So I'm drinking a bit of wine, after playing through a bit of Red Steel 2--which I never got around too--as a postlude to my daily X-COM session. It's pretty cool--not a 'major' FPS in the vein of Far Cry 3 or [/i]Human Revolution[/i], but a fun hybrid of No More Heroes and an FPS nevertheless--the swordplay is like what John Romero was trying to achieve with Daikatana, but couldn't because of the limitations of a keyboard and mouse setup. And I got thinking, because I haven't used my Wii for a while (a lot of my games are on loan to a friend): damn, the Wii was a (critically) underrated console. I say this for a few reasons:
1) The games--an obvious place to start. Nintendo undeniably contributed a boatload of great games to the Wii--I'll spare you hashing it out--but what's often forgotten is how great a lot of third-party titles were: No More Heroes, Muramasa, the best version of Resident Evil 4, Red Steel 2, MadWorld, Xenoblade Chronicles, Little King's Story, Dead Space: Extraction, Tatsunoko vs. Capcom, Zack & Wiki, Dawn of Discovery, Boom Blox, the GoldenEye remake, Trauma Center, etc etc.
Say what you will about these games, but it's worth remarking that 1) unlike its competitors, most good Wii games weren't readily available on multiple other consoles, and 2) most people who dissed the Wii for having a shallow library probably didn't own ten per cent of the good games on it.
2) Local multi-player--whatever happened to it? Admittedly, as the lifespan of the PS3 and Xbox 360 progressed, more of the games on them started to feature local multi-player support, but I was still dismayed, for example, to discover after buying Far Cry 3 that there was no co-op or even deathmatch. By contrast, when you use the Wii it's like your transported to the heyday of local multi-player--most of the good games for, barring a few decidedly single-player focused Nintendo entries, features local multi-player--you know, because sometimes it's better to play with your friends while chatting in a living room rather than being screeched at by eleven year-olds over a headset.
3) The controls--while I realize Nintendo's decision to utilize motion controls for the Wii was often decried by gamers as a "gimmick", bear with me for a second. I actually liked them. Allow me to elaborate three reasons for this:
a) The best thing about the Wii's 'motion controls' wasn't the largely redundant waggling of the Wiimote: it was actually the usage of the remote as a pointer, which--for the first time, I think, in game history--provided gamers with a pack-in controller that was as sensitive as a mouse. Aside from lending itself to breezy navigation of the console interface, this was a huge help with certain kinds of games: whenever I play shooters on the Wii I'm popping off head shots nonstop, and strategy and simulation games were way more manageable than they would've been with a joystick.
b) An often ignored benefit of the Wii's motion controls--which force you to move around a bit while you're playing--is that they tend to help abate the effects of motion sickness, which stems physiologically from a disparity between the stillness of one's body and the appearance of motion onscreen. As many as 10 to 50% of people are thought to suffer from motion sickness while gaming--and for me, this was a huge boon.
c) "The medium is the message", said Marshall McLuhan. Accordingly, the economy of the button design on the Wii--which encouraged designers to stick to utilizing 3-4 buttons in the main--was, in my opinion, a great move: it prevented games from getting bogged down with the unnecessary complexity that often puts off new (or even experienced) gamers. Nintendo does control better than anyone, and that was evident on the Wii: games like Super Mario Galaxy provided satisfying familiar control set-ups for old school gamers.
4) A lot of great Virtual Console and WiiWare games--I won't belabour readers with a list (this information is readily available on Wikipedia), but when you combine the games on WiiWare with those in the VC library the Wii handily eclipses PSN/XBLA in terms of downloadable content and retro titles. Plus, if you're a terrible anarchist who hates democracy, you could hack the console and get them all free.
5) The price--with the Wii, the price was right: it launched at a lower price point than most consoles in recent memory, and seemed to benefit during the 2007-2009 period, when the recession was in full swing, from an unwillingness on part of middle-class gamers to shell out the dough necessary for the PS3/X360. This worked well, for me: as student who wasn't working from '07-09 I didn't have much money, and the Wii consistently provided excellent gaming experiences for a couple of years before I bought a PS3, which admittedly has a larger library.
