I’ve played the Wii.
I’ve played the Wii, and I’m not impressed.
I’ve played the Wii, and I’m very impressed.
You see, it’s all a matter of perspective. This year, the Electronics Entertainment Expo featured "Early Access Media Hours" – this was designed to alleviate the crowds and give us humble press folk a bit of extra time playing the games that have been dangled in our collective faces.
I spent the entire early access segment of the show in line to play the Wii.
After waiting in line, I waited some more – it’s a bit of a shame, but it didn’t seem like there were enough Wii booths to play. Some areas of the booth were dense, choked with people – hence, I didn’t get a chance to play either Zelda or Mario. I hope to swing back through the Nintendo booth and check out these games – I certainly got plenty of time to watch the games being played, and I can tell you that they seem really cool.
After waiting in line for what seemed to be an eternity, I finally got my chance to play my first Wii game – Wii Tennis, the same game that was featured during the Nintendo press conference. Watching the press conference, I thought that the game would feature some relatively simple graphics. This is a gross understatement, and it does a disservice to the term "simple graphics." I’ll get to that later. The game served as my first introduction to the control scheme presented by the Wii-mote. The tennis game made almost perfect sense, and I’m happy to report that if I had been given more than a minute to play, I would have done quite well. The demo for the game was unfortunately pretty short. But here’s a run-down, in case you want to pretend you’re playing a Wii at home.
Swing your arm. Pretend that you hit a ball.
Tada, that’s about it.
The characters move more or less automatically (it might be related to how you’re pointing the remote, but if it is, I didn’t notice). So, there’s about 5 seconds worth of game play to describe, but those 5 seconds were quite cool.
The second game that I played on the Wii was Baseball. Here’s where I talk a bit more about graphics. They were god-awful horrible. Look, I know this is E3 (games are incomplete), and I know that the point of the demos are to demo, but man did those graphics suck. And I don’t mean simple – I LIKE SIMPLE. I mean SUCK. The stands in the back of the field looked like boxes with circles painted on them, and there was clipping everywhere. That bat went through my head about a hundred times.
Now, the graphics in the baseball title were bad. But that doesn’t really count. Here’s a summary of the graphical prowess of the Wii, in the BEST titles that I’ve seen (Zelda, Metroid, Mario): current-gen +1. I’ve seen some Xbox games released this year that look about the same. Another nice descriptor would be to characterize the graphics as first-gen Xbox 360, or a bit worse.
I also got a chance to play Madden on the Wii – I don’t care what anyone says, I’m still a big time Madden fan, and I welcomed the new control scheme with open arms.
Then EA and Nintendo punched me in the sack.
First and foremost, the Wii controller is sensitive. Too sensitive. In many cases, it was difficult to make very precise movements with the controller (to aim my cursor) or to even hold the cursor steady. It’s also a bit hard to deal with both the nun chuck and the Wii-mote with this title. The action of passing added a bit of confusion and frustration for me, because you have to move your character with the attached nun chuck – and then press a button on the Wii-mote, then make the passing motion. For a 5 minute demo, it’s quite a bit to do all at once.
Did I mention that the nunchuck is attached to the Wii-mote? Because it is, and it’s along for the ride when you swing forward for your pass. Try this little exercise with me: swing your arm forward, move one thumb one way (to select receiver), move your left thumb down (to avoid tackle), and try to look like a dignified human being while doing so.
First person shooters, driving games, whacky titles, and similar ilk will be featured in the next Wii report from me. Rest assured, these titles play much better. Much, much better.
One last thing about the accuracy of the Wii remote – it’s extremely accurate. If you want to get an idea of how accurate, take a simple laser pointer and try to point at exactly the same spot on the wall for a while. Yes, it really is that accurate. And hence, it introduces difficulty into sniping.
And yeah, while I’m at it, one last thing about sensitivity – it’s adjustable in at least one of the titles – Metroid Prime. So, thank GOD for that.
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