Shooting Synergy in the Foot: Star Wars: The Force Unleashed (Wii) Review
Posted on
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
by Gary A. Ballard
There are some pairings so perfect, so obvious, so absolutely made for each other that thinking of one will automatically cause the other to come to mind without urging. Peanut butter and jelly, the Internet and porn, Kirk and Spock, these things just fit together so well one can hardly be blamed for preferring the combination over its individual parts. One of the first thoughts that came to my mind when I saw the Wii in action was Star Wars. How perfect would the nerdgasm be were Lucasarts to create a lightsaber-focused Jedi game with the Wiimote's motion-controls? Without question, Star Wars and videogame nerds everywhere got chubby in the corduroys upon seeing the videos of the release title Red Steel, with all its sword-fighting glory. Why is it then that Star Wars: The Force Unleashed for the Wii is such a stunning disappointment?
All the stars were aligned. A Star Wars game about Darth Vader's hidden Sith apprentice with customisable force powers, motion-controlled light saber fighting and two-player duels would be the ultimate geek wet dream. But from the very get-go, I was left with a puzzled disappointment. Leaving aside the ultimately irrelevant narrative retcon of the Star Wars mythos, the presentation of the game is mediocre at best. The graphics are not even on par with the better PS2 games, and games like Metroid Prime: Corruption has already ably demonstrated that the system has the horsepower to push some impressive graphics. Yet this title is rife with flat texture works and inconsistent use of lighting and shading. Star destroyers in particular look awful, flat colored polygons with tiny bits of detail and no lighting effects. Yet your character's personal ship has plenty of detail and shading applied. The technical aspects of the system's graphics hardware count for nothing if the artists half-ass their way through the game.
The voice acting suffers from a similar inconsistency. While Vader and the Stormtroopers are certainly well-represented, the main character cannot seem to decide whether to speak with an affected British accent or an accentless American reading. This could all be forgiven if the game play lived up to the potential. Unfortunately, that is the exact area where the game falls apart the worst.
Now I realize that the original Wiimote with the addition of the upcoming MotionPlus attachment is probably not as precise an instrument as I at first thought. But a very flawed game like Red Steel managed to do what a Star Wars game could not, make sword-fighting fun even though the Wiimote does not map 1:1 arm movement onto the screen. Perhaps it was Red Steel's use of first-person perspective as opposed to the FU's 3rd person, a change which makes a big difference in immersion. But I tend to think the reason FU doesn't feel that immersive is because the controls are downright sloppy. Not only does the character not respond in kind to the Wiimotions, I never felt like I needed to do anything more than flail around in order to kill anything but a boss. I am reminded of the typical gameplay of No More Heroes, which was overly boring except on the boss fights. The force powers are fun, but many require motions on the nunchuk that aren't intuitive. The 3rd person camera was one great big bag of dick, constantly flipping around the character unbidden, causing me to lose my target. Though the D-pad allows me to control the camera, the D-pad isn't really well-placed for the kind of quick use I needed to switch the camera in combat situations. The Nunchuk's imprecise analog stick doesn't help in this respect either.
But one of the most irritating things about the game involved the boss fights. Rather than the exciting swingfests of a game like No More Heroes, the boss fights in FU are tedious affairs littered with jarring QTE's (Quicktime events). Rather than relying on the player's skill with the lightsaber and force powers to defeat bosses, every boss has certain stages of health loss that necessitate passing a QTE. Failure results in the boss's health being reset to the last stage. While some games use these effectively (Resident Evil 4 comes to mind), the use of QTE's in FU just breaks what little immersion the game has. Two hours into the game and I decided that I had had enough. The story wasn't interesting enough to endure mediocre gameplay and sloppy controls.
Seeing the mess that Lucasarts came up with for FU (a wholly appropriate acronym I might add) makes me appreciate the flawed brilliance of No More Heroes' boss fights even more. The fact that FU for the Wii has a duel mode that is not online-enabled is just another sore spot. Given the sloppiness of the controls, the weak graphics and voice acting, I'm forced to give this title a 5 stars out of 10. The only thing saving it from a lower score is the fun force powers like Choke and Lightning. But not even choking the shit out of a Stormtrooper can make up for the title's shortcomings.
All the stars were aligned. A Star Wars game about Darth Vader's hidden Sith apprentice with customisable force powers, motion-controlled light saber fighting and two-player duels would be the ultimate geek wet dream. But from the very get-go, I was left with a puzzled disappointment. Leaving aside the ultimately irrelevant narrative retcon of the Star Wars mythos, the presentation of the game is mediocre at best. The graphics are not even on par with the better PS2 games, and games like Metroid Prime: Corruption has already ably demonstrated that the system has the horsepower to push some impressive graphics. Yet this title is rife with flat texture works and inconsistent use of lighting and shading. Star destroyers in particular look awful, flat colored polygons with tiny bits of detail and no lighting effects. Yet your character's personal ship has plenty of detail and shading applied. The technical aspects of the system's graphics hardware count for nothing if the artists half-ass their way through the game.
The voice acting suffers from a similar inconsistency. While Vader and the Stormtroopers are certainly well-represented, the main character cannot seem to decide whether to speak with an affected British accent or an accentless American reading. This could all be forgiven if the game play lived up to the potential. Unfortunately, that is the exact area where the game falls apart the worst.
Now I realize that the original Wiimote with the addition of the upcoming MotionPlus attachment is probably not as precise an instrument as I at first thought. But a very flawed game like Red Steel managed to do what a Star Wars game could not, make sword-fighting fun even though the Wiimote does not map 1:1 arm movement onto the screen. Perhaps it was Red Steel's use of first-person perspective as opposed to the FU's 3rd person, a change which makes a big difference in immersion. But I tend to think the reason FU doesn't feel that immersive is because the controls are downright sloppy. Not only does the character not respond in kind to the Wiimotions, I never felt like I needed to do anything more than flail around in order to kill anything but a boss. I am reminded of the typical gameplay of No More Heroes, which was overly boring except on the boss fights. The force powers are fun, but many require motions on the nunchuk that aren't intuitive. The 3rd person camera was one great big bag of dick, constantly flipping around the character unbidden, causing me to lose my target. Though the D-pad allows me to control the camera, the D-pad isn't really well-placed for the kind of quick use I needed to switch the camera in combat situations. The Nunchuk's imprecise analog stick doesn't help in this respect either.
But one of the most irritating things about the game involved the boss fights. Rather than the exciting swingfests of a game like No More Heroes, the boss fights in FU are tedious affairs littered with jarring QTE's (Quicktime events). Rather than relying on the player's skill with the lightsaber and force powers to defeat bosses, every boss has certain stages of health loss that necessitate passing a QTE. Failure results in the boss's health being reset to the last stage. While some games use these effectively (Resident Evil 4 comes to mind), the use of QTE's in FU just breaks what little immersion the game has. Two hours into the game and I decided that I had had enough. The story wasn't interesting enough to endure mediocre gameplay and sloppy controls.
Seeing the mess that Lucasarts came up with for FU (a wholly appropriate acronym I might add) makes me appreciate the flawed brilliance of No More Heroes' boss fights even more. The fact that FU for the Wii has a duel mode that is not online-enabled is just another sore spot. Given the sloppiness of the controls, the weak graphics and voice acting, I'm forced to give this title a 5 stars out of 10. The only thing saving it from a lower score is the fun force powers like Choke and Lightning. But not even choking the shit out of a Stormtrooper can make up for the title's shortcomings.
Labels: Entertainment, George Lucas, Lucasarts, Nintendo, Science-Fiction, Star Wars, Video Games, Wii
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Unfathomable Devolution: Madden NFL '09 (Wii) Review
Posted on
Wednesday, October 15, 2008
by Gary A. Ballard
It's that time of the year again, that time when the air starts getting colder and football fans everywhere are inevitably disappointed by another year's rehashing of the familiar Madden NFL video game formula. And to celebrate the annual disappointment, it's time for me to review this year's version of that storied, beaten-to-a-pulp franchise for the Wii. Yes, most versions of the game could be reviewed with a simple, one-line hyperlink to archived reviews of a previous year's entry. However, it is an annual tradition, and I feel compelled to offer at least something new on each version that I play, so without further ado, I present my review of Madden NFL '09 for the Nintendo Wii.
This game plays like last year's version, only without some of the bugs that plagued '08.
Wow, that was easy.
With the snarky, obvious joke out of the way, let me delve a bit further into why this game is not worth purchasing. Other than the obvious and completely predictable retreading of the well-worn game engine, there is one great reason not to buy '09. The game has devolved. Yes, they did seem to fix some of the bugs I complained about last season. They did seem to make it a bit easier to tackle and pull off some of the special moves. They even added a great new feature: "Call Your Shot," which allows the player to pause the game at the line of scrimmage, select a receiver and create a route on the fly, allowing a much more flexible form of audibles than in the past (though the audible system is otherwise intact).
But the game has taken a serious turn for the worse in the graphics department. It has literally devolved from a slightly-stylized version of realism into a color-saturated world of brain-stabbing eye pain. 2007's version was what one would expect: an X-Box level graphic treatment of football, complete with shadowing and good texture work. No, the Wii versions will never approach the hi-def level of the 360 and PS3 versions, nor should one expect them to. But this year's version has taken all the depth and "realism" from the textures and instead substituted great swaths of overly bright color. Grass fields look like astroturf carpets, barely indistinguishable from domed stadiums. While this in itself would only be disappointing, their choice of color palettes for screen interface elements exacerbates the problem. Each receiver on pass plays has an icon dictating which button to push to throw to that receiver. However, the icons are not only bright, they are surrounding in neon-colored halos, ostensibly to denote which receiver is actually open. However, the colors chosen are so bright and the field behind them so bright and devoid of texture that the icons just blend into one big mess of indecipherable retina rape. The game looks like a tie-dyed Fisher-Price toy. It's excruciating. Fortunately, I can safely say that comparisons to '07's graphics prove that it isn't because the hardware can't handle decent graphics, it's because of a conscious decision on the part of the art directors at EA Sports.
This art direction has been evident in last year's FIFA product, and it has to stop. While it's perfectly acceptable to use this style in the Mii-inspired mini-games like the 5-on-5 game added to NFL '09, it is absolutely unacceptable in the regular game. Not only does it make the game ugly, it makes the game unnecessarily difficult to play. It makes the player fight the interface, which the Wii-mote is supposed to alleviate. I've seen EA Sports teams do better - the PS2 version of FIFA 08 is a perfect example. I don't know if the art style is meant to be "casual-friendly" (it's not) or just to follow what they consider a Wii-themed branding, but it has to stop. As I said in the FIFA 08 review, these games have built-in audiences that expect certain things. Adding mini-games to attract a wider audience is fine. Fucking up a game's interface in some retarded attempt to attract a wider audience that alienates previous fans of the series is destined for failure.
As a result of their design choices, I was unable to finish two full games. Had I spent full price on the game, I'd have been extremely pissed. The game has devolved from a reasonably decent version of videogame football into a cockup that isn't worth a rental. I did not get to the Online or 5-on-5 modes or any of the other new modes in the game, because the basic gameplay was just so offputting. If you can manage the retinal assault of their awful art design, the game is probably just as good as last year's version with fewer bugs. But if bright colors cause you physical pain, avoid Madden NFL '09. Your eyes will thank you.
This game plays like last year's version, only without some of the bugs that plagued '08.
Wow, that was easy.
With the snarky, obvious joke out of the way, let me delve a bit further into why this game is not worth purchasing. Other than the obvious and completely predictable retreading of the well-worn game engine, there is one great reason not to buy '09. The game has devolved. Yes, they did seem to fix some of the bugs I complained about last season. They did seem to make it a bit easier to tackle and pull off some of the special moves. They even added a great new feature: "Call Your Shot," which allows the player to pause the game at the line of scrimmage, select a receiver and create a route on the fly, allowing a much more flexible form of audibles than in the past (though the audible system is otherwise intact).
But the game has taken a serious turn for the worse in the graphics department. It has literally devolved from a slightly-stylized version of realism into a color-saturated world of brain-stabbing eye pain. 2007's version was what one would expect: an X-Box level graphic treatment of football, complete with shadowing and good texture work. No, the Wii versions will never approach the hi-def level of the 360 and PS3 versions, nor should one expect them to. But this year's version has taken all the depth and "realism" from the textures and instead substituted great swaths of overly bright color. Grass fields look like astroturf carpets, barely indistinguishable from domed stadiums. While this in itself would only be disappointing, their choice of color palettes for screen interface elements exacerbates the problem. Each receiver on pass plays has an icon dictating which button to push to throw to that receiver. However, the icons are not only bright, they are surrounding in neon-colored halos, ostensibly to denote which receiver is actually open. However, the colors chosen are so bright and the field behind them so bright and devoid of texture that the icons just blend into one big mess of indecipherable retina rape. The game looks like a tie-dyed Fisher-Price toy. It's excruciating. Fortunately, I can safely say that comparisons to '07's graphics prove that it isn't because the hardware can't handle decent graphics, it's because of a conscious decision on the part of the art directors at EA Sports.
This art direction has been evident in last year's FIFA product, and it has to stop. While it's perfectly acceptable to use this style in the Mii-inspired mini-games like the 5-on-5 game added to NFL '09, it is absolutely unacceptable in the regular game. Not only does it make the game ugly, it makes the game unnecessarily difficult to play. It makes the player fight the interface, which the Wii-mote is supposed to alleviate. I've seen EA Sports teams do better - the PS2 version of FIFA 08 is a perfect example. I don't know if the art style is meant to be "casual-friendly" (it's not) or just to follow what they consider a Wii-themed branding, but it has to stop. As I said in the FIFA 08 review, these games have built-in audiences that expect certain things. Adding mini-games to attract a wider audience is fine. Fucking up a game's interface in some retarded attempt to attract a wider audience that alienates previous fans of the series is destined for failure.
As a result of their design choices, I was unable to finish two full games. Had I spent full price on the game, I'd have been extremely pissed. The game has devolved from a reasonably decent version of videogame football into a cockup that isn't worth a rental. I did not get to the Online or 5-on-5 modes or any of the other new modes in the game, because the basic gameplay was just so offputting. If you can manage the retinal assault of their awful art design, the game is probably just as good as last year's version with fewer bugs. But if bright colors cause you physical pain, avoid Madden NFL '09. Your eyes will thank you.
Labels: Madden, NFL, Nintendo, Video Games, Wii
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posted by Gary A. Ballard @ 9:30 AM
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Circling the Bases: MLB 2k8 Baseball (Wii) Review
Posted on
Tuesday, May 20, 2008
by Gary A. Ballard
Since the demise of the High Heat Baseball franchise and my adoption of the console as my platform of choice for yearly baseball video games fix, the MLB 2k series of games has been outstanding. Though not always the prettiest or most bug-free, the series has generally been the best action-oriented baseball simulation on the market. But after the abysmal failure that was The Bigs for the Nintendo Wii by the same development studio, I had my doubts about the Wii version of MLB 2k8. If the game had adapted the execrable interface and sloppy controls of the arcadey The Bigs, it would have been a dramatic failure. I'm delighted to report that is not the case, as the 2k8 version of the series holds its own with any of its predecessors.
Those interested in an action-oriented sim with licensed player names and stats will not be disappointed with this game. Those looking for a solid, fun baseball experience will also not be disappointed. The stats are all there, the graphics are decent though not incredible, which is par for the course with this series. It contains season and franchise modes as well as home run derby minigames. It unfortunately lacks online play for those who want that sort of thing. But like any Wii game, the first question to answer is about the motion controls.
2k8's motion controls are a mixed bag. On the one hand, the pitching interface is slick and intuitive, and unlike The Bigs, doesn't make the player feel the need to strain his shoulder throwing as hard as possible. Someone with any knowledge of pitching at all should handle the pitching controls easily. The catcher will place his glove where he wants the ball pitched, and the pitcher should try to match that, as his advice is sound.
But where the game stumbles a bit is in the batting interface. This is completely puzzling to me, because it would seem that batting would be the no-brainer for this system. Wii Sports' baseball had the batting swing interface down, and this game doesn't really capture the same feel. Rather than feeling the need to stand in a batter's stance and swing for the fences, the game's controls inspire only small flicking motions. There is a disconnect between the swing and the screen that is hard to pinpoint but it creates a noticeable distance from the game that shouldn't be there. I want to make clear that the batting controls aren't bad at all. They just lack the oomph I expected out of a title with a motion-sensing stick as its main form of input. The fielding, throwing, and baserunning are all solid, and the management options in exhibition and franchise modes are as strong as the last version I played, MLB 2k6 for the XBox.
The game also stumbles on a part of the design that I'm finding is difficult for all Wii titles, the menu system. The 2k8 menus all use the shiny glass button art style that is so prevalent in Wii titles, probably because it mimics the look of the systems main console, the Wii Menu. Unfortunately, this art style is carried through all of the menus, including the screens that display stats. Baseball is a stat-heavy game, and just making up a lineup can require looking through multiple stat categories for the entire bench team. All of it is rendered with entirely too much graphical polish. Too much effort is expended on making the menus look shiny, while the information contained within is often cramped and requires side-scrolling to read properly. Baseball stats are usually presented horizontally and so much screen real estate is needlessly wasted, making menus take longer to read than necessary. Unfortunately, this is a problem in multiple Wii titles, especially sports titles like all of the EA Sports titles I've reviewed, including NBA Live '08, FIFA '08 and Madden NFL '08. I can't say whether this is a Nintendo mandate or just bad UI design, but it's becoming quite irritating.