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So what do you guys think? Does the Wii deserve its sordid reputation amongst 'hardcore' gamers? Or in spite of the protestations of it being a fad was it secretly a great console?
1) The games--an obvious place to start. Nintendo undeniably contributed a boatload of great games to the Wii--I'll spare you hashing it out--but what's often forgotten is how great a lot of third-party titles were: No More Heroes, Muramasa, the best version of Resident Evil 4, Red Steel 2, MadWorld, Xenoblade Chronicles, Little King's Story, Dead Space: Extraction, Tatsunoko vs. Capcom, Zack & Wiki, Dawn of Discovery, Boom Blox, the GoldenEye remake, Trauma Center, etc etc.
Say what you will about these games, but it's worth remarking that 1) unlike its competitors, most good Wii games weren't readily available on multiple other consoles, and 2) most people who dissed the Wii for having a shallow library probably didn't own ten per cent of the good games on it.
2) Local multi-player--whatever happened to it? Admittedly, as the lifespan of the PS3 and Xbox 360 progressed, more of the games on them started to feature local multi-player support, but I was still dismayed, for example, to discover after buying Far Cry 3 that there was no co-op or even deathmatch. By contrast, when you use the Wii it's like your transported to the heyday of local multi-player--most of the good games for, barring a few decidedly single-player focused Nintendo entries, features local multi-player--you know, because sometimes it's better to play with your friends while chatting in a living room rather than being screeched at by eleven year-olds over a headset.
3) The controls--while I realize Nintendo's decision to utilize motion controls for the Wii was often decried by gamers as a "gimmick", bear with me for a second. I actually liked them. Allow me to elaborate three reasons for this:
a) The best thing about the Wii's 'motion controls' wasn't the largely redundant waggling of the Wiimote: it was actually the usage of the remote as a pointer, which--for the first time, I think, in game history--provided gamers with a pack-in controller that was as sensitive as a mouse. Aside from lending itself to breezy navigation of the console interface, this was a huge help with certain kinds of games: whenever I play shooters on the Wii I'm popping off head shots nonstop, and strategy and simulation games were way more manageable than they would've been with a joystick.
b) An often ignored benefit of the Wii's motion controls--which force you to move around a bit while you're playing--is that they tend to help abate the effects of motion sickness, which stems physiologically from a disparity between the stillness of one's body and the appearance of motion onscreen. As many as 10 to 50% of people are thought to suffer from motion sickness while gaming--and for me, this was a huge boon.
c) "The medium is the message", said Marshall McLuhan. Accordingly, the economy of the button design on the Wii--which encouraged designers to stick to utilizing 3-4 buttons in the main--was, in my opinion, a great move: it prevented games from getting bogged down with the unnecessary complexity that often puts off new (or even experienced) gamers. Nintendo does control better than anyone, and that was evident on the Wii: games like Super Mario Galaxy provided satisfying familiar control set-ups for old school gamers.
4) A lot of great Virtual Console and WiiWare games--I won't belabour readers with a list (this information is readily available on Wikipedia), but when you combine the games on WiiWare with those in the VC library the Wii handily eclipses PSN/XBLA in terms of downloadable content and retro titles. Plus, if you're a terrible anarchist who hates democracy, you could hack the console and get them all free.
5) The price--with the Wii, the price was right: it launched at a lower price point than most consoles in recent memory, and seemed to benefit during the 2007-2009 period, when the recession was in full swing, from an unwillingness on part of middle-class gamers to shell out the dough necessary for the PS3/X360. This worked well, for me: as student who wasn't working from '07-09 I didn't have much money, and the Wii consistently provided excellent gaming experiences for a couple of years before I bought a PS3, which admittedly has a larger library.
--
So what do you guys think? Does the Wii deserve its sordid reputation amongst 'hardcore' gamers? Or in spite of the protestations of it being a fad was it secretly a great console?