Hardcore gamers feel the Wii and its success might mean the death of HD gaming. With the Wii’s lower development costs and higher user base (as of writing this, there are more Wiifit owners than PS3 owners in Japan), the system is starting to attract a lot more attention from publishers and developers, possibly at the cost of 360/PS3 focused titles. Core gamers fear the Wii the same way PC gamers feared the original Xbox would tempt the ranks of PC developers. Today, we answer some common questions from hardcore gamers.
Why are there so many crappy minigame compilations on the Wii?
Publishers, like hardcore gamers, had their attention focused squarely on the Xbox 360 and the PS3 rather than the Wii. With the PS2 being such a juggernaut last generation, publishers thought Sony was bound to pull a hat trick (rather than pull a hamstring) and concentrated on PS3 with Wii an afterthought. After the Gamecube, wouldn’t you have written off Nintendo? Minigame compilations and PS2 ports seemed to be the easiest way to release titles on the Wii.
When will we see hardcore games on the Wii?
Super Mario Galaxy was released in 2007 and was critically well received. It was outsold by critically reviled Mario and Sonic at the Olympics. Metroid Prime 3: Corruption was outsold by anything that you hate. No More Heroes, Zack and Wiki, Mad World and Boom Blox sold far less than Wii-Music. So the answer is, they won’t.
Is the Wii Gay?
No. The Wii is not gay. It just has more than just shooters, survival horror and racing games.
No seriously, is it gay?
No
Why do Wii games look blurry on my 1080p Bravia LCD HDTV?
This old chestnut. Your Wii looks blurry because every Sony HDTV features a Digital Signal Processing chip that can add defocus effect when it detects a Wii is connected. It automatically applies the filter so that Wii games look like a Vaseline commercial.
Dude?
Is that a question? Seriously. Is that a question?
Even though the Wii is super successful, why is Nintendo re-releasing GameCube games such as Pikmin, Metroid and Mario Tennis on Wii discs where the only update is so the titles can be controlled by a Wiimote nunchuck combo? Have they given up on making games?
That’s really two questions. The answer to the first is they are lazy and like money and this shit sells like a whore who gives away 25% off coupons in those free newspapers they give away in the supermarket. Er, I forgot the second question.
I said, “Has Nintendo given up on making games?”
Yes. Yes, they have.
A Wii game on the Focus Test. Who’d have thunk it? Its incontheivable.
So someone bought my parents wii-fucking-fit. Truth be told, they kinda need it. But I don’t need to be tech support.
Like thousands of older folk on Christmas, they turned to their tech-savvy kids to set up their new Wii and show them how to use their balance boards. It is of course a fun distraction for actual gamers- for a short time- and far more fun than assembling a barbecue or a lamp. But it’s a lot of money for something I know will be set aside very shortly. My parents aren’t particularly interested in technology so their interest in Wiifit is more down the fact is an excercise gadget.
I found the balance board games to be the most fun, heading a football whilst avoiding shoes and panda heads. Running with a wiimote is pretty cool but overall this isn’t going to make you go down a shirt size. It will if you keep up with it, the same way WoW will make you fat as you head towards 80. For the oldies who do keep up their Wiifit regimen, it will suck them in just as much as a MMORPG will to a Korean student.
Depending on where you are, its Christmas over the new few days. If not that, then your celebrating something so have a good time and play some games with your family. They may have just gotten a band new Wii and will expect to play Wii Sport with you. You might as well do this as it is fun and if you have more than basic gaming skills, you will pwn granny. “You’re going down, bitch!”
So after they’ve played Wii sport and you hook up the Wii Fit for the one and only time your mother will ever use it, here are some things to consider:
1. Don’t hook it up to the wifi. Everytime Nintendo feels like it, it will send a message to your Wii and the disc tray will glow blue. This will freak the fuck out of your grandfather who will proceed to call in a priest and have your Wii exorcised.
2. There are mountains of Wii games available for insane prices in bargain bins world wide. There’s a reason they are so cheap. They are either shithouse, crappy or Boom Blox.
3. Wii Fit is not a substitute for a proper exercise regime.
4. Carnival Games is not a substitute for a proper game
5. Wii Music is a toy. The only tunes you can successfully recreate in Wii music are those from Lou Reed’s Metal Machine Music album.
6. The best games on Wii are Zelda Twilight Princess, Super Mario Galaxy and Metroid: Corruption
7. The worst games have outsold the best games. Games such as Wii Play and Mario and Sonic at the Olympics are the big sellers on the system
8. Ubisoft is combining some franchises into mega-selling blockbusters such as Imagine: Tom Clanciez, Shaun White Recon Boarding Babiez and Prince of Fashion Designerz.