Despite these flaws, MLB 2k8 is a damn fine game of baseball, the first good serious sports sim on the system. I would recommend it for anyone who wants a good baseball game for their Wii. The game deserves an 8.5 out of 10 for its depth of play, quality of presentation and fun mechanics. Perhaps next year's version will include online play and even online leagues. Until then, MLB 2k8 is a fine addition to any Wii sports fan's library.
Those interested in an action-oriented sim with licensed player names and stats will not be disappointed with this game. Those looking for a solid, fun baseball experience will also not be disappointed. The stats are all there, the graphics are decent though not incredible, which is par for the course with this series. It contains season and franchise modes as well as home run derby minigames. It unfortunately lacks online play for those who want that sort of thing. But like any Wii game, the first question to answer is about the motion controls.
2k8's motion controls are a mixed bag. On the one hand, the pitching interface is slick and intuitive, and unlike The Bigs, doesn't make the player feel the need to strain his shoulder throwing as hard as possible. Someone with any knowledge of pitching at all should handle the pitching controls easily. The catcher will place his glove where he wants the ball pitched, and the pitcher should try to match that, as his advice is sound.
But where the game stumbles a bit is in the batting interface. This is completely puzzling to me, because it would seem that batting would be the no-brainer for this system. Wii Sports' baseball had the batting swing interface down, and this game doesn't really capture the same feel. Rather than feeling the need to stand in a batter's stance and swing for the fences, the game's controls inspire only small flicking motions. There is a disconnect between the swing and the screen that is hard to pinpoint but it creates a noticeable distance from the game that shouldn't be there. I want to make clear that the batting controls aren't bad at all. They just lack the oomph I expected out of a title with a motion-sensing stick as its main form of input. The fielding, throwing, and baserunning are all solid, and the management options in exhibition and franchise modes are as strong as the last version I played, MLB 2k6 for the XBox.
The game also stumbles on a part of the design that I'm finding is difficult for all Wii titles, the menu system. The 2k8 menus all use the shiny glass button art style that is so prevalent in Wii titles, probably because it mimics the look of the systems main console, the Wii Menu. Unfortunately, this art style is carried through all of the menus, including the screens that display stats. Baseball is a stat-heavy game, and just making up a lineup can require looking through multiple stat categories for the entire bench team. All of it is rendered with entirely too much graphical polish. Too much effort is expended on making the menus look shiny, while the information contained within is often cramped and requires side-scrolling to read properly. Baseball stats are usually presented horizontally and so much screen real estate is needlessly wasted, making menus take longer to read than necessary. Unfortunately, this is a problem in multiple Wii titles, especially sports titles like all of the EA Sports titles I've reviewed, including NBA Live '08, FIFA '08 and Madden NFL '08. I can't say whether this is a Nintendo mandate or just bad UI design, but it's becoming quite irritating.
Despite these flaws, MLB 2k8 is a damn fine game of baseball, the first good serious sports sim on the system. I would recommend it for anyone who wants a good baseball game for their Wii. The game deserves an 8.5 out of 10 for its depth of play, quality of presentation and fun mechanics. Perhaps next year's version will include online play and even online leagues. Until then, MLB 2k8 is a fine addition to any Wii sports fan's library.
Labels: Baseball, MLB, Nintendo, Sports, Video Games, Wii
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posted by Gary A. Ballard @ 3:28 PM
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Wooo-hoooo!!! Super Mario Galaxy (Wii) Review
Posted on
Friday, March 14, 2008
by Gary A. Ballard
I am not a fan of the Mario Bros. series of games. Yes, I'm old enough to have played the original Donkey Kong in arcades when it was brand spanking new. I've played Super Mario on the original NES and Super Mario World on the Super NES. But I never really liked platform jumping games, probably because I suck so horribly at platform jumping. I always preferred the Sonic or Crash Bandicoot games over Mario if I wanted to indulge in that kind of gameplay, but only rarely and without any real zeal. When Super Mario Galaxy for the Nintendo Wii came up in my queue, it was the kind of game I wanted to play if only to review it for this blog. What I found was an incredibly surprising game, the kind of innovative take on an old genre that is so fun, the game transcends its genre trappings.
Super Mario Galaxy is about something. There's a story involving Princess Peach being kidnapped by Bowser again, but really, the story is about as coherent as an acid trip. For this type of game, story is essentially a meaningless contextualizing of the natural imperative to finish the level. The game would be just as entertaining with or without the story. Like most of the other first-party Wii games, such as Metroid Prime: Corruption, or The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, this game is really a puzzle game masquerading as a platform jumper. Mario is sent to different galaxies, most of which are mini-planetoids floating in space. Mario must find his way to unlock the planetoid, which will either allow him to move to another planetoid or rescue one of the Power Stars he is sent to collect. Getting the power star finishes the galaxy, or in the case of multi-star galaxies, it opens up another set of planetoids.
The planetoid designs are fantastic. Each is an almost perfectly-sized morsel of fun, with some inventive puzzles that challenging, sometimes mentally, sometimes physically. The game isn't a HARD game, per se, as its gameplay is simplistic enough for all ages. The motion-controls are used sparingly, so that the game doesn't really give much of a workout except on some rare planetoids. But it will make you think about how to navigate through the puzzles or beat the bosses. The game's level design and gameplay philosophy remind me of Valve's Portal because of how different from other games of its apparent genre it really is. Though I think Portal is a better game, mainly because its FPS genre trappings are more my style than platform jumping, Galaxy is still one of the best games I've played on the Wii.
Graphically, the game is gorgeous, proving once again that High-Definition graphics are not necessary to make a good game. Walking about on the planetoids isn't quite dizzying, but the way in which the topsy-turvy gravity of the planetoids is implemented makes the game much more immersive than a non-first-person game should be. The sound is also top-notch, though Mario's "Wooo-hoooo!" has always grated on my nerves. My one complaint about the game is that the Wii's nunchuk analog stick can sometimes feel a little uncomfortable over long periods of play, though that's hardly the game's fault.
Super Mario Galaxy is one of those "tons of fun in small, easily digestible chunks" games, and as such is as close to a must-buy game on the system as there can be. I would rate the game as a 9.2 out of 10, because it just really is that much fun. Though I didn't finish the game, it was only because of the release of a real baseball game on the Wii (MLB 2k8 which I will be reviewing). I plan on putting the game back in my queue at a later time to continue my star collection.
Super Mario Galaxy is about something. There's a story involving Princess Peach being kidnapped by Bowser again, but really, the story is about as coherent as an acid trip. For this type of game, story is essentially a meaningless contextualizing of the natural imperative to finish the level. The game would be just as entertaining with or without the story. Like most of the other first-party Wii games, such as Metroid Prime: Corruption, or The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, this game is really a puzzle game masquerading as a platform jumper. Mario is sent to different galaxies, most of which are mini-planetoids floating in space. Mario must find his way to unlock the planetoid, which will either allow him to move to another planetoid or rescue one of the Power Stars he is sent to collect. Getting the power star finishes the galaxy, or in the case of multi-star galaxies, it opens up another set of planetoids.
The planetoid designs are fantastic. Each is an almost perfectly-sized morsel of fun, with some inventive puzzles that challenging, sometimes mentally, sometimes physically. The game isn't a HARD game, per se, as its gameplay is simplistic enough for all ages. The motion-controls are used sparingly, so that the game doesn't really give much of a workout except on some rare planetoids. But it will make you think about how to navigate through the puzzles or beat the bosses. The game's level design and gameplay philosophy remind me of Valve's Portal because of how different from other games of its apparent genre it really is. Though I think Portal is a better game, mainly because its FPS genre trappings are more my style than platform jumping, Galaxy is still one of the best games I've played on the Wii.
Graphically, the game is gorgeous, proving once again that High-Definition graphics are not necessary to make a good game. Walking about on the planetoids isn't quite dizzying, but the way in which the topsy-turvy gravity of the planetoids is implemented makes the game much more immersive than a non-first-person game should be. The sound is also top-notch, though Mario's "Wooo-hoooo!" has always grated on my nerves. My one complaint about the game is that the Wii's nunchuk analog stick can sometimes feel a little uncomfortable over long periods of play, though that's hardly the game's fault.
Super Mario Galaxy is one of those "tons of fun in small, easily digestible chunks" games, and as such is as close to a must-buy game on the system as there can be. I would rate the game as a 9.2 out of 10, because it just really is that much fun. Though I didn't finish the game, it was only because of the release of a real baseball game on the Wii (MLB 2k8 which I will be reviewing). I plan on putting the game back in my queue at a later time to continue my star collection.
Labels: Mario, Nintendo, Video Games, Wii
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posted by Gary A. Ballard @ 10:46 AM
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Dribbling for Dullards: NBA Live 08 (Wii) Review
Posted on
Friday, February 15, 2008
by Gary A. Ballard
I am not a fan of the current incarnation of the NBA and am not a fan of basketball in general. My first exposure to the game in over a decade came during last year's NBA Finals, and only because my favorite player LeBron James had made it to the championship series. As a result, a "casual-focused" NBA action simulation game should be right up my alley. The Wii version of NBA Live 08 from EA Sports should be that game. The fact that it isn't highlights the defects of the EA Sports' overall design philosophy for Wii games. In short, they are designing dumbed down, barely-interactive imitations of their popular series from other platforms, and doing it quite badly.
This review will be similar to the review I gave of FIFA 08 last year, because that game shares so many similarities with this one, as well as with Madden 08. Though NBA Live 08 does not share the bugs of Madden, all three games use the exact same menu system, a menu system that blows like Orca. While the menus are pretty, they are horribly slow, and often deliberately short of necessary information. For instance, during season mode, trading a player or signing a free agent is an exercise in frustration. The player cannot sort the columns of information, so that searching for a Point Guard with an overall rating of 70 or higher means sifting through every single player until that point guard is found. For the free agent list, that is over 50 players to sort through, with a painfully slow scroll feature. Once a player is selected, there is no additional information about that player beyond his name, position and overall rating. No biographical information, no age, no breakdown of his skills, just an overall rating. The information is there, as it shows up on team roster screens, so why isn't it available when scouting the player?
Like FIFA, the game is incredibly light on the typical game modes expected of an EA Sports title, or any "serious" sports title for that matter. There are exhibition games, the casual "Party" mini-games, season, playoffs and tournament modes, as well as online games. Unlike the other versions of the title, there is no dynasty mode, which is what most fans of this type of game will want to play. What's so galling about the exclusion of Dynasty mode is that there really is no design needed on such a mode, since it's been in previous versions of the title for years as well as current versions on other platforms. It's an infuriating design decision. Just as with FIFA 08, the target audience for this type of game is going to be fans of the previous games in the series and people who are NBA fans. Dynasty mode is exactly what those fans will come to expect, and any game that does not contain it will be considered inferior. It's almost as if the designers at EA don't want people to purchase the game for the Wii, which is ludicrous and bordering on tinfoil hat territory.
But beyond all the extra modes expected of a franchise such as this, how does the on-court action perform? That's a mixed bag. On the one hand, the game is fun, more so than FIFA 08 and with fewer bugs than Madden 08. Here to, the game fails at the fundamental design level. Like the other EA Sports titles, NBA Live includes a "Family Play" option, something EA Sports has touted as a means of balancing the game among different skill levels. Younger kids or less accomplished gamers can use the Family Play controls, which only use the Wiimote to pass, shoot and play some defense, while more skilled gamers use the advanced controls which adds the nunchuk and the ability to control the players' movements. I applaud the concept. However, the actual design and execution falls well short of the stated goal. Rather than evening the balance, it hamstrings the more accomplished player by removing options. The advanced player feels disconnected from the actions on the screen, mainly because there are so few actions the player can perform when compared to other games of this type on other platforms.
Motion-sensitive controls are supposed to be about immersing the player deeper into the game by mimicing real-life motions. Mapping the game's controls to the restrictive nature of the Family Play set of controls actually makes the player feel less immersed, because of how little freedom with shot selection, shot skill and juke moves the controls allow. Once the basic controls are mastered, there don't seem to be anywhere else for the player to improve, and his actions feel divorced from the actions the players are peforming onscreen. FIFA 08 suffered from the same problem, and it is a fundamental flaw of the Family Play design. If EA wishes to target sports games to a younger, less savvy audience, it would seem to make more sense not to use the existing "hardcore" NBA Live franchise to do so. For myself, it leads me to prefer to purchase the game on the PS2, which is disappointing in the extreme. Motion controls are supposed to make the Wii version preferable, because of how much more immersive they can make the game, and EA Sports has failed miserably time and time again.
It's high time that the EA Sports Wii division be replaced from the top-down with those who understand that existing franchises come with expectations that are not being met. I shudder to think of how badly this design philosophy would diminish the NHL franchise. Sports gamers who want serious sports games on the Wii are being criminially underserved. I would rate NBA Live 08 a 6 out of 10, only worth purchasing in the bargain bin by people who care nothing about NBA seasons and just want a midly fun, 30-minute basketball-flavored diversion.
This review will be similar to the review I gave of FIFA 08 last year, because that game shares so many similarities with this one, as well as with Madden 08. Though NBA Live 08 does not share the bugs of Madden, all three games use the exact same menu system, a menu system that blows like Orca. While the menus are pretty, they are horribly slow, and often deliberately short of necessary information. For instance, during season mode, trading a player or signing a free agent is an exercise in frustration. The player cannot sort the columns of information, so that searching for a Point Guard with an overall rating of 70 or higher means sifting through every single player until that point guard is found. For the free agent list, that is over 50 players to sort through, with a painfully slow scroll feature. Once a player is selected, there is no additional information about that player beyond his name, position and overall rating. No biographical information, no age, no breakdown of his skills, just an overall rating. The information is there, as it shows up on team roster screens, so why isn't it available when scouting the player?
Like FIFA, the game is incredibly light on the typical game modes expected of an EA Sports title, or any "serious" sports title for that matter. There are exhibition games, the casual "Party" mini-games, season, playoffs and tournament modes, as well as online games. Unlike the other versions of the title, there is no dynasty mode, which is what most fans of this type of game will want to play. What's so galling about the exclusion of Dynasty mode is that there really is no design needed on such a mode, since it's been in previous versions of the title for years as well as current versions on other platforms. It's an infuriating design decision. Just as with FIFA 08, the target audience for this type of game is going to be fans of the previous games in the series and people who are NBA fans. Dynasty mode is exactly what those fans will come to expect, and any game that does not contain it will be considered inferior. It's almost as if the designers at EA don't want people to purchase the game for the Wii, which is ludicrous and bordering on tinfoil hat territory.
But beyond all the extra modes expected of a franchise such as this, how does the on-court action perform? That's a mixed bag. On the one hand, the game is fun, more so than FIFA 08 and with fewer bugs than Madden 08. Here to, the game fails at the fundamental design level. Like the other EA Sports titles, NBA Live includes a "Family Play" option, something EA Sports has touted as a means of balancing the game among different skill levels. Younger kids or less accomplished gamers can use the Family Play controls, which only use the Wiimote to pass, shoot and play some defense, while more skilled gamers use the advanced controls which adds the nunchuk and the ability to control the players' movements. I applaud the concept. However, the actual design and execution falls well short of the stated goal. Rather than evening the balance, it hamstrings the more accomplished player by removing options. The advanced player feels disconnected from the actions on the screen, mainly because there are so few actions the player can perform when compared to other games of this type on other platforms.
Motion-sensitive controls are supposed to be about immersing the player deeper into the game by mimicing real-life motions. Mapping the game's controls to the restrictive nature of the Family Play set of controls actually makes the player feel less immersed, because of how little freedom with shot selection, shot skill and juke moves the controls allow. Once the basic controls are mastered, there don't seem to be anywhere else for the player to improve, and his actions feel divorced from the actions the players are peforming onscreen. FIFA 08 suffered from the same problem, and it is a fundamental flaw of the Family Play design. If EA wishes to target sports games to a younger, less savvy audience, it would seem to make more sense not to use the existing "hardcore" NBA Live franchise to do so. For myself, it leads me to prefer to purchase the game on the PS2, which is disappointing in the extreme. Motion controls are supposed to make the Wii version preferable, because of how much more immersive they can make the game, and EA Sports has failed miserably time and time again.
It's high time that the EA Sports Wii division be replaced from the top-down with those who understand that existing franchises come with expectations that are not being met. I shudder to think of how badly this design philosophy would diminish the NHL franchise. Sports gamers who want serious sports games on the Wii are being criminially underserved. I would rate NBA Live 08 a 6 out of 10, only worth purchasing in the bargain bin by people who care nothing about NBA seasons and just want a midly fun, 30-minute basketball-flavored diversion.
Labels: Basketball, EA Sports, NBA, Nintendo, Sports, Video Games, Wii
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No Idea: No More Heroes (Wii) Review
Posted on
Friday, February 01, 2008
by Gary A. Ballard
Imagine the immature, socially-retarded cousins of Sid Vicious and Johnny Knoxville met, fell in love and had babies. Now imagine those babies were raised on Atari 2600 games, mixed with a liberal dose of Grand Theft Auto 3 and anime. Imagine that child grew up to be a game designer. Had that hypothetical scenario been a reality, that demon spawn would have produced No More Heroes for the Nintendo Wii.
The developer, Suda 51, is the fevered mind behind the game Killer 7, which I have routinely criticized as a game too interested in being a pretentious, avant garde statement on the concept of video games than in being a playable game. I'm happy to say that NMH is not that kind of game. It is a puzzling game, nonetheless.
