www.wiibreak.com
When Nintendo announced that they were completely changing the way us gamers played games, most of us agreed that it was time for a change. Call this blind fanboyism or just a general consensus that games were becoming too absurd to control, they both have the same opinion: games were becoming stagnant. At the Tokyo Game Show 2005, Nintendo kept to their promise and unveiled to the world the Wii-Remote and its “nunchuck” attachment to be their main controller input.
While obviously different aesthetically, it was the controller’s guts that separated it from most of the herd, see CD-i. The Wii-Remote has a built in motion sensor that tracks the user’s movements in a three dimensional space while its nunchuck attachment has an accelerometer for basic hand gestures and wrist flicks. This “new” and “revolutionary” feature could be debated by some as a new generation of immersing the gamer in video games while skeptics may see this as a total gimmick from a company that finished dead last in the previous console race.
Be that as it may, ever since Nintendo showed it off for the first time to E3 2006 where I got my hands on the controller and was able to make my own justified opinion, I completely supported the new control scheme. Now, a month prior to launch, I’m having second thoughts as to whether or not this paradigm shift is completely necessary.
Playing games since I was the age of three with Asteroids for the Atari 2600 being my first game, I prided myself as being able to accept the challenge of the most complex games on the market. Fast forward to the new millennium with the release of the PS2, with the Xbox and GameCube following a year later, and my how things have changed. I find myself not being able to keep up with most new games just because I simply don’t have time to divulge myself into this hobby.
I didn’t quite realize this until I first played Halo: Combat Evolved for the Xbox in 2001 and was flabbergasted that there were two buttons I had never used, the “White” and “Black” button, over a month later! As the generation got on its feet, more and more of this happened with each new release with the most evident, in my opinion, being Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater for the PlayStation 2. Even Nintendo displayed this trait when it released Battalion Wars for GameCube. This was when I realized that games were in desperate need for a change.
Nintendo and E3 couldn’t have come at a more opportune time. Upon arrival I head to their booth to give the Wii a test drive. Here I found myself having more fun with incomplete games such as Super Monkey Ball: Banana Blitz and Metroid Prime 3: Corruption than I had had since I first got my hands on a controller some 20 years ago. Seeing these games converted to a new control scheme so elegantly, I was sure Nintendo had made the right choice in forgoing conventional methods.
As time went on, more and more games started popping up with all new ways for the gamer to see that motion control was the way to go. The eager beaver in me couldn’t take it anymore so I decided that I would sit down and see every game that was in development for the system and analyze their videos to gather just how they controlled. This is where things started to change.
It was in between the time when someone was trying to control his truck in Monster 4×4 and a frantic reticule in Call of Duty 3 that paranoia set in. Is contorting your wrists like a spaz the next big thing? After watching these videos I realized that it just might be a tad more accurate, and less tiring, to tilt an analog stick than having to rotate a controller 45 degrees and not knowing whether the game registered the motion or not. Also, in the analog stick’s favor, the stick has a stopping point since it cant twist anymore due to the manufacturer putting edges while a person can keep twisting the controller until the cows come home. One more benefit in the analog stick’s favor is that it can recenter itself when it is released whereas a free floating controller requires the player having to right themselves each and every time.
Another thing that has been rearing its ugly head is how crazy some people go when playing the games that it becomes absurd watching them. Be it Red Steel or The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, both of these games seem to make the player initiate expansive movements to get the character to mimic the same actions on screen. Although this isn’t particularly the Wii-Remote’s fault since it is the player doing the actions, it’s when the action that happens on screen isn’t the same that the player made. When most people saw the trailer of Red Steel, they saw a guy jumping around his place shooting things and sword fighting like some sort of bat out of hell. Isn’t it a shame when a newcomer to video games picks up the Wii-Remote and starts flailing about because he was led to believe that all his actions in real life have a one to one ratio of that in the game? I think so.
This doesn’t mean that the controller is completely hopeless though. During my stint at E3, there were two games in particular that were changed because of this new method of playing: Super Monkey Ball: Banana Blitz and Metroid Prime 3: Corruption. It was a dream playing these games with complete control and both of them didn’t require erratic hand gestures in order to progress through the levels like some of the other games in the same genres. With just a little flick of the wrist, Samus or AiAi would follow every move you made with some little added twists.
All is not lost though. If the past is anything to show us, Nintendo does know what they’re doing when it comes to implementing a new feature. If you still don’t believe that, there is one piece of hardware that many are overlooking: the Virtual Boy! Just Kidding. Of course I’m talking about the Nintendo DS. With this two screened wonder, Nintendo blew the doors off of its traditional Game Boy franchise by claiming this was a third pillar and not to compete with the same market. Almost two years later and over 20 million units sold, it’s safe to say that the Nintendo DS is here to stay.
What does this mean for Wii though? Well many people were skeptical at first with its new setup and features and was quickly passed off as a gimmick. It also didn’t help that it released around the same time that the Sony PlayStation Portable released which was to bring handheld games out of the “gaming ghetto.” It took nearly six months for the game to get legs of its own, but that wasn’t because it had the prettiest graphics or did the most features. The one and only thing that helped save the DS from absolute failure was the games that made their way to the system.
So in the long run, it’s not the control that will be the determining factor as to not whether people accept the Nintendo Wii, it’ll be the games that show up on the system. With an early start, Zelda will be the first to get people used to the feature. Mario will then be making his debut, as will Samus in 2007. Control or not, there is one game that will get people buying the Wii; Super Smash Bros. Brawl. What the future holds for the system is a mystery, but that’s the fun of a new generation of video games!
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