9. Gamecube Pikmin is being ported to the Wii. Not a new version, just a port of the GC version they runs on a Wii disc, even though you can just load the GC version you can get quite cheaply pre-owned or used or, as is more likely to be the case, sitting unplayed in your own collection.
10. Now that Mario Kart, Super Mario Galazy, Zelda, Metroid and Wario have games on the system, the 3 year long wait until the next Nintendo machine with new iterations of those games begins. In the meantime Nintendo will offer us Wii Macrame, Wii Masturbate (a surprising hit amongst core gamers), Wii Beat a Dead Horse, Wii Scraping the Bottom of the Barrell and Wii Out of Ideas.
Reviewed on Xbox 360. Also on PS3, PS2, Wii
Well, Guitar Hero for rock fans who only like Aerosmith. That should cut down the need for things like advertising, sales, etc.
Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock developed by former Tony Hawk developers Neversoft, puts paid to the rumour that the Guitar Hero series would be milked into the ground. They managed to keep the series humming along quite nicely. But then Guitar Hero Aerosmith comes out as a full price game, completely screwing up the first sentence
So really, it’s just Guitar Hero III with Aerosmith models on stage whenever you play an Aerosmith song. And do you want to know why I like GH Aerosmith compared to III? Its purely down to musical taste. I’m not a huge Aerosmith fan, but I love the type of rock they play.
GH III was weighed down by too much modern crap and indie bands which are like modern crap but not as popular.
It could have just been a downloadable pack, there’s really little reason for this not to have been the case, apart from money. It its first month, this game did not appear very highly in the NPD sales figures for NA, but considering the only costs in this game are a bit of licensing of Aerosmith’s tunes, I can’t see Activision stopping anytime soon.
Why should you play this? If you like hard rock, ’70s rock or if you just like Aerosmith. Or if you love GH and want more of the same. Now since the next iteration of Guitar Hero adds bass, drums and a mike, this is the last time the guy with the axe is the star of the show.
C1 Rating: 1/3 (Aerosmith fans should make this a 3/3 however)
Reviewed on Xbox 360. Also on: DS, PSP, PS2, Wii, PS3, PC. Developed by Traveller’s Tales. Published by Lucasarts (NTSC)/Activision (PAL)
It’s the third Lego game based on Lucasfilm source material. And probably the best so the pressure’s on Lego Batman. Lego Indy takes the storylines from the first three movies and turns them into plastic heroin.
Maybe that was pushing it a bit far but what you have is a charming (if
sometimes obtuse) action game with puzzles, combat, vehicles and Short
Round able to destroy metal barrels with his bare hands.
Lego Indy has refined the formula laid down in Lego Star Wars but reducing the number of characters in your party (usually 2, sometimes three in some of the Temple of Doom levels) and very occasionally 4 (as in the final level of Last Crusade) but without characters who only have one talent that is occasionally used and is otherwise a drain on the fun (ie C3PO). Of course now you have phobias (Indy can’t go near the snake pits, Elsa won’t go near the rats, etc). You also don’t have unlimited ammo in guns and can only use weapons dropped by enemies (when they have them). A few shots and you’re empty. Of course any character can pick up a spanner to fix a machine or a shovel to dig up Lego treasure and small characters have their hatches leading to secret areas but on the whole this has refined the approach. There are puzzles based on Simon Says provided one of you characters has a blue book that’s usually sticking out of their pocket and some boss battle where its not immediately apparent what the fuck you have to do to progress (the worst was the thugee on the rock crusher)
That said there’s still some annoying crap such as often respawning on the edge of the cliff you fell off anyway, areas where you are constantly overwhelmed by enemies, some of whom now wield RPG’s that blow you to Lego bits with one shot. Obscure puzzles and boss battles are annoying but you’ll generally work stuff out without too much drama. I scratched my head a bit, but then I’m not very bright. But I think the Comedy 64 is more over-rated than Kristen Bell so I can’t be all that dumb.
Graphics don’t really matter much as they look the same on most platforms but they are quite pretty on 360 with background textures of non Lego items being rather nice. Lego is Lego and as such Marion looks like a tranny, but one without a penis so its not all bad for Indy. Lego Indy, of course has no genitals either so….
The Score is great and It’s nice to hear the music from Temple and Crusade since you can’t buy the fuckers on CD at the moment. The sound effects are also crisp, but many of them are the same as the ones from Lego Star Wars.
So I loved Lego Indy. Would I buy Lego Batman? Well, One Lego game a year is enough and I love Indy and Star Wars so much more than Batman. But I would be up for a Kingdom of the Crystal Skull game, just so I can hear people trying to popularise “nuke the fridge” and be burned like a goat’s bitch. Oh wait.
C1 Rating: 2/3