The main character is Travis Touchdown, a Johnny Knoxville-inspired anime assassin looking to raise his world assassin ranking by killing the ten assassins ranked above him. For some reason, he's also hoping to get into the pants of his handler, the blonde Frenchie named Sylvia, who appears to be more interested in abusing Travis than getting freaky with him. Armed with his lightsaber-like beam katana, he has to work odd jobs and various assassination missions to pay for the entry fees to his ranked fights. Yes, I'm well aware that this entire scenario makes no sense whatsoever. At best, it's a manga storyline told with as much sardonic disdain as abject reverence. At worst, it's just a mishmash of things that the developer thought would be funny.
I have a difficult time trying to define an audience that would like this game. On the one hand, it's a third-person adventure game, similar to Prince of Persia without the acrobatics or really anything other than slicing and dicing. Travis mows through hordes of faceless thugs, with the occasional mini-boss, before reaching a boss battle. Between those boss battles (called ranked fights), Travis is given timed missions which are either action missions, or really irritating mini-games. All the mini-games and missions are strung together in a Grand Theft Auto-style city that Travis drives around on his motorcycle.
With one notable exception, all of these different types of gameplay are at best mediocre, such as the thug-killing missions. At worst, they are downright insulting, especially the collection mini-games. One such mini-game involves Travis karate chopping trees until coconuts fall out, gathering up the coconuts and pressing the A-button Track-and-Field style to run back to the coconut turn-in point. At some points of the game, these mini-games are not optional, because they make Travis the money he needs to enter the ranked fights. The driving game is poorly controlled and seems to serve no purpose other than to pay homage to the Grand Theft series. The city is uninteresting. Running over pedestrians causes no consequences, Travis can't perform any jumps or tricks with his bike, and in the 4 hours I played, there seemed to be no emergent gameplay in these sections. The long corridors of thug-bashing gets old really quickly, as there seems to be little strategy needed to dispatch the hordes, and it all serves to distract from the best parts of the game, the boss battles.
Had NMH just focused solely on making boss battles and lots of them, it would have been a fantastic game. The boss battles are challenging, exciting affairs, where tactics are needed to overcome the enemy. But knowing there are likely only 10 boss battles (with perhaps a few more added as challengers come after Travis' rank) means the game will have very little worthwhile gameplay chopped up by mediocre and irritating mini-games. None of the mini-games will stand out on its own. As a result, the game likely won't appeal to most fans of any of those types of games, which makes me confused as to who the real audience would be.
The game's main selling point seems to be its style. While some will find it humorous or downright hysterical, I just found it was trying too hard to be "punk" and "irreverant." Things like making Travis take a dump to save the game, or his begging Sylvia to "do it" didn't make me laugh so much as cringe. The crew of Jackass might enjoy these parts, but I'm not sure who else would. The graphics are a mixed bag, using a jagged, cel-shaded art style which works well at times. At other times, the scenery is horribly anti-aliased, worse than I've seen on most Wii games. The system is capable of better visuals.
The game uses the Wii's motion controls sparingly, as finishing moves on combos, or gimmicky sections of the mini-games. There is nothing done with these controls that couldn't be accomplished with a PS2 controller, and that's a real shame. A lightsaber/sword game with motion controls would have been more interesting than the control scheme used.
In all, the game is worthy of a rental at best, and then only if the things mentioned above aren't a hindrance. For me, four hours was enough to know I wouldn't care to finish the game. The boss battles were great, but the majority of the game wasn't worth slogging through to get to them. I'd rate the game a 6 out of 10.
The developer, Suda 51, is the fevered mind behind the game Killer 7, which I have routinely criticized as a game too interested in being a pretentious, avant garde statement on the concept of video games than in being a playable game. I'm happy to say that NMH is not that kind of game. It is a puzzling game, nonetheless.
The main character is Travis Touchdown, a Johnny Knoxville-inspired anime assassin looking to raise his world assassin ranking by killing the ten assassins ranked above him. For some reason, he's also hoping to get into the pants of his handler, the blonde Frenchie named Sylvia, who appears to be more interested in abusing Travis than getting freaky with him. Armed with his lightsaber-like beam katana, he has to work odd jobs and various assassination missions to pay for the entry fees to his ranked fights. Yes, I'm well aware that this entire scenario makes no sense whatsoever. At best, it's a manga storyline told with as much sardonic disdain as abject reverence. At worst, it's just a mishmash of things that the developer thought would be funny.
I have a difficult time trying to define an audience that would like this game. On the one hand, it's a third-person adventure game, similar to Prince of Persia without the acrobatics or really anything other than slicing and dicing. Travis mows through hordes of faceless thugs, with the occasional mini-boss, before reaching a boss battle. Between those boss battles (called ranked fights), Travis is given timed missions which are either action missions, or really irritating mini-games. All the mini-games and missions are strung together in a Grand Theft Auto-style city that Travis drives around on his motorcycle.
With one notable exception, all of these different types of gameplay are at best mediocre, such as the thug-killing missions. At worst, they are downright insulting, especially the collection mini-games. One such mini-game involves Travis karate chopping trees until coconuts fall out, gathering up the coconuts and pressing the A-button Track-and-Field style to run back to the coconut turn-in point. At some points of the game, these mini-games are not optional, because they make Travis the money he needs to enter the ranked fights. The driving game is poorly controlled and seems to serve no purpose other than to pay homage to the Grand Theft series. The city is uninteresting. Running over pedestrians causes no consequences, Travis can't perform any jumps or tricks with his bike, and in the 4 hours I played, there seemed to be no emergent gameplay in these sections. The long corridors of thug-bashing gets old really quickly, as there seems to be little strategy needed to dispatch the hordes, and it all serves to distract from the best parts of the game, the boss battles.
Had NMH just focused solely on making boss battles and lots of them, it would have been a fantastic game. The boss battles are challenging, exciting affairs, where tactics are needed to overcome the enemy. But knowing there are likely only 10 boss battles (with perhaps a few more added as challengers come after Travis' rank) means the game will have very little worthwhile gameplay chopped up by mediocre and irritating mini-games. None of the mini-games will stand out on its own. As a result, the game likely won't appeal to most fans of any of those types of games, which makes me confused as to who the real audience would be.
The game's main selling point seems to be its style. While some will find it humorous or downright hysterical, I just found it was trying too hard to be "punk" and "irreverant." Things like making Travis take a dump to save the game, or his begging Sylvia to "do it" didn't make me laugh so much as cringe. The crew of Jackass might enjoy these parts, but I'm not sure who else would. The graphics are a mixed bag, using a jagged, cel-shaded art style which works well at times. At other times, the scenery is horribly anti-aliased, worse than I've seen on most Wii games. The system is capable of better visuals.
The game uses the Wii's motion controls sparingly, as finishing moves on combos, or gimmicky sections of the mini-games. There is nothing done with these controls that couldn't be accomplished with a PS2 controller, and that's a real shame. A lightsaber/sword game with motion controls would have been more interesting than the control scheme used.
In all, the game is worthy of a rental at best, and then only if the things mentioned above aren't a hindrance. For me, four hours was enough to know I wouldn't care to finish the game. The boss battles were great, but the majority of the game wasn't worth slogging through to get to them. I'd rate the game a 6 out of 10.
Labels: Video Games, Wii
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Beautiful Puzzles: Metroid Prime Corruption (Wii) Review
Posted on
Friday, January 18, 2008
by Gary A. Ballard
Having never played the Metroid Prime series on the GameCube, or any Metroid games at all, I came into Metroid Prime Corruption for the Nintendo Wii with a completely blank slate. The only preconceived notions I had going in were that the game was a pretty, neon-infested first-person shooter sequel which had garnered rave reviews in previous incarnations. Those notions were somewhat incorrect. While the game appears on the surface to be a first-person shooter, it is really much more.
At heart, Corruption is a puzzle game, masquerading as an action-adventure shooter. The game does look and play like a shooter, but the shooting is secondary to the real fun in the game, the various puzzles embedded into the landscape surrounding the main character. Dressed up by a story involving an alien race called space pirates and their attacks on the Galactic Federation, the story is a thin context for the conflict that drives the player forward. While the story is good, it's certainly not deep, reminiscent of many anime movies. There are parts of the story that do not resolve to any coherent conclusion such as the origin of Dark Samus, the player's evil counterpart, but overall the story is satisfactory. The voice acting is solid throughout, and the visual effects and cutscenes are well-done. The game itself is gorgeous, with a distinctive style that leans heavily on the neon. It is easily on par with the best-looking games on the system, like Zelda: Twilight Princess.
The gameplay itself is spectacular. As I mentioned above, the shooting is secondary to the main gameplay element. Using the Wii Remote as an aiming device, the aiming is precise and can be augmented with a target lock (though the player must still aim at the enemies). Beyond the aiming, there isn't a lot of "waggle" gameplay. The only other use of the motion controls is the use of the electro-grapple, which uses the nunchuk to control an electromagnetic whip, but it's used well. The game's puzzles are fantastic. Most are decipherable with the visual context given, but there were a number of puzzles that caused me to go to Gamefaqs to solve. The puzzles are fun, though I wonder about a world that builds structures that require a person to roll themselves into an armored spheroid in order to power gigantic machines. In the context of the game, it all makes a weird sort of sense, and the armorball gameplay is an interesting mechanic, though I certainly prefer the upright gameplay over the marble madness.
The exclusion of an online multiplayer function, which had been rumored as a feature months before release, is a damn shame. The dynamics of the electro-grapple and armor ball would likely make for some incredibly interesting multiplayer combinations, both in team-based and deathmatch-style games. Hopefully the design team will consider that and come back with a less expensive online-only Metroid game in the future (but I won't hold my breath for that). As it is, the game has between 15-20 hours of gameplay and a low replay value. Finishing the main story opens up a "Hypermode" difficulty, giving those who enjoy replaying the same game on a higher difficulty some replay value.
Overall, the game serves as a great reason to own a Wii. While certainly not a perfect game, Corruption proves that the system can combine gorgeous graphics with solid gameplay and subtle yet appropriate uses of the motion controls. I would rate the game an 8.5 out of 10, certainly worth a purchase or a very long rental.
At heart, Corruption is a puzzle game, masquerading as an action-adventure shooter. The game does look and play like a shooter, but the shooting is secondary to the real fun in the game, the various puzzles embedded into the landscape surrounding the main character. Dressed up by a story involving an alien race called space pirates and their attacks on the Galactic Federation, the story is a thin context for the conflict that drives the player forward. While the story is good, it's certainly not deep, reminiscent of many anime movies. There are parts of the story that do not resolve to any coherent conclusion such as the origin of Dark Samus, the player's evil counterpart, but overall the story is satisfactory. The voice acting is solid throughout, and the visual effects and cutscenes are well-done. The game itself is gorgeous, with a distinctive style that leans heavily on the neon. It is easily on par with the best-looking games on the system, like Zelda: Twilight Princess.
The gameplay itself is spectacular. As I mentioned above, the shooting is secondary to the main gameplay element. Using the Wii Remote as an aiming device, the aiming is precise and can be augmented with a target lock (though the player must still aim at the enemies). Beyond the aiming, there isn't a lot of "waggle" gameplay. The only other use of the motion controls is the use of the electro-grapple, which uses the nunchuk to control an electromagnetic whip, but it's used well. The game's puzzles are fantastic. Most are decipherable with the visual context given, but there were a number of puzzles that caused me to go to Gamefaqs to solve. The puzzles are fun, though I wonder about a world that builds structures that require a person to roll themselves into an armored spheroid in order to power gigantic machines. In the context of the game, it all makes a weird sort of sense, and the armorball gameplay is an interesting mechanic, though I certainly prefer the upright gameplay over the marble madness.
The exclusion of an online multiplayer function, which had been rumored as a feature months before release, is a damn shame. The dynamics of the electro-grapple and armor ball would likely make for some incredibly interesting multiplayer combinations, both in team-based and deathmatch-style games. Hopefully the design team will consider that and come back with a less expensive online-only Metroid game in the future (but I won't hold my breath for that). As it is, the game has between 15-20 hours of gameplay and a low replay value. Finishing the main story opens up a "Hypermode" difficulty, giving those who enjoy replaying the same game on a higher difficulty some replay value.
Overall, the game serves as a great reason to own a Wii. While certainly not a perfect game, Corruption proves that the system can combine gorgeous graphics with solid gameplay and subtle yet appropriate uses of the motion controls. I would rate the game an 8.5 out of 10, certainly worth a purchase or a very long rental.
Labels: Nintendo, Video Games, Wii
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posted by Gary A. Ballard @ 8:51 AM
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Vivendi Tries to Make EA Jealous
Posted on
Monday, December 03, 2007
by Gary A. Ballard
The video game news this morning is disappointing for video gamers. Yet another big video game merger has occurred, this time involving Vivendi and Activision. Not content with the cash cow that is World of Warcraft, Vivendi has merged its game division with Activision, publisher of such hits as Guitar Hero, Tony Hawk and Call of Duty. The new merged company will be called Activision Blizzard, with Vivendi holding a 52% stake in the venture. Of course, there is one thing to notice about this new company. Every successful game they have is some kind of sequel.
World of Warcraft (WoW) is an MMOG sequel to Blizzard's madly successful Warcraft series. All of the Activision titles listed in the linked article are franchise properties as well, with each having at least three different titles in the series. Blizzard's upcoming products include an expansion for WoW and a sequel to its classic RTS Starcraft series. The trend is unmistakable. Vivendi has built a company to rival Electronics Arts, following the same formula. That formula is to buy up developers with successful properties and leverage those properties into sequel after sequel after sequel.
While I believe WoW's success in the MMOG market has caused investment money to flow back into MMOG development, meaning more MMOG's will be made, I do worry that such money will be spent on shitty, slapdash attempts to clone WoW's gameplay. And the last thing the video game industry needed was another gigantic publisher with kneejerk sequelitis. Sequels are not by themselves bad things, and most accounts of Guitar Hero and Call of Duty sequels are positive. I myself even rated Call of Duty 3 for the Wii highly.
That said, giant corporate publishers with the means and desire to gobble up small developers like Electronic Arts have hurt the game industry. EA Sports acquisition of the exclusive NFL video game license has resulted in buggy rehashes of the Madden franchise, a series showing almost as much age as its namesake. We gamers do not need another monolith trying to out-shovel EA, we already have Ubisoft. Perhaps the three of them can get together and form the massive Blandotron, spitting out Splinter Cells, Maddens and Tony Hawks with the regularity of bowel movements.
Gird your loins. The sequel onslaught has begun.
World of Warcraft (WoW) is an MMOG sequel to Blizzard's madly successful Warcraft series. All of the Activision titles listed in the linked article are franchise properties as well, with each having at least three different titles in the series. Blizzard's upcoming products include an expansion for WoW and a sequel to its classic RTS Starcraft series. The trend is unmistakable. Vivendi has built a company to rival Electronics Arts, following the same formula. That formula is to buy up developers with successful properties and leverage those properties into sequel after sequel after sequel.
While I believe WoW's success in the MMOG market has caused investment money to flow back into MMOG development, meaning more MMOG's will be made, I do worry that such money will be spent on shitty, slapdash attempts to clone WoW's gameplay. And the last thing the video game industry needed was another gigantic publisher with kneejerk sequelitis. Sequels are not by themselves bad things, and most accounts of Guitar Hero and Call of Duty sequels are positive. I myself even rated Call of Duty 3 for the Wii highly.
That said, giant corporate publishers with the means and desire to gobble up small developers like Electronic Arts have hurt the game industry. EA Sports acquisition of the exclusive NFL video game license has resulted in buggy rehashes of the Madden franchise, a series showing almost as much age as its namesake. We gamers do not need another monolith trying to out-shovel EA, we already have Ubisoft. Perhaps the three of them can get together and form the massive Blandotron, spitting out Splinter Cells, Maddens and Tony Hawks with the regularity of bowel movements.
Gird your loins. The sequel onslaught has begun.
Labels: Corporate Corruption, Game Design, PS3, Video Games, Wii, X-Box
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posted by Gary A. Ballard @ 10:19 AM
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Why Bother? Driver: Parallel Lines (Wii) Review
Posted on
Tuesday, October 30, 2007
by Gary A. Ballard
This review will likely take more time to write than it took me to play Driver: Parallel Lines for the Wii. The lack of time spent on both playing and writing isn't to say the game is short, because I've no idea how short the game is. What the game is can be shortened into an acronym: YASP, which stands for Yet Another Shitty Port. The review is short because I couldn't stand to play this game for more than twenty minutes and neither should anyone else.
Not having played any of the previous Driver games, I can't comment on how it compares to the rest of the series. It bears a startling similarity to the Grand Theft Auto series of games, complete with Pulp Fiction-esque cinematics. The story follows a young driver in 1970's New York, just a wacky guy who takes odd jobs being the getaway driver for all manner of criminal enterprises. The game part of this story involves stealing cars, driving the cars around to various waypoints and evading the police to complete whatever mission is presented to the player.
All of that might be fun, if it weren't for the controls. The game is a wasteful mess, a good concept wrapped around sloppy, sluggish controls. Driving is an exercise in frustration, using the Nunchuk's analog stick to terrible effect. The stick is unresponsive and hard to use, as if the developers didn't want to bother tweaking the software to respond to this particular set of hardware. In the short time I played, I found no use of the Wii's motion controls at all. Given how badly the analog stick was utilized, I should probably be thankful I wasn't forced to use bad waggle just to justify the game's existence on the Wii.
