360 and PS3 titles and only keep the ones that I think have replay value (not many).
From these statements, you can deduce that while I generally like many Wii titles, I get sick of most of them before I can complete them. It's the motion control; I'm tired of it. It hardly ever works right. It gets old, fast. I have serious waggle fatigue.
I love Wii for the Virtual Console and for stuff like Galaxy and Metroid Prime 3 and Umbrella Chronicles. You don't get lighter-side, classic experiences like that on the PS3 or 360, where lately everything I've played has been highly detailed, intense and dark, with lots of gray grit, featuring guys who act like jerks and people who are gooey and black.
But unfortunately Wii is the super flavor du jour for the industry at large, which means lots of games forced to be motion games that don't need to be. That, I daresay, should not be. At Kotaku I just investigated rumors that Microsoft is getting on the band-waggle, which I hope they don't end up doing because man alive, I am so sick of flailing around.
Side note -- of the three consoles, Wii is also the easiest to endow with a human personality. It's flanked by the two very tall, very black larger consoles, and there it is all little and white. I know when it is updating because it breathes blue light. It's cute. Sometimes I pat it.
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Personally, I view the IR pointer and the split controller as far, far greater advancements than the motion control.
Zak and Wiki was really the only game so far to begin to use the latter well.
Aww, the Wii is cute in that way, isn't it. What's with that new Wii Fit though? The advert is really weird, with a little man growing a bit of a belly. Kind of funny. Anyway, it's great for light-hearted games that are totally crazy in a way.
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Maybe the Wii games could come with some way to . . . calibrate the motion control? So instead of jerking it around until you accidentally do what the game wants you to do, it would scale itself down to the the sort of subtle wrist movements you can do with the thing in your lap.
(Insert obligatory joke about gamers being proficient at wrist movement here.)
You normally hold the thing kinda tilted on it's side? No problem! The calibration rotates the input 30 degrees so you can move "sideways" with a natural twitch of your hand.
Do you naturally "wind up" before pantomiming whacking something? The remote learns this and compensates.
I don't know very much about the specifics of the Wiimote's motion-sensing mechanism, but these seem to be obvious things to do. Most FPSs nowadays do something similar, like having someone tell you to look "up" early in the game to figure out whether you play Inverted or not. And with something as individualized as motion sensing, it seems like the obvious thing to do.
Also, the obvious thing to do.
Hooray for redundancy.
The trouble with so many Wii games is that gesturing wildly is not always an adequate replacement for traditional, binary input. I know what will happen in Devil May Cry when I apply pressure to the triangle button. It is a finite, easily repeatable action -- there is nothing gestural that feels as satisfying. No matter how many times I've played the air hockey game in Wii Play, I'm still terrible at it. I can't hold my hand steadily enough, or something. There's something fundamentally wrong with this. Killing demons should be more difficult than moving a paddle around.
Leigh, you're completely right regarding the aesthetics & design of the Wii. It is both sleek and adorable, with an ineffable lightheartedness that so few consumer electronics have. Compare that to Sony's cool, impersonal vibe.
It's also great how the Wii is the first Nintendo console system that does not look completely stupid (in America, that is); instead it makes you look completely stupid. Very crafty, Nintendo.
Noc -- don't worry about redundancy.
-c -- No kidding; I think Nintendo must have learned something from the "purple lunchbox" GameCube debacle. And don't even get me started on the N64's sheer ugliness.
I like how if you have the Wii out of its stand and flat on its belly, it looks for all the world like some ugly-ass external DVD drive. And yet, all you do is prop it on its side, at that specific angle, and suddenly it turns sleek and cool.
And the new Nights is a perfect example of everything people are doing wrong on the Wii.
Horrible waggle controls (and bad gameplay overall) graphics from the beginning of the last generation, stupid minigames, boring levels and so on.
Really, seeing Nights talking made me so depressed I can't express in words. Also, "let's explain f****n everything will walls of text and horrible voice overs!"
Love the GTA mashup header, top notch.
Waggle is a dirty word to me. Its like motion control done wrong. The thing thats odd to me though is that the line is hard to draw between good and bad motion.
Call me a fanboy cuz I lorves me some Twilight Princess, and maybe the kool-aid makes me view that games motion control with rose tinted glasses. I can't say I hate it. The thing is, I could do without it also. If it was an option to turn it off, I would've. Strangely, there was an option to turn off the aiming, which I thought was solid.
Hopefully devs will look at Brawl and say to themselves, hey, we don't NEED to use waggle.
To Ben, I agree 100% about the comfort of the split controller, I love being able to sit there with my hands at my sides while playing a game, its so much more comfortable than having my hands cuffed together with a little game pad.
Shih-Tzu -- Consoles on their sides?!? How repugnantly barbaric.
Jones M. -- Re NiGHTS, I wholeheartedly agree. Giving NiGHTS a voice was a huge barrier for me, and the wall of unskippable explanations in those horrendous fake English accents did not help either. The excess of voice on all fronts ruined the sort of dreamlike pseudo-reality that made the first game so effective.
Ptolemy -- Thanks on the banner. And actually, I dug the Twilight Princess controls also. It's worth raising a brow at that Nintendo is the only one that ever seems to consistently nail development on the Wii, and that seems to be frequently true on the DS as well.
If it's a fact that Nintendo just doesn't offer strong support to third parties on Wii, those developers would never, never say so.
Wait, the new NiGHTS is crap? That's disappointing.
But damnit, I need to worry about redundancy! As yet, the "Platonically Concise Post" - a comment so logical, and so eloquent, that it encapsulates a complex and multifaceted issue perfectly in as few words as possible - exists only in theory.
It's an elusive grail, but one I've set myself to find, though I confess my process is more the trial-and-error of alchemy then true Science.
Believe it or not I'm still yet to even try the Wii and therefore, obviously, the Wiimote and motion sensing.
So it's interesting to sit here on the sidelines (if you will) seeing people react to the console, the games and indeed the controls. The more time goes on, the more I am starting to see posts like these that show a disinterest in using the motion sensing controls.
I will be getting a Wii at one point and I absolutely look forward to playing Galaxy, Super Paper Mario, Okami and most importantly (for me at least) Metroid Prime 3 (no Twilight Princess because I own it on Gamecube). However, from what I can gather based on everyone else's opinions I don't see myself playing the Wii as much as I would have played, say, the Gamecube or Nintendo 64. That's an interesting thing to think about for me who grew up with Nintendo consoles and naturally as a result, is a Nintendo fanboy at heart.
All I can say is hopefully developers start realising the potential of the controls, start utilising said potential and hopefully we start to see more games that not only appeal to the mainstream (Wii Fit or whatever), but also to us old timers who have been with Nintendo (and indeed the third party developers as well) for a long time.
Too bad that last paragraph is a comment that everyone has heard over and over again...
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