| Nintendo Wii: A Viable Choice |
[May. 31st, 2009|05:13 pm] |
I got my Nintendo Wii the month after it came out, whilst I should have been revising for my first round of A2-level exams, and whilst I must confess I enjoyed Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, I found the experience was slightly lacking. I gave up playing LoZ:TP after about thirty-five hours of gameplay (I intend to come back to it and complete it this summer, it's a pride thing), and although Mario Kart Wii is fun in short bursts, I'm the first to confess it probably hasn't justified the money I paid for it yet. The other game I got back then was Red Steel, which was, although a fairly competent FPS, by no means great (or indeed all that interesting a plot). The graphics were poor, even for a Wii game, and the swordfighting was really not a good showcase of the Wiimote's potential.
The reason I mention Red Steel last is because I bought a copy of Nintendo Official Magazine today, and it has a feature in it on the sequel. As some of you will know, there's a peripheral coming for the Wii this summer called the MotionPlus, which adds functionality to the Wiimote - essentially, the console now knows exactly where your hand is and how you're moving it, meaning that much finer controls are available. Red Steel 2 uses this functionality to finally deliver the epic swordfighting that people have been waiting to see on the Wii since its conception.
To cap that off, the developers have opted for a cel-shaded, almost Japanese arthouse style of graphics. Graphics are not the Wii's strong suit, it's nowhere near as powerful as the PS3 or the Xbox 360, and that is blatantly obvious in some games, so the solution is to opt for stylistic graphics that make a game unique, rather than the überrealistic graphics found in the Xbox 360's and PS3's games at the moment. This is pleasing, I must confess, and I really think it works well in other games of the same type (XIII and Viewtiful Joe are both cel-shaded GameCube games and neither looks like it's an old game today, so why not harness that for the Wii?).
This is encouraging enough for my underused Wii as it is, but that's not the only thing currently getting me all excited about my little white box. Sega have been beavering away on some games for the Wii this year, and they released House of the Dead: Overkill and Mad World pretty much at the same time. I purchased HOTD:Overkill recently and I was amazed at how good it is. It's a prequel to the other HOTD games, and it's in the same arcade style - the Wiimote shoots mutants, you put the Wiimote in the Wii Zapper or lightgun accessory of your choice and you're away! It's amazing to play, really, really good fun and I'm currently working my way through the director's cut (it's haaaard).
On the subject of Sega, Mad World also looks like good fun (I got it today, not played it yet) and they're releasing a game soon called The Conduit, an FPS designed specifically to be played on the Wii, which looks awesome. Another game I'm currently getting excited about is Need for Speed: Nitro, which is another game specifically designed for play on the Wii, and will be a different experience from the upcoming game Shift for the Xbox 360 and PS3. I think that's good - you're far more likely to do well from a game designed for the console you play it on, than a game designed for a different console, and intelligent use of the Wii's controls is usually far better than a port from one of the Wii's big brothers.
Oh, and then again, there's the GameCube compatibility. I bought Viewtiful Joe, a brilliant game I never owned for the GameCube, recently, and also the bongos you could get are coming in handy for nights playing videogames with my mates.
I have spent the last year being unconvinced by videogames that were either shitty ports for the Wii or videogames that were expensive and would have required a console I was unsure I wanted to buy for me to play them. Suddenly, I've bought an extra three videogames in the space of a month and I'm playing on my Wii every day. I toyed with the idea of selling my Wii so many times last year, and I am so glad I didn't. The humble games console from Nintendo is finally becoming a viable choice for those of us who don't just want to play minigames or keep fit. |
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