In short, the game is a terrible, terrible port that is a complete waste of a DVD. No one should buy, rent or play this game. It is a YASP of the lowest kind, yet another shitty port that disrespects the system and its fans.
Not having played any of the previous Driver games, I can't comment on how it compares to the rest of the series. It bears a startling similarity to the Grand Theft Auto series of games, complete with Pulp Fiction-esque cinematics. The story follows a young driver in 1970's New York, just a wacky guy who takes odd jobs being the getaway driver for all manner of criminal enterprises. The game part of this story involves stealing cars, driving the cars around to various waypoints and evading the police to complete whatever mission is presented to the player.
All of that might be fun, if it weren't for the controls. The game is a wasteful mess, a good concept wrapped around sloppy, sluggish controls. Driving is an exercise in frustration, using the Nunchuk's analog stick to terrible effect. The stick is unresponsive and hard to use, as if the developers didn't want to bother tweaking the software to respond to this particular set of hardware. In the short time I played, I found no use of the Wii's motion controls at all. Given how badly the analog stick was utilized, I should probably be thankful I wasn't forced to use bad waggle just to justify the game's existence on the Wii.
In short, the game is a terrible, terrible port that is a complete waste of a DVD. No one should buy, rent or play this game. It is a YASP of the lowest kind, yet another shitty port that disrespects the system and its fans.
Labels: Nintendo, Video Games, Wii
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posted by Gary A. Ballard @ 8:15 PM
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A Kick in the Balls: Fifa Soccer 08 (Wii) Review Turns into a Rant
Posted on
Monday, October 15, 2007
by Gary A. Ballard
Fifa Soccer 07 for the X-Box, while flawed, was the game I played the most over the last year. The game was not perfect, nor was it a completely realistic simulation of football, and yet its outstanding action play, its deep managerial simulation and plethora of club and international teams and leagues was overwhelming. Most sports video games wear out their welcome by the second or third month of play, often before I've even finished an entire season, but not Fifa 07. When my X-Box finally died, I spent a few weeks missing the game, and eventually ended up purchasing a copy of the Gamecube version to play on my Wii to tide me over until the 08 version showed up for the Wii. It was with a great deal of breathless anticipation that I looked forward to seeing an updated, motion-controlled version of one of my favorite sports video games of all time. In the weeks before its release, however, I began to get worried. My fears were justified. EA Sports has kicked me in the balls.
My first pangs of worry came from the release of Madden NFL 08 for the Wii. My review was not as harsh as it should have been. Madden's flaws were evident when writing the review, but the flaws became so much more obvious and galling after I wrote the review. It was the kind of piss-poor execution of an existing franchise that familiarity bred the ultimate contempt. I would actually downgrade my assessment of the game to the point that I would consider it unworthy of a purchase. It is incredibly buggy, its online play is atrocious, its controls less precise than the previous year's version, which is ridiculous considering the 07 version was a Wii launch title. The game might at first appear to be worth a 7 out of 10, but eventually it wears one's patience down to a 5. The lack of any patching options on the Wii, as well as EA Sports' decision to ignore the Wii audience's demands for a roster update leads me to label Madden as shovelware.
But Fifa Soccer 08 for the Wii is worse. Initial reports suggested that many of the game modes available in other versions of the game would not make it to the Wii, including my personal robot jesus mode, Manager mode. While this worried me, I was determined to purchase the game. It still had season and tournament modes, I would tell myself, so perhaps those modes would be acceptable. They weren't. The extra play modes for the Wii version are so thin, the game feels like it was released in 2003. While all the teams and leagues make it on the disc, they are mostly just window dressing without the manager mode. It might have been acceptable in the '90's to play a season without any way to transfer players between teams, but in 2007, that's a feature that cannot be dropped. And what was it dropped for? Footi Party, a series of three shallow multiplayer mini-games hosted by a horse-toothed Mii version of Ronaldhino. While I applaud the addition of these type of party games, they are in no way deep enough to warrant a purchase by casual players who weren't already interested in a new Fifa game. The Table Football (Foosball) is a fun diversion, while the other games are somewhat weak, and none make up for the loss of manager mode.
But how does the real game, the game on the field play out? It drowns in mediocrity. While the graphics are updated from the GameCube version (though not as realistic as the X-Box version) with appropriate shininess, the controls are weak. Player movement feels entirely too sloppy, especially on defense. The AI on Semi-Pro difficulty was rarely a challenge. The most important aspect of gameplay, the motion controls, were spotty and imprecise. Although one can use a Wiimote waggle to pass, it isn't necessary and thus feels tacked on. Crossing and shooting was a mixed bag of up or down Wiimote thrusts. It appeared that instead of the granularity of normal power bars, motion controls only offered four different strengths of shot or cross. Tricks are accomplished with button presses and waggles, but the motions were sloppily implemented and difficult to choose. While the gameplay wasn't bad, it wasn't great either. The motion controls were useless tack-ons, imparting no immersion whatsoever. Like all too many shovelware games from the big publishers for the Wii, the waggle seemed to be used for no other reason than to tout waggle.
This is the thing that gets me most ranty. Not only is the game lacking in critical features, not only is the motion control poorly implemented, but the developers couldn't even get the basics down. The menus are incredibly laggy, especially in the roster view. Each player's stamina, which must be viewed during a game to help determine substitutions, is only shown by selecting the player, which is in itself a slow, tedious task because the screen hitches for a second before updating with the selected player. In other versions, the stamina is shown in the roster list. Perhaps the developers felt that Wii players wouldn't substitute, but even in season management menus, game mode menus, really every menu in the game is a laggy mess. If one were to wear a tinfoil hat, one would think EA Sports WANTS the Wii to fail to sell games. Given EA Sports' obvious choice of the 360 as its promotional tool, that idea is not too far-fetched.
This game is a failure in every sense of the word. It is a gimped, shovelware version of a fantastic franchise and the developers should be ashamed of how little effort is exhibited. The game's very design is fundamentally flawed. I've been a champion of the Wii's ability to draw in non-gamers and casual gamers with its intuitive motion controls. Adding casual games such as the Footi Party to Fifa 08 is a good idea, unless of course, it means removing features that fans of the series have come to expect. Fifa 08 is not a new game, it's an upgrade to an existing popular franchise, and as such, the developers have an obligation to target the design for the franchise's past audience first. Not only have they not done that, they've designed the game so badly, even casual players will have no reason to pick the game up. The addition of waggles controls without any real good reason to add them further compounds the problem. And finally, the game doesn't even allow the player to set up their own control scheme, which means the customer can't customise their experience to their own level of comfort. Rather than make the game more accessible to those outside the core audience, they've made it less accessible to those customers most likely to purchase the game in the first place.
Someone in the Wii division of EA Games needs to de-assify their head. Adding casual gamers to the development target audience does not mean purposefully forgetting everything that made their games successful in the first place. It means expanding the genres for development, and expanding the intuitive nature of the game's controls. I hope that someone in managment reads this review and dickslaps every person involved in the development of the EA Sports games for the Wii, because I'm not sure anything but genitalia across the chops is going to sink in.
The final indignity is my own reaction to the failure of this game. Like a true addict, instead of putting the game away and never speaking of it again, I traded it and Madden in for credit, which allowed me to buy a PS2 and the PS2 version of Fifa 08. Yes, I am a complete fucking tool, but I must have my Fifa. And now EA and Sony both win, despite doing nothing to deserve it. But at least the PS2 version has manager mode and plays well. I think I'll need to watch an Uwe Boll movie. I've already taken two kicks to the balls, I might as well complete the trifecta.
My first pangs of worry came from the release of Madden NFL 08 for the Wii. My review was not as harsh as it should have been. Madden's flaws were evident when writing the review, but the flaws became so much more obvious and galling after I wrote the review. It was the kind of piss-poor execution of an existing franchise that familiarity bred the ultimate contempt. I would actually downgrade my assessment of the game to the point that I would consider it unworthy of a purchase. It is incredibly buggy, its online play is atrocious, its controls less precise than the previous year's version, which is ridiculous considering the 07 version was a Wii launch title. The game might at first appear to be worth a 7 out of 10, but eventually it wears one's patience down to a 5. The lack of any patching options on the Wii, as well as EA Sports' decision to ignore the Wii audience's demands for a roster update leads me to label Madden as shovelware.
But Fifa Soccer 08 for the Wii is worse. Initial reports suggested that many of the game modes available in other versions of the game would not make it to the Wii, including my personal robot jesus mode, Manager mode. While this worried me, I was determined to purchase the game. It still had season and tournament modes, I would tell myself, so perhaps those modes would be acceptable. They weren't. The extra play modes for the Wii version are so thin, the game feels like it was released in 2003. While all the teams and leagues make it on the disc, they are mostly just window dressing without the manager mode. It might have been acceptable in the '90's to play a season without any way to transfer players between teams, but in 2007, that's a feature that cannot be dropped. And what was it dropped for? Footi Party, a series of three shallow multiplayer mini-games hosted by a horse-toothed Mii version of Ronaldhino. While I applaud the addition of these type of party games, they are in no way deep enough to warrant a purchase by casual players who weren't already interested in a new Fifa game. The Table Football (Foosball) is a fun diversion, while the other games are somewhat weak, and none make up for the loss of manager mode.
But how does the real game, the game on the field play out? It drowns in mediocrity. While the graphics are updated from the GameCube version (though not as realistic as the X-Box version) with appropriate shininess, the controls are weak. Player movement feels entirely too sloppy, especially on defense. The AI on Semi-Pro difficulty was rarely a challenge. The most important aspect of gameplay, the motion controls, were spotty and imprecise. Although one can use a Wiimote waggle to pass, it isn't necessary and thus feels tacked on. Crossing and shooting was a mixed bag of up or down Wiimote thrusts. It appeared that instead of the granularity of normal power bars, motion controls only offered four different strengths of shot or cross. Tricks are accomplished with button presses and waggles, but the motions were sloppily implemented and difficult to choose. While the gameplay wasn't bad, it wasn't great either. The motion controls were useless tack-ons, imparting no immersion whatsoever. Like all too many shovelware games from the big publishers for the Wii, the waggle seemed to be used for no other reason than to tout waggle.
This is the thing that gets me most ranty. Not only is the game lacking in critical features, not only is the motion control poorly implemented, but the developers couldn't even get the basics down. The menus are incredibly laggy, especially in the roster view. Each player's stamina, which must be viewed during a game to help determine substitutions, is only shown by selecting the player, which is in itself a slow, tedious task because the screen hitches for a second before updating with the selected player. In other versions, the stamina is shown in the roster list. Perhaps the developers felt that Wii players wouldn't substitute, but even in season management menus, game mode menus, really every menu in the game is a laggy mess. If one were to wear a tinfoil hat, one would think EA Sports WANTS the Wii to fail to sell games. Given EA Sports' obvious choice of the 360 as its promotional tool, that idea is not too far-fetched.
This game is a failure in every sense of the word. It is a gimped, shovelware version of a fantastic franchise and the developers should be ashamed of how little effort is exhibited. The game's very design is fundamentally flawed. I've been a champion of the Wii's ability to draw in non-gamers and casual gamers with its intuitive motion controls. Adding casual games such as the Footi Party to Fifa 08 is a good idea, unless of course, it means removing features that fans of the series have come to expect. Fifa 08 is not a new game, it's an upgrade to an existing popular franchise, and as such, the developers have an obligation to target the design for the franchise's past audience first. Not only have they not done that, they've designed the game so badly, even casual players will have no reason to pick the game up. The addition of waggles controls without any real good reason to add them further compounds the problem. And finally, the game doesn't even allow the player to set up their own control scheme, which means the customer can't customise their experience to their own level of comfort. Rather than make the game more accessible to those outside the core audience, they've made it less accessible to those customers most likely to purchase the game in the first place.
Someone in the Wii division of EA Games needs to de-assify their head. Adding casual gamers to the development target audience does not mean purposefully forgetting everything that made their games successful in the first place. It means expanding the genres for development, and expanding the intuitive nature of the game's controls. I hope that someone in managment reads this review and dickslaps every person involved in the development of the EA Sports games for the Wii, because I'm not sure anything but genitalia across the chops is going to sink in.
The final indignity is my own reaction to the failure of this game. Like a true addict, instead of putting the game away and never speaking of it again, I traded it and Madden in for credit, which allowed me to buy a PS2 and the PS2 version of Fifa 08. Yes, I am a complete fucking tool, but I must have my Fifa. And now EA and Sony both win, despite doing nothing to deserve it. But at least the PS2 version has manager mode and plays well. I think I'll need to watch an Uwe Boll movie. I've already taken two kicks to the balls, I might as well complete the trifecta.
Labels: Football, Nintendo, Soccer, Sports, Video Games, Wii
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posted by Gary A. Ballard @ 9:41 AM
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Wasting the Waggle
Posted on
Wednesday, September 26, 2007
by Gary A. Ballard
I've been a vocal supporter of the Nintendo Wii and its motion-sensitive Wiimote. Since I saw the first video of the sword-fighting in Red Steel, I was hooked on the concept of using intuitive motions to execute video game actions as opposed to the established thumbstick and button-pushing interfaces of the past few generations. The waggle, as it's been somewhat derisively labeled, was a step along the path towards making video games not only accessible to more people, but more immersive in ways that didn't involve buying expensive HDTV's and adding more pixels. But I remain concerned that many developers are wasting the waggle by releasing half-assed games which use waggle because they feel obligated to waggle. Down that path lies the Virtual Boy, the Power Glove and other gimmicky controllers in video game history.
The Wii has so far shown itself to be a fantastic "party game" machine, with such sterling examples as Wii Sports, Super Mario Party 8, and Rayman Raving Rabbits. There's nothing wrong with these mini-game laden offerings targeted at people who are not traditionally considered gamers. Wii Parties as a cultural phenomenon aren't a bad thing, despite what many pissy elitist game developers and hardcore gamers might claim. Opening the market to non-traditional casual gamers means more money for developers, which should translate into more games and more games should be what every gamer wants.
That said, tossing out half-assed efforts with tacked-on waggle is going to do nothing to help anyone. Games like Marvel Ultimate Alliance are a perfect example of what I mean by tacked-on waggle. The game should have been something akin to Robot Jesus for comic book geeks like myself, but it failed miserably to attract me. The main reason, as my review states, is because the motion-controls were so obviously just button combinations mapped to specific Wiimote waggles. Why not use motions which feel organic to the action performed by the character onscreen? Why not make the player actually throw Captain America's shield instead of just flipping the Wiimote one direction? Why not map one button to Thor's hammer and let the direction and speed of the hammer throw depend on the player's arm motion? Why not use another button to select Thor's or Storm's lightning attacks and make the player reach to the skies and drag down lightning at the target the Wiimote is pointed at? In short, why was no imagination shown in adding waggle to the game? The most likely answer is money, of course. I'm positive Raven Software was forced to release the game during the launch window, and as a result took the easy way out, but they wasted a fantastic opportunity to create a true classic.
Another game which has wasted the waggle is Prince of Persia: Rival Swords. While I must say this game is one of the better games for the system, it's use of motion-control is paltry and weak. The only motions used are for sword-fighting and chain-tossing when in Dark Prince mode. Other than that, there is no use of the Wiimote's uniqueness. The sword-fighting use of the waggle is weak, another obvious use of static motions mapped to replace button combinations from other versions of the game. The controls are imprecise and for most of the combat, the harder to execute motions aren't needed. Unlike Ultimate Alliance, the game is spectacular in all other aspects, and the weak waggle controls don't detract from the game enough to earn a negative judgement on the game. Why again wasn't the Prince's sword mapped to the player's movements? Why wasn't his sword arm controlled organically by the Wiimote while his body's combat acrobatics were mapped to nunchuk waggles? Even something along the lines of Red Steel's swordfighting would have made combat more exciting. Again, the game was excellent, in part because it's focus was the acrobatic puzzle-solving instead of the ho-hum combat. But it could have been so much more with a little thought
Waggle controls should be used with some serious thought. If the waggle doesn't add anything to the game that couldn't be achieved better with a button press, don't use it. Mario Strikers Charged is a perfect example. The waggle is used in exactly two spots. The Wiimote can be flicked to execute a tackle, and the Wiimote's pointer is used to block megastrikes (similar to penalty kicks in real football). That's all, and that's all that's needed. While there might have been more uses of it, they may not have added anything to the gameplay. The release of EA Sports FIFA '08 in two weeks will use more waggling, and I anticipate it with excited trepidation. EA's track record on the Wii is not good, it's latest version of Madden NFL '08 actually a step backwards from the previous version.
One of the Wii's most vocal critic is Shiny founder David Perry, who has criticized the system's non-HD graphics hardware before. His latest comments exhibit a nonsensical criticism of the system by claiming that the Wii has "sloppy" waggle control. What he misses is that the sloppiness of the controls aren't a result of the hardware, but the software driving the games. Yes, there have been games with very sloppy waggle. EA's Need for Speed: Carbon, the aforementioned Ultimate Alliance and Far Cry: Vengeance come to mind as games with sloppy controls. Other games don't suffer from this, such as Zelda, Mario Strikers, Super Swing Golf and Call of Duty 3. The software has to be written well, not half-assed, and the blame for sloppy controls has to be placed squarely on the heads of the developers of the software, not the hardware.
