So, I had a chance to try out the Wii at the local Arcadia Festival yesterday. I wasn’t blown away with the festival itself (the only new thing there was the Wii and entering ended up costing 17.50$ rather than the 10$ the website claims), but it’s always nice to try out new games before their official release. I was taking a “wait and see” approach to the Wii, so that was a nice opportunity to see if the hype was warranted.
I played Wii Tennis and Excite Truck and watch others play Zelda, Raving Rabbids and Warioware. As I expected, the graphics were nothing exceptional — they were about the level of good looking Xbox (the original) games. But hey, it’s all the revolutionary controls, right?
The two games I played were quite simple: Wii tennis could be played with a single button instead of the wiimote (you don’t even control the movement of your character) and Excite Truck is an arcade racer with an accelerator and a boost button. Warioware looked just as simple. Raving Rabbids is a gun shooting game (with a cursor on screen) with some mini-games. The people I watched play Zelda didn’t seem to use motion sensing for much, but I didn’t watch them for too long.
I didn’t see anything really revolutionary — nothing that couldn’t be done easily on previous consoles. Sure the games are accessible to non-gamers (the target market for the Wii), but it’s because of the simplicity of the games and not the new controller. Would Excite Truck be much harder to play if you pressed left and right instead of holding the controller like a steering wheel?
Talking about Excite Truck, it had a control problem that’s unique to the Wii: lack of feedback. On a regular controller, you know if you’re turning as hard as is possible because you’re pressing the joystick fully. On the Wii, you turn the controller like a virtual steering wheel, but it’s not clear how much you need to turn it: is a quarter-turn enough? Is it 180°? 45°? Hard to say because there’s nothing to stop your movement.
Likewise, it isn’t obvious in Tennis that flicking your wrist results in much more powerful hits than full arm movements. I’m sure I’d get used to those two quirks, but it goes to show that there’s a different type of learning curve with the Wii: learning to do the motions correctly.
Nintendo’s motto is “Playing is Believing”. I played, I still don’t believe. I’m sure games taking full advantage of the Wii’s capabilities will come out eventually, but none of the games I saw really impressed me. Aside from Zelda, they mostly felt like mini-games. Zelda is also coming to the Gamecube, and (I’m probably the only one to think so) I think the Zelda formula is getting stale after 10 gajillion games. So I guess it’s still wait and see for me.
November 11th, 2006 at 9:00 pm
I’m getting Zelda on the GameCube. Stale? What are you talking about?
November 12th, 2006 at 1:29 am
If anything isn’t as follows in the new Zelda, I’d be extremely surprised: you start without a sword or shield, but you earn them in one of your firsts tasks; you gotta save Princess Zelda, but your quest ends up being about saving Hyrule as a whole; you explore dungeons, in which you find a map, a compass, a new weapon or gadget and a boss you gotta kill using the new weapon or gadget; you get a horse, a sword, a boomerang, bombs, a bow and some sort of grappling hook; you cut grass and break pots to get money; you eventually get bigger bags allowing you to carry more money and bombs; you’ll probably get some sort of musical thing that teleports you around; and so on.
Would it kill Nintendo to change the formula a bit? The Zelda games have become so predictable they bore me out of my skull…
November 12th, 2006 at 10:41 pm
Tradition can be comforting.
November 13th, 2006 at 10:32 am
That’s pretty much the impression I had, especially about the mini-game-ness of it all. I’ll probably get the Wii eventually, but I’ll let someone else be a raving fanatic about it
November 14th, 2006 at 8:04 pm
It seems like you know the point of the Wii is the new controls but not why people seem to be liking them.
“Wii tennis could be played with a single button instead of the wiimote (you don’t even control the movement of your character)”
The point is that you are doing a motion instead of just hitting a button.
Also “but it’s because of the simplicity of the games and not the new controller” could be very wrong as well.
If you read a lot of the current press you hear casual people play it and go “I’m buying one of these!”. You don’t hear them doing that with something like the 360.
The controller is not as impressive as a lot of people originally thought and may not be for everyone but at least it’s a nice change of pace and can be a lot of fun. Worth a second look I say.
November 15th, 2006 at 7:01 pm
As I said, I have a “wait and see” approach, not a “I’m never going to get one” approach. I’m still interested, but the launch line-up doesn’t include anything making it worth purchasing right now for me.
As for the new controls, I do agree that swinging a virtual tennis racket is kinda fun, but I don’t see long term enjoyment out of it. It’s fun because it’s new, but once it isn’t new anymore it’ll lose its fun. That’s when deep gameplay will matter. Sadly, the games I saw didn’t really have deep gameplay (except for Zelda, but that’s coming to Gamecube).
November 16th, 2006 at 12:32 pm
Hopefully it ends up helping the experiences be more immersive rather than just a gimmick (RE: Nintendo DS).
As far as Zelda, I’m not a huge fan either but the wolf stuff in the new one might be interesting and there is no denying that playing 1st party Nintendo games is like going to school in GD.
If you’re not too interested in it then it’s probably good to wait. It will be an interesting 2007.