The Wiimote's waggle won't revolutionize the video game interface without good, innovative design and careful, competent programming. Nintendo must ensure that the third-party developers who have flocked to the system because of its initial success aren't using the Wii as a dumping ground for sloppy, half-assed cheap development to fund their AAA titles on the systems elitist developers want to work on. If one year from now, developers are still allowed to release drek such as Far Cry or shovelware like Ultimate Alliance, the Wii WILL fade from the video game industry no matter how profitable its initial run was for the Big N. It's time to stop wasting the waggle, there's only so much wiggle room in the industry these days.
The Wii has so far shown itself to be a fantastic "party game" machine, with such sterling examples as Wii Sports, Super Mario Party 8, and Rayman Raving Rabbits. There's nothing wrong with these mini-game laden offerings targeted at people who are not traditionally considered gamers. Wii Parties as a cultural phenomenon aren't a bad thing, despite what many pissy elitist game developers and hardcore gamers might claim. Opening the market to non-traditional casual gamers means more money for developers, which should translate into more games and more games should be what every gamer wants.
That said, tossing out half-assed efforts with tacked-on waggle is going to do nothing to help anyone. Games like Marvel Ultimate Alliance are a perfect example of what I mean by tacked-on waggle. The game should have been something akin to Robot Jesus for comic book geeks like myself, but it failed miserably to attract me. The main reason, as my review states, is because the motion-controls were so obviously just button combinations mapped to specific Wiimote waggles. Why not use motions which feel organic to the action performed by the character onscreen? Why not make the player actually throw Captain America's shield instead of just flipping the Wiimote one direction? Why not map one button to Thor's hammer and let the direction and speed of the hammer throw depend on the player's arm motion? Why not use another button to select Thor's or Storm's lightning attacks and make the player reach to the skies and drag down lightning at the target the Wiimote is pointed at? In short, why was no imagination shown in adding waggle to the game? The most likely answer is money, of course. I'm positive Raven Software was forced to release the game during the launch window, and as a result took the easy way out, but they wasted a fantastic opportunity to create a true classic.
Another game which has wasted the waggle is Prince of Persia: Rival Swords. While I must say this game is one of the better games for the system, it's use of motion-control is paltry and weak. The only motions used are for sword-fighting and chain-tossing when in Dark Prince mode. Other than that, there is no use of the Wiimote's uniqueness. The sword-fighting use of the waggle is weak, another obvious use of static motions mapped to replace button combinations from other versions of the game. The controls are imprecise and for most of the combat, the harder to execute motions aren't needed. Unlike Ultimate Alliance, the game is spectacular in all other aspects, and the weak waggle controls don't detract from the game enough to earn a negative judgement on the game. Why again wasn't the Prince's sword mapped to the player's movements? Why wasn't his sword arm controlled organically by the Wiimote while his body's combat acrobatics were mapped to nunchuk waggles? Even something along the lines of Red Steel's swordfighting would have made combat more exciting. Again, the game was excellent, in part because it's focus was the acrobatic puzzle-solving instead of the ho-hum combat. But it could have been so much more with a little thought
Waggle controls should be used with some serious thought. If the waggle doesn't add anything to the game that couldn't be achieved better with a button press, don't use it. Mario Strikers Charged is a perfect example. The waggle is used in exactly two spots. The Wiimote can be flicked to execute a tackle, and the Wiimote's pointer is used to block megastrikes (similar to penalty kicks in real football). That's all, and that's all that's needed. While there might have been more uses of it, they may not have added anything to the gameplay. The release of EA Sports FIFA '08 in two weeks will use more waggling, and I anticipate it with excited trepidation. EA's track record on the Wii is not good, it's latest version of Madden NFL '08 actually a step backwards from the previous version.
One of the Wii's most vocal critic is Shiny founder David Perry, who has criticized the system's non-HD graphics hardware before. His latest comments exhibit a nonsensical criticism of the system by claiming that the Wii has "sloppy" waggle control. What he misses is that the sloppiness of the controls aren't a result of the hardware, but the software driving the games. Yes, there have been games with very sloppy waggle. EA's Need for Speed: Carbon, the aforementioned Ultimate Alliance and Far Cry: Vengeance come to mind as games with sloppy controls. Other games don't suffer from this, such as Zelda, Mario Strikers, Super Swing Golf and Call of Duty 3. The software has to be written well, not half-assed, and the blame for sloppy controls has to be placed squarely on the heads of the developers of the software, not the hardware.
The Wiimote's waggle won't revolutionize the video game interface without good, innovative design and careful, competent programming. Nintendo must ensure that the third-party developers who have flocked to the system because of its initial success aren't using the Wii as a dumping ground for sloppy, half-assed cheap development to fund their AAA titles on the systems elitist developers want to work on. If one year from now, developers are still allowed to release drek such as Far Cry or shovelware like Ultimate Alliance, the Wii WILL fade from the video game industry no matter how profitable its initial run was for the Big N. It's time to stop wasting the waggle, there's only so much wiggle room in the industry these days.
Labels: Game Design, Nintendo, Video Games, Wii
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posted by Gary A. Ballard @ 9:43 AM
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Tackling the Inevitable: Madden NFL 08 (Wii) Review
Posted on
Thursday, September 13, 2007
by Gary A. Ballard
Unless you've been under a rock for the last two decades, you should know exactly what you are going to get when you purchase the current year's iteration of the Madden NFL series. In year's past, this has meant the addition of one or two highly touted (and quickly forgotten) new features, a barely current roster update and perhaps a graphical tweak or two. The only real surprises in the series come with the shift from past-gen consoles to the next-gen. Those first versions often come with a plethora of bugs or missing features as EA's development teams get up to speed on their new console. Madden NFL 08 for the Wii, featuring the surely-doomed Vince Young as the cover athlete, is the inevitable result of the typical Madden development cycle, but with a new set of unexpected problems.
To discuss the actual game seems almost a waste of words. If you like football, particularly NFL-branded football with licensed teams and real-life player names and ratings, you have no choice in video games other than the Madden series. This is the disappointing, yet inevitable result of the oft-cursed exclusive contract EA won from the NFL in 2004. As little as the Madden series iterated when they had competition, they have made any fewer attempts to innovate since. The actual gameplay would be hard to distinguish from the 07 Wii version, other than the mapping of buttons is different for what seems arbitrary reasons at best. Most of the playbooks are the same, the on-field graphics received no significant upgrade, the commentary is little changed, and the AI works with a clone-like similarity to 07. Yes, if you pay $50 for this gem, you are buying 07 again.
It won't feel the same at first, since as I mentioned, the buttons all do different things. The difference in key mapping makes some things easier but for the most part only requires gaining familiarity before becoming second nature. Things like choosing your defensive players, making defensive position shifts and defensive audibles are easier, but audibles for the offense are harder to execute, relying on nunchuk waggles for no good reason. Even with the changes, it feels no different than the 07 version. This is only a bad thing because one has to pay $50 for essentially a roster update, but those who have purchased Madden more than once are well aware of this, their financial scars already having scabbed over to the point of numbness.
What makes Madden NFL 08 for the Wii different is the piss poor execution of things that should be child's play for the Madden team. With so many iterations of the same game engine under their belt, features like quick-loading menus and online play should be refined diamonds, features so polished they burn the retinas. After all, navigating a menu should be the most basic of functions for a programmer, especially when the options on the menus haven't changed since 2003. But the menus in Madden NFL 08 are sluggish. Online play, while new to the Wii version, has been in Madden since the 2003 version on the PS2. And yet, the Wii's online play is in one word, awful.
Fucking awful. I played one game online, and have not gone back since. The game was laggy, like swimming through molasses. Worse yet, I couldn't tell if my opponent was a complete fucking idiot, or if the game was bugged. Multiple times before the snap, my opponent would just wander across the line of scrimmage into an offsides penalty for no reason. At least twice, the opponent just seemed to be meandering in my backfield. The game never even made it to a conclusion, as the opponent was disconnected. I assume he was disconnected by the service, since he was winning at the time. Again, the Madden series has been online since 2003. While yes, there are differences between console hardware, the science of moving discrete packets of bits from two client machines to one server and back isn't new, nor is the problem of latency. I do not expect a perfect online experience, but I certainly expect something better than this no matter what restrictions Nintendo places on online play. And despite there being two roster updates for the PS3 and 360, there have been no offline roster updates for the Wii. These things are Sports Games 101 type of mistakes, and EA has no excuse for them considering the monumental success every version of Madden achieves. They have the money to do all these things right, so one can only assume they choose not to.
With all that said, the game is still fun. If you are the type to buy a new version of Madden and enjoy the Madden style of football, you'll enjoy this version as much as last year. But if the idea of buying a bug-ridden version of last year's game with new rosters offends you, stay far away from this game. Perhaps the addition of Peter Moore to EASports' hierarchy will improve next year's version, but that would be a minor miracle. The game gets an inevitable 7 out of 10 overall score, the kind of game only past Madden owners should consider purchasing.
To discuss the actual game seems almost a waste of words. If you like football, particularly NFL-branded football with licensed teams and real-life player names and ratings, you have no choice in video games other than the Madden series. This is the disappointing, yet inevitable result of the oft-cursed exclusive contract EA won from the NFL in 2004. As little as the Madden series iterated when they had competition, they have made any fewer attempts to innovate since. The actual gameplay would be hard to distinguish from the 07 Wii version, other than the mapping of buttons is different for what seems arbitrary reasons at best. Most of the playbooks are the same, the on-field graphics received no significant upgrade, the commentary is little changed, and the AI works with a clone-like similarity to 07. Yes, if you pay $50 for this gem, you are buying 07 again.
It won't feel the same at first, since as I mentioned, the buttons all do different things. The difference in key mapping makes some things easier but for the most part only requires gaining familiarity before becoming second nature. Things like choosing your defensive players, making defensive position shifts and defensive audibles are easier, but audibles for the offense are harder to execute, relying on nunchuk waggles for no good reason. Even with the changes, it feels no different than the 07 version. This is only a bad thing because one has to pay $50 for essentially a roster update, but those who have purchased Madden more than once are well aware of this, their financial scars already having scabbed over to the point of numbness.
What makes Madden NFL 08 for the Wii different is the piss poor execution of things that should be child's play for the Madden team. With so many iterations of the same game engine under their belt, features like quick-loading menus and online play should be refined diamonds, features so polished they burn the retinas. After all, navigating a menu should be the most basic of functions for a programmer, especially when the options on the menus haven't changed since 2003. But the menus in Madden NFL 08 are sluggish. Online play, while new to the Wii version, has been in Madden since the 2003 version on the PS2. And yet, the Wii's online play is in one word, awful.
Fucking awful. I played one game online, and have not gone back since. The game was laggy, like swimming through molasses. Worse yet, I couldn't tell if my opponent was a complete fucking idiot, or if the game was bugged. Multiple times before the snap, my opponent would just wander across the line of scrimmage into an offsides penalty for no reason. At least twice, the opponent just seemed to be meandering in my backfield. The game never even made it to a conclusion, as the opponent was disconnected. I assume he was disconnected by the service, since he was winning at the time. Again, the Madden series has been online since 2003. While yes, there are differences between console hardware, the science of moving discrete packets of bits from two client machines to one server and back isn't new, nor is the problem of latency. I do not expect a perfect online experience, but I certainly expect something better than this no matter what restrictions Nintendo places on online play. And despite there being two roster updates for the PS3 and 360, there have been no offline roster updates for the Wii. These things are Sports Games 101 type of mistakes, and EA has no excuse for them considering the monumental success every version of Madden achieves. They have the money to do all these things right, so one can only assume they choose not to.
With all that said, the game is still fun. If you are the type to buy a new version of Madden and enjoy the Madden style of football, you'll enjoy this version as much as last year. But if the idea of buying a bug-ridden version of last year's game with new rosters offends you, stay far away from this game. Perhaps the addition of Peter Moore to EASports' hierarchy will improve next year's version, but that would be a minor miracle. The game gets an inevitable 7 out of 10 overall score, the kind of game only past Madden owners should consider purchasing.
Labels: Football, Madden, NFL, Sports, Video Games, Wii
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posted by Gary A. Ballard @ 9:49 AM
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OVER 9,000!!! Dragonball Z 2: Budokai Tenkaichi (Wii) Review
Posted on
Monday, July 30, 2007
by Gary A. Ballard
It would be an understatement to say that I am not a fan of the Dragonball Z series of anime. In fact, saying that I believe such animation to be the witless etchings of an army of angry dwarf animators huffing Drano fumes would be putting it mildly. In short, I find Dragonball Z to be not only an insult to my intelligence, but a seizure-inducing parade of cliched drivel that makes me want to wretch until I see my shoes come out of my mouth. And yet, the Wii launch title Dragonball Z 2: Budokai Tenkaichi (DBZ 2) did not make me worship at the porcelain throne; it actually entertained me.
Dragonball Z is an anime about fighting. That's all I can figure out from what little I've seen of it. It consists of overmuscled, over-exaggerated beings of all shapes and sizes flexing and screaming at each other for a half-hour, with the occasional explosion as someone uses a power no one has ever seen before, to the chagrin of his opponent. The screaming is often about some vague and barely decipherable explanation of one of the contestants' new powers, which is somehow a surprise and often catastrophic. I always imagine that these are the kinds of films shown to Malcolm McDowell's character in A Clockwork Orange, orgies of violence he was forced to watch through pried open eyelids. They certainly make me scream as if ocular rape had occurred. What kind of game is made from an anime about fighting? Luckily, it's a fighting game, and not some heartfelt Final Fantasy-esque angst roleplaying game.
As a fighting game, DBZ 2 is a hundred times better than the anime could hope to be. A narrative has to have context for the battles, while a fighting game is all about battles, with the context being shallow window dressing at best. Freed of the necessity for exposition, the game is able to focus on making the fights fun. It succeeds admirably. Using the Wii's "waggle" controls is a bit of a mixed bag, unfortunately. Rather than using a system more like Wii Sports except with explosions, it's obvious DBZ 2 was originally meant to be a GameCube game. While the waggle controls aren't bad, they are definitely gamepad controls shoehorned into predefined waggles. There are even options to use a GameCube controller instead of the Wiimote, or to use the Wiimote without the waggle.
Despite this, the game still manages to be more fun than a DBZ game should be. The hardest part about the controls is remembering how to perform the special moves and blasts that are required in order to win. That's where the game's major flaw becomes apparent. Special moves are the lifeblood of fighting games, but most will allow for the reflex-challenged like myself to make do in single player mode without performing all of the moves in quick succession in every fight. DBZ 2, however, does not. While one might win a fight or two on regular kicks, punches and throws, even on the easiest difficulty setting the game is brutally hard without using special moves. If your character isn't blowing fireballs out of his ass, he's probably going to be dickstomped on a regular basis. As a result, the game is really meant only for hardcore fighting game fans. Casual players will become frustrated all too quickly at their lack of progress.
The game has an impressive graphical style, using cel-shaded animation to give it the appearance of a 2D cartoon come into 3D life. All the characters look like their anime counterparts, the environments are stylistic and lush, and the terrain is partly destructible. One spectator of my game who is a DBZ fan commented that it looked and acted just like an episode of the cartoon. Voiceovers are rampant in the game, using the voices of the English version of the series on menus and during fights. The presentation is top-notch on all levels, though the voices on the menus will get irritating if the player is not a fan of the series.
DBZ 2 is a fun game, but not one that I would recommend for everyone. The learning curve is brutal for casual players. Fans of the series and fighting game aficionados should love the game, finding it well worth a full price purchase. Casual players should rent it, buy it used, or wait until it drops in price. I'd give the game an 7 out of 10 if I used numerical ratings, an 8 for fighting game fans.
Dragonball Z is an anime about fighting. That's all I can figure out from what little I've seen of it. It consists of overmuscled, over-exaggerated beings of all shapes and sizes flexing and screaming at each other for a half-hour, with the occasional explosion as someone uses a power no one has ever seen before, to the chagrin of his opponent. The screaming is often about some vague and barely decipherable explanation of one of the contestants' new powers, which is somehow a surprise and often catastrophic. I always imagine that these are the kinds of films shown to Malcolm McDowell's character in A Clockwork Orange, orgies of violence he was forced to watch through pried open eyelids. They certainly make me scream as if ocular rape had occurred. What kind of game is made from an anime about fighting? Luckily, it's a fighting game, and not some heartfelt Final Fantasy-esque angst roleplaying game.
As a fighting game, DBZ 2 is a hundred times better than the anime could hope to be. A narrative has to have context for the battles, while a fighting game is all about battles, with the context being shallow window dressing at best. Freed of the necessity for exposition, the game is able to focus on making the fights fun. It succeeds admirably. Using the Wii's "waggle" controls is a bit of a mixed bag, unfortunately. Rather than using a system more like Wii Sports except with explosions, it's obvious DBZ 2 was originally meant to be a GameCube game. While the waggle controls aren't bad, they are definitely gamepad controls shoehorned into predefined waggles. There are even options to use a GameCube controller instead of the Wiimote, or to use the Wiimote without the waggle.
Despite this, the game still manages to be more fun than a DBZ game should be. The hardest part about the controls is remembering how to perform the special moves and blasts that are required in order to win. That's where the game's major flaw becomes apparent. Special moves are the lifeblood of fighting games, but most will allow for the reflex-challenged like myself to make do in single player mode without performing all of the moves in quick succession in every fight. DBZ 2, however, does not. While one might win a fight or two on regular kicks, punches and throws, even on the easiest difficulty setting the game is brutally hard without using special moves. If your character isn't blowing fireballs out of his ass, he's probably going to be dickstomped on a regular basis. As a result, the game is really meant only for hardcore fighting game fans. Casual players will become frustrated all too quickly at their lack of progress.
The game has an impressive graphical style, using cel-shaded animation to give it the appearance of a 2D cartoon come into 3D life. All the characters look like their anime counterparts, the environments are stylistic and lush, and the terrain is partly destructible. One spectator of my game who is a DBZ fan commented that it looked and acted just like an episode of the cartoon. Voiceovers are rampant in the game, using the voices of the English version of the series on menus and during fights. The presentation is top-notch on all levels, though the voices on the menus will get irritating if the player is not a fan of the series.
DBZ 2 is a fun game, but not one that I would recommend for everyone. The learning curve is brutal for casual players. Fans of the series and fighting game aficionados should love the game, finding it well worth a full price purchase. Casual players should rent it, buy it used, or wait until it drops in price. I'd give the game an 7 out of 10 if I used numerical ratings, an 8 for fighting game fans.
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Whimpering for Vengeance: Far Cry:Vengeance (Wii) Review
Posted on
Thursday, July 05, 2007
by Gary A. Ballard
The term launch title is generally used in a derogatory manner to indicate the type of game typical of the launch of a new console. Other than a few stellar titles, most console launches are filled with their share of rushed ports from other platforms and simplistic licensed games based on recent popular animated movies. The insult launch title was made for drek like Happy Feet. But based on the fact that the Far Cry series had been successfully ported from its original PC platform to the other consoles, and that Far Cry: Vengeance for the Nintendo Wii wasn't meant to have a great deal of new content, one wouldn't think it could sink to the depths that a kids movie tie-in might. One would be wrong.
Far Cry: Vengeance (FC:V) for the Wii is a mixed bag, where the mixture consists of about 80% horse crap. FC:V didn't have to be as bad as it is. As I said, the game is mostly unchanged from previous versions, with a little new content thrown in. While the motion-sensing controls of the Wii are a new twist, the gameplay they add is so basic when compared to other FPS titles like Red Steel or Call of Duty 3 that the designers displayed little imagination. The Far Cry graphics engine, capable of rendering gorgeous vistas on the PC and other platforms, appears to have devolved three graphics generations. While I will certainly admit the Wii's graphics chip lacks the power of the Xbox 360 or the PS3, other launch titles have shown it perfectly capable of rendering exciting visuals. But what FC:V ends up with is a muddled, angular, badly-textured mess. Characters not only look angular, often it appears their bodies were put together using the most primitive shapes possible. GameCube games like Eternal Darkness absolutely sparkle when compared to FC:V.
Even worse than the artistic inadequacies, the technical aspects of FC:V are glaringly bad. Cutscenes rendered with the in-game engine are choppy and pixelated, as if they were thrown together the night before the game went to press. It's one thing if heavy action causes graphical slowdown (and in this game, that does occur), but when a pre-rendered, non-interactive cutscene can't even be displayed at 30 frames per second, someone should be looking for a new job. There's simply no excuse for that sort of garbage, launch title rush or not. The game compounds this series of errors by piling on bug after bug. After about an hour of play, the game froze on me, locking up and producing an irritating sound stutter that continued until I reset the system. After the second hour of play, my Wiimote lost sync with the system and could not reconnect, a problem which required multiple resets to remedy. Upon returning to the game, I discovered that my progress in the game had been completely wiped. Faced with replaying those two hours, I chose instead to the return the game to my rental service. Life is too short to be playing games that bitchslap you with little warning.
The most disappointing aspect of this comedy of errors is that the gameplay wasn't as bad as all that. While not up to the standards of Zelda, Red Steel or Call of Duty3, it was nevertheless a mildly entertaining game. Though linear to a fault, as a "shooter on rails" it was playable. Had the polish and presentation of a normal title been in any way present, one might even have been able to enjoy it despite it being standard shooter fare. But adding all the bugs and bad designs together with the uninspiring gameplay, one is left with a steaming pile of launch title. The game was blatantly underdone to make a launch window, rushed and improperly tested, built with a lazy indifference that's infuriating. It's obvious that other than Red Steel, Ubisoft had not placed its faith in the Wii making any sort of progress against the release of the PS3, and thus put out a few cursory titles for a quick buck. FC:V is currently on sale for $19.99, which is about $14.99 more than anyone should ever be asked to pay for it.
For its complete lack of anything worthwhile to recommend it, I give Far Cry: Vengeance 1 star, a star it only gets because its gameplay wasn't as atrocious as the rest of the package. Rent this game if you really have nothing else to play, but be prepared to take it back early.
Far Cry: Vengeance (FC:V) for the Wii is a mixed bag, where the mixture consists of about 80% horse crap. FC:V didn't have to be as bad as it is. As I said, the game is mostly unchanged from previous versions, with a little new content thrown in. While the motion-sensing controls of the Wii are a new twist, the gameplay they add is so basic when compared to other FPS titles like Red Steel or Call of Duty 3 that the designers displayed little imagination. The Far Cry graphics engine, capable of rendering gorgeous vistas on the PC and other platforms, appears to have devolved three graphics generations. While I will certainly admit the Wii's graphics chip lacks the power of the Xbox 360 or the PS3, other launch titles have shown it perfectly capable of rendering exciting visuals. But what FC:V ends up with is a muddled, angular, badly-textured mess. Characters not only look angular, often it appears their bodies were put together using the most primitive shapes possible. GameCube games like Eternal Darkness absolutely sparkle when compared to FC:V.
Even worse than the artistic inadequacies, the technical aspects of FC:V are glaringly bad. Cutscenes rendered with the in-game engine are choppy and pixelated, as if they were thrown together the night before the game went to press. It's one thing if heavy action causes graphical slowdown (and in this game, that does occur), but when a pre-rendered, non-interactive cutscene can't even be displayed at 30 frames per second, someone should be looking for a new job. There's simply no excuse for that sort of garbage, launch title rush or not. The game compounds this series of errors by piling on bug after bug. After about an hour of play, the game froze on me, locking up and producing an irritating sound stutter that continued until I reset the system. After the second hour of play, my Wiimote lost sync with the system and could not reconnect, a problem which required multiple resets to remedy. Upon returning to the game, I discovered that my progress in the game had been completely wiped. Faced with replaying those two hours, I chose instead to the return the game to my rental service. Life is too short to be playing games that bitchslap you with little warning.
The most disappointing aspect of this comedy of errors is that the gameplay wasn't as bad as all that. While not up to the standards of Zelda, Red Steel or Call of Duty3, it was nevertheless a mildly entertaining game. Though linear to a fault, as a "shooter on rails" it was playable. Had the polish and presentation of a normal title been in any way present, one might even have been able to enjoy it despite it being standard shooter fare. But adding all the bugs and bad designs together with the uninspiring gameplay, one is left with a steaming pile of launch title. The game was blatantly underdone to make a launch window, rushed and improperly tested, built with a lazy indifference that's infuriating. It's obvious that other than Red Steel, Ubisoft had not placed its faith in the Wii making any sort of progress against the release of the PS3, and thus put out a few cursory titles for a quick buck. FC:V is currently on sale for $19.99, which is about $14.99 more than anyone should ever be asked to pay for it.
For its complete lack of anything worthwhile to recommend it, I give Far Cry: Vengeance 1 star, a star it only gets because its gameplay wasn't as atrocious as the rest of the package. Rent this game if you really have nothing else to play, but be prepared to take it back early.
Labels: Video Games, Wii
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Need for Speed: Carbon (Wii) Review
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Friday, January 26, 2007
by Gary A. Ballard
The latest Need for Speed game from EA, subtitled Carbon, is a mixed bag of shininess, unnecessary cinematics and puzzling design decisions. The meat of the game, the actual driving simulation, is virtually identical to previous iterations of NFS games like Underground, but with a few tweaks and the Wii control scheme. I'm happy to say the Wii controls are successful, though not the resounding, innovative success I'd hope they would be.
Carbon takes the typical Need for Speed tuner car gameplay and tries to add a layer of strategic, story-driven RPG onto the old formula. Like a cross between an interactive Fast and the Furious and a territory-conquest game like the turn-based parts of the Total War series, Carbon casts the player in the role of tuner car racer, living fast and furious on the mean streets. At the beginning of the game, a series of cinematics tell the story of your avatar's past, in which he fled the racing scene with his boss's money, only to return to the city and a rather unwelcome greeting from the boss.
I must take a moment to go off on a tangent about the cinematics. The boss is played by Tahmoh Penikett, Helo of Battlestar Galactica fame, and other less notable actors fill in with satisfactory performances. However, their style of dress is giggle-inducing, their garb a cross between urban SS and a high school marching band's uniforms. Penikett's menace is completely diffused by the British redcoat ensemble some fashion designer saddled him with. However, filmed in Sin City-style green screen with soft lit, black and white with selective muted colors, the cinematics are lush despite their silliness.
Once the plotline is established, you are given a henchman with his own car, a car of your own, some money and a map of the city. Gangs vie for control of territory by winning races, and some territories are not available to the player until other races have been won. Each car can be tuned for performance and style, as well as each of your henchmen's cars. The henchman (called wingmen by the game) serve a purpose during some races, with each henchman having his own special ability such as blocker or scout. The wingman is a new addition to the gameplay not seen in previous NFS games. Unfortunately, I felt it really didn't add much to the gameplay other than often beating me at races; while it counted as a victory for the racing team, it offered reduced victory rewards.
The wingman was just one of the problems I had with the game, more specifically with the game's controls. The game offered five different control schemes, most with motion sensitivity. I played with the default, which uses the Wiimote turned sideways, tilting the controller up and down like a car's steering wheel. That worked well for the most part. There were times when I would turn the "wheel" so far to one side or the other to navigate a particularly nasty turn and the game would stop registering that the wheel was turning, auto-centering itself awkwardly. I can't say whether this was a problem with the Wiimote controls or just the way the game interpreted the movements, but it was frustrating. It didn't happen often enough to make me think it was a huge flaw, but it was something that would need to be taken into account.
The button controls are where the game's designers made some design decisions I do not agree with. When driving a car with manual shift, the Up and Down arrows on the D-pad are used for shifting, in conjunction with holding down the B-trigger button. This would work fine except that holding B and the Left D-pad was used for changing the camera. Without fail, almost anyone is going to change the camera accidentally while trying to steer. Doing so in the middle of a race is jarring and has caused me a number of wrecks. I'm not sure why the designers felt the need to make camera changes accessible in mid-race as opposed to just an option on a pause screen. It was the most annoying thing about the game's controls, hindering what would otherwise have been a flawed but enjoyable experience.
The decision to tack on a cheesy movie plot, wingmen and RTS-style territorial control to an otherwise decent racing/tuner sim was just as much of a hindrance. While I can see the thought behind such additions, in this case, they just really didn't add anything to the heart of the game, the racing. Perhaps they would have had I played the game past the initial five hours that I put into it, but I don't think so. Combined with the technical control decisions I highlighted above, they just caused me to send the rental disc back long before I would have without the problems. NFS: Carbon isn't a bad game, and one could do a lot worse. It's one of the games ported to the Wii that I feel would likely be a better game on another platform with a different controller, because of the way they used the Wii's controller. At best, the Wii version is worth a rental, but it's not likely to be a repeat rental.
Carbon takes the typical Need for Speed tuner car gameplay and tries to add a layer of strategic, story-driven RPG onto the old formula. Like a cross between an interactive Fast and the Furious and a territory-conquest game like the turn-based parts of the Total War series, Carbon casts the player in the role of tuner car racer, living fast and furious on the mean streets. At the beginning of the game, a series of cinematics tell the story of your avatar's past, in which he fled the racing scene with his boss's money, only to return to the city and a rather unwelcome greeting from the boss.
I must take a moment to go off on a tangent about the cinematics. The boss is played by Tahmoh Penikett, Helo of Battlestar Galactica fame, and other less notable actors fill in with satisfactory performances. However, their style of dress is giggle-inducing, their garb a cross between urban SS and a high school marching band's uniforms. Penikett's menace is completely diffused by the British redcoat ensemble some fashion designer saddled him with. However, filmed in Sin City-style green screen with soft lit, black and white with selective muted colors, the cinematics are lush despite their silliness.
Once the plotline is established, you are given a henchman with his own car, a car of your own, some money and a map of the city. Gangs vie for control of territory by winning races, and some territories are not available to the player until other races have been won. Each car can be tuned for performance and style, as well as each of your henchmen's cars. The henchman (called wingmen by the game) serve a purpose during some races, with each henchman having his own special ability such as blocker or scout. The wingman is a new addition to the gameplay not seen in previous NFS games. Unfortunately, I felt it really didn't add much to the gameplay other than often beating me at races; while it counted as a victory for the racing team, it offered reduced victory rewards.
The wingman was just one of the problems I had with the game, more specifically with the game's controls. The game offered five different control schemes, most with motion sensitivity. I played with the default, which uses the Wiimote turned sideways, tilting the controller up and down like a car's steering wheel. That worked well for the most part. There were times when I would turn the "wheel" so far to one side or the other to navigate a particularly nasty turn and the game would stop registering that the wheel was turning, auto-centering itself awkwardly. I can't say whether this was a problem with the Wiimote controls or just the way the game interpreted the movements, but it was frustrating. It didn't happen often enough to make me think it was a huge flaw, but it was something that would need to be taken into account.
The button controls are where the game's designers made some design decisions I do not agree with. When driving a car with manual shift, the Up and Down arrows on the D-pad are used for shifting, in conjunction with holding down the B-trigger button. This would work fine except that holding B and the Left D-pad was used for changing the camera. Without fail, almost anyone is going to change the camera accidentally while trying to steer. Doing so in the middle of a race is jarring and has caused me a number of wrecks. I'm not sure why the designers felt the need to make camera changes accessible in mid-race as opposed to just an option on a pause screen. It was the most annoying thing about the game's controls, hindering what would otherwise have been a flawed but enjoyable experience.
The decision to tack on a cheesy movie plot, wingmen and RTS-style territorial control to an otherwise decent racing/tuner sim was just as much of a hindrance. While I can see the thought behind such additions, in this case, they just really didn't add anything to the heart of the game, the racing. Perhaps they would have had I played the game past the initial five hours that I put into it, but I don't think so. Combined with the technical control decisions I highlighted above, they just caused me to send the rental disc back long before I would have without the problems. NFS: Carbon isn't a bad game, and one could do a lot worse. It's one of the games ported to the Wii that I feel would likely be a better game on another platform with a different controller, because of the way they used the Wii's controller. At best, the Wii version is worth a rental, but it's not likely to be a repeat rental.
Labels: Video Games, Wii
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posted by Gary A. Ballard @ 1:10 PM
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Playaction Controls: Madden NFL 07 (Wii) Review
Posted on
Friday, January 05, 2007
by Gary A. Ballard
It's been five years since I was what one might call a fan of the John Madden series of console football games. After buying 2001 and 2002 for the PC, there seemed to be glacial change from year to year in core gameplay mechanics. Having heard that the 2k series of football games were better, I tried them and said goodbye to Madden for what I thought was forever. The NFL 2k series of games were simply vastly superior to Madden where it counted, on the virtual field. Not only did the game look better, lacking Madden's signature Fatty McFattenstein out-of-proportion player models, it played better as well. When EA decided to shut down what had become sturdy competition in the football video game market by signing an exclusive licensing deal with the NFL, I vowed to boycott Madden for as long as I could hold out.
One year and an E3 video of Madden for the Wii later, my resolve failed me. Rather than being disappointed, I'm pleasantly surprised and satisfied with my purchase.
Madden NFL 07 for the Wii is first and foremost a Madden game. Anyone who has played previous versions of the game will recognize just about all of its trademark features, including the pork pie models mentioned above. The nuts and bolts of the Madden series really hasn't changed a great deal since 2002. Defenses both CPU and player still give up big pass plays, though run defense has improved. The soundtrack still contains way too much rap and alternapop from bands I've never heard of and never wanted to hear of. And just like EA's other football franchise game, Head Coach, the menu interface is still badly designed, with too much screen real estate engulfed by useless buttons while important things like play diagrams are shrunk to mouse anus size.
But if you are able to stomach the Madden formula of design, you'll find a pleasant football game. More importantly, you'll find a new control scheme thanks to the Wiimote/Nunchuk setup that elevates this game above its clones on other platforms. I've played this game on the X-Box and found it lackluster, much as I expected to. The Wii version is a cut above thanks to the motion-sensing control scheme.
Passing is more involving when your arm movement controls the power behind your delivery. Jukes and stiff arms are more satisfying with a flick of the nunchuk or Wiimote. The kicking game, a source of frustration and disappointment for me on traditional console controllers, is smooth on the Wii. Hold the Wiimote down and then bring it up in a motion pantomiming the leg's kicking motion, with the amount of power in the swing echoed in the kick and the deviations from a straight upward line providing hook or slice to the ball. The hardest part about the kicking game is getting the power right when not trying to put everything into a kick. Tackling requires you to push both controllers away from your body with various buttons used to add power, and additional pulls of the controllers towards your body makes your player attempt to strip the ball from the ball carrier. In pass coverage, raising your arms will attempt an interception while pushing your arms away swats the ball down.
The controls work. Not perfectly, mind you, but they give the game a measure of immersiveness that isn't there in the X-Box version. Defense is still a weak point, as moving a player with a thumbstick to the correct tackling position is imprecise; this isn't a measure of the Wii's controllers since I have the same problem on the X-Box. The Wiimote can be used as a pointing device on menus but I found this option to get in the way more than be helpful. Calling audibles, shifting linemen, sending players in motion or setting hot routes takes a bit of getting used to. In order to do any of these, you must first select the player with the Wiimote pointer, hit the A button and then perform a thumbstick or digital control pad movement to set it off. It's complicated at first, but as you learn the correct control pad movements, it gets easier.
Graphics and sound are both good without being spectacular, and each has its flaws. The stadium background graphics are very low-resolution, and it stands out in a big way during certain plays. The sound piped through the Wiimote is meant to add immersion, with calls of "HUT HUT!" being tossed out of it in the pre-snap. However, the game's normal sound channels also scream "HUT!" in the pre-snap and sometimes the two do not match, either in timing or even in verbiage. With a control scheme built on immersion, it breaks that immersion. The manual is atrocious even by console standards. It consists of about 6 pages of control diagrams or instructions on play, a few pages of credits, and a cover. It could certainly make the strategy guide useful, which is sold separately of course. EA has to pay back that ginormous license fee somehow.
One other complaint I have about the game, which applies equally to every single football game I've ever played, is the camera angles. While there are a number of camera angles to choose from, most of them aren't very good. All of the angles are shot from the offense's side of the ball, which puts the player on defense at an immediate disadvantage. I would like to see an option to set the camera for when the player is both on offense and defense. Let me set the camera in a defensive position when I'm defending, and then have it switch back to an offensive one when I have the ball. I've yet to figure out why no one has done this. NFL 2k4 and 2k5 allowed you to see from the defense's perspective but only in first-person mode, a gameplay mode I miss dearly.
This year's version has no online play or online stats updates, something I hope is added in next year's inevitable version. The game is a good start and with some interface changes, defensive changes and slight change to the art style, next year's version could be great. As it stands, 07 for the Wii is a worthy purchase for football fans that have no other option anyway. It beats the other versions in everything but graphical prowess and sound design.
One year and an E3 video of Madden for the Wii later, my resolve failed me. Rather than being disappointed, I'm pleasantly surprised and satisfied with my purchase.
Madden NFL 07 for the Wii is first and foremost a Madden game. Anyone who has played previous versions of the game will recognize just about all of its trademark features, including the pork pie models mentioned above. The nuts and bolts of the Madden series really hasn't changed a great deal since 2002. Defenses both CPU and player still give up big pass plays, though run defense has improved. The soundtrack still contains way too much rap and alternapop from bands I've never heard of and never wanted to hear of. And just like EA's other football franchise game, Head Coach, the menu interface is still badly designed, with too much screen real estate engulfed by useless buttons while important things like play diagrams are shrunk to mouse anus size.
But if you are able to stomach the Madden formula of design, you'll find a pleasant football game. More importantly, you'll find a new control scheme thanks to the Wiimote/Nunchuk setup that elevates this game above its clones on other platforms. I've played this game on the X-Box and found it lackluster, much as I expected to. The Wii version is a cut above thanks to the motion-sensing control scheme.
Passing is more involving when your arm movement controls the power behind your delivery. Jukes and stiff arms are more satisfying with a flick of the nunchuk or Wiimote. The kicking game, a source of frustration and disappointment for me on traditional console controllers, is smooth on the Wii. Hold the Wiimote down and then bring it up in a motion pantomiming the leg's kicking motion, with the amount of power in the swing echoed in the kick and the deviations from a straight upward line providing hook or slice to the ball. The hardest part about the kicking game is getting the power right when not trying to put everything into a kick. Tackling requires you to push both controllers away from your body with various buttons used to add power, and additional pulls of the controllers towards your body makes your player attempt to strip the ball from the ball carrier. In pass coverage, raising your arms will attempt an interception while pushing your arms away swats the ball down.
The controls work. Not perfectly, mind you, but they give the game a measure of immersiveness that isn't there in the X-Box version. Defense is still a weak point, as moving a player with a thumbstick to the correct tackling position is imprecise; this isn't a measure of the Wii's controllers since I have the same problem on the X-Box. The Wiimote can be used as a pointing device on menus but I found this option to get in the way more than be helpful. Calling audibles, shifting linemen, sending players in motion or setting hot routes takes a bit of getting used to. In order to do any of these, you must first select the player with the Wiimote pointer, hit the A button and then perform a thumbstick or digital control pad movement to set it off. It's complicated at first, but as you learn the correct control pad movements, it gets easier.
Graphics and sound are both good without being spectacular, and each has its flaws. The stadium background graphics are very low-resolution, and it stands out in a big way during certain plays. The sound piped through the Wiimote is meant to add immersion, with calls of "HUT HUT!" being tossed out of it in the pre-snap. However, the game's normal sound channels also scream "HUT!" in the pre-snap and sometimes the two do not match, either in timing or even in verbiage. With a control scheme built on immersion, it breaks that immersion. The manual is atrocious even by console standards. It consists of about 6 pages of control diagrams or instructions on play, a few pages of credits, and a cover. It could certainly make the strategy guide useful, which is sold separately of course. EA has to pay back that ginormous license fee somehow.
One other complaint I have about the game, which applies equally to every single football game I've ever played, is the camera angles. While there are a number of camera angles to choose from, most of them aren't very good. All of the angles are shot from the offense's side of the ball, which puts the player on defense at an immediate disadvantage. I would like to see an option to set the camera for when the player is both on offense and defense. Let me set the camera in a defensive position when I'm defending, and then have it switch back to an offensive one when I have the ball. I've yet to figure out why no one has done this. NFL 2k4 and 2k5 allowed you to see from the defense's perspective but only in first-person mode, a gameplay mode I miss dearly.
This year's version has no online play or online stats updates, something I hope is added in next year's inevitable version. The game is a good start and with some interface changes, defensive changes and slight change to the art style, next year's version could be great. As it stands, 07 for the Wii is a worthy purchase for football fans that have no other option anyway. It beats the other versions in everything but graphical prowess and sound design.
Labels: NFL, Sports, Video Games, Wii
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posted by Gary A. Ballard @ 10:38 AM
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Ultimately Disappointing: Marvel Ultimate Alliance (Wii) Review
Posted on
Wednesday, December 27, 2006
by Gary A. Ballard
Some games should be a no-brainer, a game with all the right components in place to make for a perfect game, and yet despite all these components, the game is ultimately a disappointment. Such a game is Marvel Ultimate Alliance for the Nintendo Wii. Developed by Raven Software, MUA is a sequel of sorts to the popular X-Men Legends series of games. I enjoyed the first X-Men game a great deal, and as such was positive I would enjoy MUA even more. Unfortunately, Ultimate Alliance fell well short of my expectations in all the places I never expected it to.
Take the gameplay from the X-Men Legends games, add a roster of 20 playable Marvel characters including my favorite Daredevil, as well as other fan favorites like Captain America, Spider-Man, Ms. Marvel, Luke Cage and Moon Knight and wrap it around a Wiimote control scheme and you have a sure-fire hit, right? Yet, Ultimate Alliance doesn't seem to pay off any of the parts that made the X-Men series so good.
For one thing, the Wiimote control scheme, rather than being immersive and involving feels like a tacked-on afterthought. Just as PC gamers complain of their interfaces being dumbed-down by console ports, Wii users should be equally critical of cross-platform ports being shoehorned onto the Wii. The use of motion-sensing controls never feels natural, nor like anything other than pre-determined flailing substituting for button-mashing. In addition, the controls are not nearly as responsive as they need to be for the number of actions the player must perform during each battle. Each character has multiple normal attacks, as well as a growing array of special powers which must be used. On a normal console controller, each power is a button; on the Wii, special powers are performed by a particular type of motion performed while holding down the B trigger. But changing the special power being used requires toggling the C button while holding the B trigger and then performing the motion. Why when each power is a separate motion must the player toggle powers? In all, the control scheme seems rushed for a launch release and not well-thought out.
The graphics are a mixed bag. Powers, explosions and other particle effects are vibrant and colorful, but many of the background textures are so detailed that they fight with the action going on in the foreground. It's as if the developers took the same hi-res textures from the Hi-Def 360 versions and compressed them for standard resolutions without considering the visual effect. The character graphics and cinematics are well-done but often lost in the visual orgy of high-detail textures.
One of the hallmarks of the X-Men Legends series was a strong story with equally strong voice-acting. Ultimate Alliance has the voice acting, but the story is weak. Not only does the story ignore all Marvel continuity in order to bring together all the game's villains, it does so without even a word of explanation. It might be acceptable if the matchups weren't so bizzare. Early in the game, the Radioactive Man and the Winter Soldier are paired against the heroes, a pairing which could never happen. But aside from that Internet geek pedantry, the story's dialogue is awful. I don't mean it's normal comic book cheesy, I mean it borders on Dragonball Z-level idiocy. Having it spoke well just makes it more obvious. While Legends was cheesy, it never made me cringe like some of the dialogue in Ultimate Alliance.
The best part of the game is the character progression scheme. Each character has a ton of powers, gear and stats to keep track of and upgrade, and each has multiple costumes based on different Marvel comics publications. Each costume has its own set of character modifiers that can be purchased with coins that drop in the game. But unfortunately, the leveling scheme is driven by an MMOG-style grind through bland, uninspired levels of mob-whacking. The characters plow through tunnel after hallway after tunnel of bad guys that have very little to do with superhero stories and more to do with fantasy dungeon-hacking. The game's insistence on quick action button-mashing (or in this case, Wii-flapping) is ultimately a flaw, making the game feel less like a superhero adventure than a reskinned Dungeons and Dragons module. Were I to recreate the series, I'd go back to old school turn-based combat with less opponents and more tactical gameplay. That would be a different game, of course, but a better one.
In all, the game isn't terrible. It just doesn't live up to its predecessors. Not only does it not innovate on the old gameplay, it straps on a Wiimote control scheme without taking advantage of the Wii's strengths. I'd considered playing this on the X-Box for more natural controls, but the cheesy dialogue and bland level design has convinced me it wouldn't be worth the effort. On a five point scale, I'd give Marvel Ultimate Alliance a 2.5. My hope is that future cross-platform ports are given enough development time to really leverage the Wii's motion-sensing strengths rather than just take the place of button-mashing.
Take the gameplay from the X-Men Legends games, add a roster of 20 playable Marvel characters including my favorite Daredevil, as well as other fan favorites like Captain America, Spider-Man, Ms. Marvel, Luke Cage and Moon Knight and wrap it around a Wiimote control scheme and you have a sure-fire hit, right? Yet, Ultimate Alliance doesn't seem to pay off any of the parts that made the X-Men series so good.
For one thing, the Wiimote control scheme, rather than being immersive and involving feels like a tacked-on afterthought. Just as PC gamers complain of their interfaces being dumbed-down by console ports, Wii users should be equally critical of cross-platform ports being shoehorned onto the Wii. The use of motion-sensing controls never feels natural, nor like anything other than pre-determined flailing substituting for button-mashing. In addition, the controls are not nearly as responsive as they need to be for the number of actions the player must perform during each battle. Each character has multiple normal attacks, as well as a growing array of special powers which must be used. On a normal console controller, each power is a button; on the Wii, special powers are performed by a particular type of motion performed while holding down the B trigger. But changing the special power being used requires toggling the C button while holding the B trigger and then performing the motion. Why when each power is a separate motion must the player toggle powers? In all, the control scheme seems rushed for a launch release and not well-thought out.
The graphics are a mixed bag. Powers, explosions and other particle effects are vibrant and colorful, but many of the background textures are so detailed that they fight with the action going on in the foreground. It's as if the developers took the same hi-res textures from the Hi-Def 360 versions and compressed them for standard resolutions without considering the visual effect. The character graphics and cinematics are well-done but often lost in the visual orgy of high-detail textures.
One of the hallmarks of the X-Men Legends series was a strong story with equally strong voice-acting. Ultimate Alliance has the voice acting, but the story is weak. Not only does the story ignore all Marvel continuity in order to bring together all the game's villains, it does so without even a word of explanation. It might be acceptable if the matchups weren't so bizzare. Early in the game, the Radioactive Man and the Winter Soldier are paired against the heroes, a pairing which could never happen. But aside from that Internet geek pedantry, the story's dialogue is awful. I don't mean it's normal comic book cheesy, I mean it borders on Dragonball Z-level idiocy. Having it spoke well just makes it more obvious. While Legends was cheesy, it never made me cringe like some of the dialogue in Ultimate Alliance.
The best part of the game is the character progression scheme. Each character has a ton of powers, gear and stats to keep track of and upgrade, and each has multiple costumes based on different Marvel comics publications. Each costume has its own set of character modifiers that can be purchased with coins that drop in the game. But unfortunately, the leveling scheme is driven by an MMOG-style grind through bland, uninspired levels of mob-whacking. The characters plow through tunnel after hallway after tunnel of bad guys that have very little to do with superhero stories and more to do with fantasy dungeon-hacking. The game's insistence on quick action button-mashing (or in this case, Wii-flapping) is ultimately a flaw, making the game feel less like a superhero adventure than a reskinned Dungeons and Dragons module. Were I to recreate the series, I'd go back to old school turn-based combat with less opponents and more tactical gameplay. That would be a different game, of course, but a better one.
In all, the game isn't terrible. It just doesn't live up to its predecessors. Not only does it not innovate on the old gameplay, it straps on a Wiimote control scheme without taking advantage of the Wii's strengths. I'd considered playing this on the X-Box for more natural controls, but the cheesy dialogue and bland level design has convinced me it wouldn't be worth the effort. On a five point scale, I'd give Marvel Ultimate Alliance a 2.5. My hope is that future cross-platform ports are given enough development time to really leverage the Wii's motion-sensing strengths rather than just take the place of button-mashing.
Labels: Comics, Video Games, Wii
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posted by Gary A. Ballard @ 12:06 PM
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Nintendo Gets HALF!
Posted on
Friday, December 08, 2006
by Gary A. Ballard
NPD has released sales figures for video game hardware for the month of November 2006. The news is pretty sweet if you happen to be Nintendo, not so much for anyone else. You see, over half of the hardware sold last month was a Nintendo.
From the press release:
That's some seriously strong mojo. The best news for Nintendo out of all that is the average of two additional games per system. Though they make some profit on the hardware, the real money is in the sales of games, whether first-party or third. Ninetendo employees should get a huge Christmas bonus this year.
From the press release:
According to independent sales data from the NPD Group, Nintendo sold 55
percent of all video game systems in November, led by the launch of the Wii™
home system and the incredible continuing success of the Nintendo DS™
portable.In only the first seven days of availability after its Nov. 19 launch, Wii
sold nearly half a million systems in the United States alone (as reported
previously by Nintendo, total sales of Wii in the Americas reached 600,000 in
its first eight days of availability). Despite spot shortages in some locations,
well more than a million Wii systems will be available in the United States by
the end of the year.While Wii sold through at a rate of more than 70,000 a day for the seven days represented in the data (substantially higher than any other game device), November’s two top sellers of any type were the Nintendo DS, at almost 920,000 units, and Game Boy® Advance, with nearly 642,000 portables sold. With Wii and Nintendo GameCube™ totals included, Nintendo sold through more than 2.1 million of the 3.9 million systems purchased for the month.
The data also reveals that the Wii title The Legend of Zelda®: Twilight Princess achieved sales of 412,000, representing 87 percent of all Wii purchasers, the highest industry rate of sale for any launch title since introduction of Super Mario® 64 with the Nintendo® 64 a decade ago.
In addition, despite the inclusion of Wii Sports software with every system sale, Wii buyers also purchased an average of two additional games, compared to approximately one game per system for the installed bases of either competing new home system.
That's some seriously strong mojo. The best news for Nintendo out of all that is the average of two additional games per system. Though they make some profit on the hardware, the real money is in the sales of games, whether first-party or third. Ninetendo employees should get a huge Christmas bonus this year.
Labels: Video Games, Wii
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posted by Gary A. Ballard @ 1:33 PM
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First Impression: Call of Duty 3 (Wii)
Posted on
Thursday, December 07, 2006
by Gary A. Ballard
The Nintendo Wii is made for first-person shooters. I can come to no other conclusions. While there are certainly flaws to the paradigm of using the Wiimote as a shooting device, it makes console shooters playable to the mouse and keyboard brigade members such as me. My latest foray into Wii shooting territory is Activision's Call of Duty 3, a WWII-genre cinematic shooter.
Those familiar with the Call of Duty or Medal of Honor franchises will recognize the type of game. Rather than being a run-and-gun affair such as Unreal Tournament, both series are known for being heavily scripted linear shooters. The main selling point is their cinematic experience, which translates into their attempts to recreate the sights, sounds and feelings evoked by the Normandy landing scene of Saving Private Ryan, as well as that movie's soldier interaction. Call of Duty 3 does so quite well. The battlefield is littered with debris, cover is plentiful and necessary, bullets whiz by constantly tearing up dirt and concrete all around the player, tanks rumble back and forth and the whole scene is generally a chaotic experience of which your character is a participant. The player doesn't drive the story so much as push it along. The core design philosophy does a good job at immersing the player in his role as a soldier as opposed to the typical shooter mentality of individual soldier as walking death god.
My impressions here are based off of my first two hours of play. On normal difficulty with a not insignificant number of deaths, that equates to about two full missions. The most impressive factor of the game's design has got to be the sound, and that's something I've seen on every Wii title I've played. From Zelda to Red Steel to Call of Duty, the sound is crisp, clear and rich. CoD3's sound design is particularly immersive, with its impressive collection of bullets, explosions and German curses. The controls are responsive, much more so than analog sticks would be for shooters. Just based on the control scheme alone, I'd suggest that anyone wanting to play CoD3 should play it on the Wii or the PC, unless you really really like analog sticks with shooters. The difference really is amazing.
The Wii has gotten knocked a good bit for having a "last-gen" graphics chip, and I'm sure many of the reviews I've seen that have given good Wii games lower scores are judging their graphics against PS3 and 360 Hi-Def graphics. That's an unfair comparison. CoD3 on the Wii has more than enough graphic gusto. It might not be as visually stunning as the 360 version of the game, but it's graphics, especially character graphics, are pretty spectacular. The game's color palette is somewhat muted, which is to be expected in a Europeon-based WWII shooter. That actually serves a gameplay function as well, as many of the German uniforms use camouflage and can thus be harder to distinguish among the rubble and mud and grass, an artistic choice that also befits the genre.
The game is one with enough polish and fun to be among the top launch titles on the system. My first impression is that it's a title worth buying or renting, depending on how much you want to spend on one single-player game. I'll update my thoughts as I make my way through the game.
Those familiar with the Call of Duty or Medal of Honor franchises will recognize the type of game. Rather than being a run-and-gun affair such as Unreal Tournament, both series are known for being heavily scripted linear shooters. The main selling point is their cinematic experience, which translates into their attempts to recreate the sights, sounds and feelings evoked by the Normandy landing scene of Saving Private Ryan, as well as that movie's soldier interaction. Call of Duty 3 does so quite well. The battlefield is littered with debris, cover is plentiful and necessary, bullets whiz by constantly tearing up dirt and concrete all around the player, tanks rumble back and forth and the whole scene is generally a chaotic experience of which your character is a participant. The player doesn't drive the story so much as push it along. The core design philosophy does a good job at immersing the player in his role as a soldier as opposed to the typical shooter mentality of individual soldier as walking death god.
My impressions here are based off of my first two hours of play. On normal difficulty with a not insignificant number of deaths, that equates to about two full missions. The most impressive factor of the game's design has got to be the sound, and that's something I've seen on every Wii title I've played. From Zelda to Red Steel to Call of Duty, the sound is crisp, clear and rich. CoD3's sound design is particularly immersive, with its impressive collection of bullets, explosions and German curses. The controls are responsive, much more so than analog sticks would be for shooters. Just based on the control scheme alone, I'd suggest that anyone wanting to play CoD3 should play it on the Wii or the PC, unless you really really like analog sticks with shooters. The difference really is amazing.
The Wii has gotten knocked a good bit for having a "last-gen" graphics chip, and I'm sure many of the reviews I've seen that have given good Wii games lower scores are judging their graphics against PS3 and 360 Hi-Def graphics. That's an unfair comparison. CoD3 on the Wii has more than enough graphic gusto. It might not be as visually stunning as the 360 version of the game, but it's graphics, especially character graphics, are pretty spectacular. The game's color palette is somewhat muted, which is to be expected in a Europeon-based WWII shooter. That actually serves a gameplay function as well, as many of the German uniforms use camouflage and can thus be harder to distinguish among the rubble and mud and grass, an artistic choice that also befits the genre.
The game is one with enough polish and fun to be among the top launch titles on the system. My first impression is that it's a title worth buying or renting, depending on how much you want to spend on one single-player game. I'll update my thoughts as I make my way through the game.
Labels: Video Games, Wii
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posted by Gary A. Ballard @ 1:14 PM
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Finalized!! Review: Red Steel (Wii)
Posted on
Wednesday, November 22, 2006
by Gary A. Ballard
The first game I saw in the Wii pre-release hype that made me excited about the system was Red Steel. The shooting part of the game was certainly interesting, though not unique, but it was the swordfighting sequences that really grabbed me from the word go. Troubling reports from various media outlets about the game's mediocrity worried me, but it was still the first game I wanted to rent when the Wii was released. And after Zelda and Wii Sports, it was the first game I played even though I have Call of Duty 3 from Gameznflix as well. And since I received it on Monday, it's the game I've played first when I've gotten time at the console.
Red Steel is a first-person shooter with a Hong Kong action movie theme. That theme is stamped all over the game, so thick that it practically smells of fried rice and hibachi shrimp. The menus are all rendered as neon signs with Japanese characters, lit up like a pachinko machine. After a quick cinematic tutorial on using the pointer which also serves as a calibration for the pointer's sensitivity, you are thrust into the story. Your name is Scott and you're about to meet your fiancée Miyu's father, a Japanese businessman named Mr. Sato. While waiting to be allowed in to see your future father-in-law, you are caught in an assassination attempt by a horde of waiters with Uzi's. The action starts fast and furious and doesn't let up for more than a second or two. You have to rescue Mr. Sato, find Miyu and get out of the hotel before the waiter army puts too many caps in your ass. At certain points, you are treated to cutscenes of two types. There are the obligatory "in-engine" cutscenes and more stylistic comic book style cutscenes, with dialogue spoken over moving panels of comic art.
The story is thin, of course. If anything, I should say that the whole package reminds me of playing through one of John Woo's Hong Kong movies, like The Killer or Hard-Boiled. The characters are one-dimensional archetypes, the situations meant to drive the character from one fantastic blow-up set piece to the next. While neither high art nor cinema, for a fan of that genre of action movie, this game is a brilliant homage. The sound is particularly good. The Wiimote is used for reloading sounds as well as sword slashes. During gunfights, bullets whizz around you and there's always glass to be shot up with an amazingly engrossing crash. Explosions are meaty and bright, guns are booming and the music score is a driving beat that entertains without getting in the way.
Many of the reviews I've read claim the Red Steel controls are weak. I disagree. While they could be a bit more precise, they are certainly acceptable to me, much more so than this game would be with analog stick aiming. I've only two complaints about the use of the Wiimote, one of which is just inherent in this control scheme. Unlike a mouse, the Wiimote doesn't center automatically; that is if the Wiimote is pointing to the edge of the screen or to the side, it can keep going on and on, throwing your viewpoint completely out of whack. This doesn't tend to happen during fights, of course, because you are constantly aiming at your victims. This only requires you to be a bit more careful about your resting position in non-action scenes. The other complaint is about the game's zoom feature. Using the Wiimote, you can hold down the "A" button to lock your camera on something, and then push the Wiimote forwards to zoom in, or pull backwards to zoom out. This motion doesn't feel quite natural, especially if you either aren't holding the Wiimote away from your body or if you are holding it on your knees like I do. It's a minor complaint, however, not really detracting all that much from the action.
The gameplay mechanic that hooked me on this game was the swordfighting. While I'm normally sitting down for the shooting sections, when a swordfight happens, I'm on my feet. I'm quite sure I look like a complete tool swinging the Wiimote around, but I care not. In my opinion, the swordfighting adds a visceral dimension to the game that even the joy of shooting a Yakuza gangster directly in the face with a shotgun doesn't have. Don't get me wrong, I love the shooting part, and think the game is worthwhile on that alone. But the swordfighting scenes are what really make this a homerun game. Yes, it's a simplistic approach. The sword doesn't emulate every single movement you make, instead slotting your movements into a series of canned slashes and parries. But it's still great fun, in my opinion, and a welcome change of pace from the run-and-gun areas of the game.
The game isn't perfect. Some of the characters have really bad, stereotypical accents, bordering on the insulting. Distant enemies can be hard to see, which is as much a function of my terrible eyesight as any fault of the game. The menu system is a bit confusing at first, requiring dragging icons instead of just clicking on them. Its faults do not outweigh the fun I've had with it, however. Other reviews may give you reason to doubt the game, and if so, rent it before plopping down $50 for a maybe game, or wait and buy it used.
If my opinion changes as I get further into it, I'll post about it. But for now, I'm enjoying it more than any of the other Wii games I've tried so far.
UPDATE: I'm now about 10 hours (30%) into the game. It definitely has a few warts. I've found a few clipping issues such as guns being stuck through walls. About four or five hours into the story, there's a particular branch of the story that requires you to follow one specific path. If you manage to find a way around that path, which I found by accident quite easily, the story won't advance until you hit a later script. I found myself tasked with saving my woman, but once I reached her, she just ignored me because I'd not run over the script trigger spot. It wasn't a game killer, as there is another trigger spot later on that advances the story.
The sword fighting gets better. After certain points in the story, you learn new skills such as special sword moves. These give a bit of variety to later melee encounters. The story also branches, giving you the option to follow the linear story in the order you choose. Finally, you gain the ability to "focus" which is akin to bullet-time slow motion. With this, you can disarm opponents and target specific enemies. If one of those enemies is a leader, taking him out can cause the others to become confused, ceasing their attacks.
One of the stranger gameplay mechanics is that of your health. At most times, your character can take about three or four shots before death. But rather than following typical shooter rules and providing some form of health powerup, your character can recover full health just by staying out of the line of fire for a few seconds. At first, I was taken aback by this mechanic, but the more I think about it, the more I feel it fits the genre. It reminds me of the main characters in Hong Kong action movies; they get shot, wince in pain and duck behind cover, and twenty seconds later, they are off again like nothing ever happened. It's one of those mechanics that may drive traditional shooter fans nuts.
Despite its aforementioned flaws, I am still enjoying the game. I don't think everyone would, and I stand behind the recommendation that you try it before you buy it for full price. Were I one to hand out numerical scores, I'd put the game overall somewhere between a 7.5 and an 8.5, depending on whether you are a huge fan of Hong Kong style action or not. It isn't a must-buy, but I've certainly played it more than Zelda because of my affinity for the genre.
UPDATE: I finished the game. Or more correctly, I made it through the storyline. The game actually has two endings, one the easy ending and another more difficult to achive ending. I made it through the easy ending, which involves a swordfight that you win not by killing your opponent but by breaking his sword. Winning the fight gets you one ending, losing gets you another. The ending was a bit abrupt. It tied up most of the loose ends about the story, but felt rushed. It doesn't help that you get one small set of cinematics and a "You have complete Red Steel" message before being shown the very long credits.
Overall, I stand by my estimation that the game deserves about a 7.5 - 8.0 rating. The short ending cuts it from a possible 8.5. It has multiplayer, but I never tried it since it is only splitscreen. The replay value of the game is very small. Your progress is marked in percentage points, but in order to get 100% (or more) you must complete the game on hardest difficulty and do everything right. I'm sure the game would lose its lustre, at least to me, before I could complete that lofty goal. And with no indication that such an achievement will have tangible rewards a la Resident Evil 4, replay value is almost nil. I ended up with approximately 10.5 hours of gameplay and my progress stopped at around 77%. I would suggest the game is a great rental or worthy of a half-price purchase unless you just have money to burn.
Red Steel is a first-person shooter with a Hong Kong action movie theme. That theme is stamped all over the game, so thick that it practically smells of fried rice and hibachi shrimp. The menus are all rendered as neon signs with Japanese characters, lit up like a pachinko machine. After a quick cinematic tutorial on using the pointer which also serves as a calibration for the pointer's sensitivity, you are thrust into the story. Your name is Scott and you're about to meet your fiancée Miyu's father, a Japanese businessman named Mr. Sato. While waiting to be allowed in to see your future father-in-law, you are caught in an assassination attempt by a horde of waiters with Uzi's. The action starts fast and furious and doesn't let up for more than a second or two. You have to rescue Mr. Sato, find Miyu and get out of the hotel before the waiter army puts too many caps in your ass. At certain points, you are treated to cutscenes of two types. There are the obligatory "in-engine" cutscenes and more stylistic comic book style cutscenes, with dialogue spoken over moving panels of comic art.
The story is thin, of course. If anything, I should say that the whole package reminds me of playing through one of John Woo's Hong Kong movies, like The Killer or Hard-Boiled. The characters are one-dimensional archetypes, the situations meant to drive the character from one fantastic blow-up set piece to the next. While neither high art nor cinema, for a fan of that genre of action movie, this game is a brilliant homage. The sound is particularly good. The Wiimote is used for reloading sounds as well as sword slashes. During gunfights, bullets whizz around you and there's always glass to be shot up with an amazingly engrossing crash. Explosions are meaty and bright, guns are booming and the music score is a driving beat that entertains without getting in the way.
Many of the reviews I've read claim the Red Steel controls are weak. I disagree. While they could be a bit more precise, they are certainly acceptable to me, much more so than this game would be with analog stick aiming. I've only two complaints about the use of the Wiimote, one of which is just inherent in this control scheme. Unlike a mouse, the Wiimote doesn't center automatically; that is if the Wiimote is pointing to the edge of the screen or to the side, it can keep going on and on, throwing your viewpoint completely out of whack. This doesn't tend to happen during fights, of course, because you are constantly aiming at your victims. This only requires you to be a bit more careful about your resting position in non-action scenes. The other complaint is about the game's zoom feature. Using the Wiimote, you can hold down the "A" button to lock your camera on something, and then push the Wiimote forwards to zoom in, or pull backwards to zoom out. This motion doesn't feel quite natural, especially if you either aren't holding the Wiimote away from your body or if you are holding it on your knees like I do. It's a minor complaint, however, not really detracting all that much from the action.
The gameplay mechanic that hooked me on this game was the swordfighting. While I'm normally sitting down for the shooting sections, when a swordfight happens, I'm on my feet. I'm quite sure I look like a complete tool swinging the Wiimote around, but I care not. In my opinion, the swordfighting adds a visceral dimension to the game that even the joy of shooting a Yakuza gangster directly in the face with a shotgun doesn't have. Don't get me wrong, I love the shooting part, and think the game is worthwhile on that alone. But the swordfighting scenes are what really make this a homerun game. Yes, it's a simplistic approach. The sword doesn't emulate every single movement you make, instead slotting your movements into a series of canned slashes and parries. But it's still great fun, in my opinion, and a welcome change of pace from the run-and-gun areas of the game.
The game isn't perfect. Some of the characters have really bad, stereotypical accents, bordering on the insulting. Distant enemies can be hard to see, which is as much a function of my terrible eyesight as any fault of the game. The menu system is a bit confusing at first, requiring dragging icons instead of just clicking on them. Its faults do not outweigh the fun I've had with it, however. Other reviews may give you reason to doubt the game, and if so, rent it before plopping down $50 for a maybe game, or wait and buy it used.
If my opinion changes as I get further into it, I'll post about it. But for now, I'm enjoying it more than any of the other Wii games I've tried so far.
UPDATE: I'm now about 10 hours (30%) into the game. It definitely has a few warts. I've found a few clipping issues such as guns being stuck through walls. About four or five hours into the story, there's a particular branch of the story that requires you to follow one specific path. If you manage to find a way around that path, which I found by accident quite easily, the story won't advance until you hit a later script. I found myself tasked with saving my woman, but once I reached her, she just ignored me because I'd not run over the script trigger spot. It wasn't a game killer, as there is another trigger spot later on that advances the story.
The sword fighting gets better. After certain points in the story, you learn new skills such as special sword moves. These give a bit of variety to later melee encounters. The story also branches, giving you the option to follow the linear story in the order you choose. Finally, you gain the ability to "focus" which is akin to bullet-time slow motion. With this, you can disarm opponents and target specific enemies. If one of those enemies is a leader, taking him out can cause the others to become confused, ceasing their attacks.
One of the stranger gameplay mechanics is that of your health. At most times, your character can take about three or four shots before death. But rather than following typical shooter rules and providing some form of health powerup, your character can recover full health just by staying out of the line of fire for a few seconds. At first, I was taken aback by this mechanic, but the more I think about it, the more I feel it fits the genre. It reminds me of the main characters in Hong Kong action movies; they get shot, wince in pain and duck behind cover, and twenty seconds later, they are off again like nothing ever happened. It's one of those mechanics that may drive traditional shooter fans nuts.
Despite its aforementioned flaws, I am still enjoying the game. I don't think everyone would, and I stand behind the recommendation that you try it before you buy it for full price. Were I one to hand out numerical scores, I'd put the game overall somewhere between a 7.5 and an 8.5, depending on whether you are a huge fan of Hong Kong style action or not. It isn't a must-buy, but I've certainly played it more than Zelda because of my affinity for the genre.
UPDATE: I finished the game. Or more correctly, I made it through the storyline. The game actually has two endings, one the easy ending and another more difficult to achive ending. I made it through the easy ending, which involves a swordfight that you win not by killing your opponent but by breaking his sword. Winning the fight gets you one ending, losing gets you another. The ending was a bit abrupt. It tied up most of the loose ends about the story, but felt rushed. It doesn't help that you get one small set of cinematics and a "You have complete Red Steel" message before being shown the very long credits.
Overall, I stand by my estimation that the game deserves about a 7.5 - 8.0 rating. The short ending cuts it from a possible 8.5. It has multiplayer, but I never tried it since it is only splitscreen. The replay value of the game is very small. Your progress is marked in percentage points, but in order to get 100% (or more) you must complete the game on hardest difficulty and do everything right. I'm sure the game would lose its lustre, at least to me, before I could complete that lofty goal. And with no indication that such an achievement will have tangible rewards a la Resident Evil 4, replay value is almost nil. I ended up with approximately 10.5 hours of gameplay and my progress stopped at around 77%. I would suggest the game is a great rental or worthy of a half-price purchase unless you just have money to burn.
Labels: Video Games, Wii
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posted by Gary A. Ballard @ 11:29 AM
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