Tuesday, September 30, 2008

Poll #2: "Which Super Smash Bros. game was your favorite?" results


My second poll's over and here's the results:

Which Super Smash Bros. game was your favorite?
  • Super Smash Bros. - 10% (4 votes)
  • Super Smash Bros. Melee - 15% (6 votes)
  • Super Smash Bros. Brawl - 75% (30 votes)
I voted for Brawl, as I'm still loving the hell out of it. But I was surprised not a lot of people voted for Melee, I know some people and hear from a lot of internet forums that they like Melee because of the more stratagies you can get going, like Wave Dashing, which I never really got into. The good news is 40 votes! W00T! A full 33 more than last time. Keep on voting guys...

And last but not least, there's a new poll: Which systems do you own this generation?

Saturday, September 27, 2008

Mega Man 2 (Virtual Console) review

About the Virtual Console reviews: I'm not rating these games necessarily by today's standards, otherwise my graphics and lasting value categories would usually score very low. But I'm also not reviewing these games by their original system's standards. Think of it as a combination of the two and overall just if it's worth a download or not.


Developer: Capcom
Publisher: Capcom
Date Released: NES: December 31, 1988 (USA); VC: September 15, 2008 (USA)
Players: 1
Genre: Action/Platform
ESRB Rating: E (Everyone)

The original Mega Man may have set the basis of gameplay for the games to come, but Mega Man 2 perfected it and improved nearly every aspect of the game. But how does the game stand up today? And is it really worth a download and those precious blocks of your Wii's memory?

If you've ever played the original, you'll notice quite a bit of similarity in the two games. Mega Man looks exactly the same, moves, jumps, and shoots exactly the same, and controls perfectly once again. But there are some changes, all of them for the better. The first you'll notice right after booting up the game, is that there are eight Robot Masters for you to defeat this time (a whole two more than last time). The second is the soundtrack of the game is a step above Mega Man's and is astonishing, but I'll get to that later...


The same rock-paper-scissors gameplay and nonlinear stage order returns once again, and will continue on through the Mega Man series. But this time around both the bosses and weapons are more memorable. My favorite weapon, and hands down the most powerful weapon in the game, are Metal Man's Metal Blades, which you can fire off in any direction. The levels also are pretty unforgettable, as there's some top-notch level design put into these. The gameplay of Mega Man 2 is so polished, so incredible you have to play. Even if the sheer difficulty of it may turn some off, the trial and error style of advancing each stage will usually prove enough in the end.

As I said before, the visuals of the game are almost exactly like Mega Man, but that's not a bad thing, as the sprites and backgrounds all look very nice. But where Mega Man 2 really shines is in the musical soundtrack. The Mega Man games are known for their exceptional music, but Mega Man 2 is home to the best of the Mega Man series and some of the best video game music ever. This is mostly due to the series creator's love of music. Every stage has a different range of music and it's all some of the best 8-bit tunes you can find. The sound effects have that same 8-bit vibe of beeps and boops. The sound effects and music all blend together very nicely.


If you ran right through the entire game it would probably take less than an hour, that is if you knew ever secret, ever danger, and ever boss's weakness. But mostly you won't and that's where the depth is. You'll try the same stage over and over until you learn where ever baddies spawn point is and what every Robot Master's weakness is. Even with this taken into account, the game isn't incredibly long, but at least there's a good bit of variety in the eight Robot Master stages and four or five Dr. Wily stages.

Overall Thoughts

Gameplay: 10/10 This is Mega Man at his finest. The levels are all professionally made and polished and the controls never fail.

Graphics: 8/10 8-bit with a nice style and different colors.

Sound: 10/10 Some of the best video game music ever.

Lasting Value: 8/10 Eight Robot Master stages and five or so Dr. Wily castle levels. It may not seem like a lot, but you'll be stuck on each for a while, lengthening your game time.

9/10

Comments or questions? Drop an email to kylehogg@gmail.com or leave a comment below...

Disaster: Day of Crisis video tour


Josh, from Wiifolder.com, posted another video tour, this time of Disaster: Day of Crisis, which is linked below.

Wednesday, September 24, 2008

We interupt this special "Mega Man" themed week to bring you an awesome video...

I know I'm supposed to be posting all about Mega Man this week. But this Wario Land: Shake It! promotional video on YouTube caught me off guard and you have to see it. It's pretty amazing...

Why a retro style works


Mega Man 9 released this Monday and it's probably going to sell very well. Especially to that hardcore crowd and the people who played the originals "back in the day". While a lot of games incorporate a style into their graphics, Mega Man took the graphics (and gameplay to add to that) of their classic games from the 80's era (NES, etc.) and built an entire game to feel like one of the Mega Mans of old. As a gamer, I really hope we see more games like this. I'm not talking about an entire shift in the industry. But bringing back a lot of classic franchise with their original feel would be great. (Classic Castlevania anyone? 16-bit Metroid?) So, today I'll be discussing why I think this kind of style works.

First off, as I said earlier, it appeals to the hardcore crowd. To the kind of people who played NES and SNES games back in their childhood, this is pure nostalgia. Nothing will bring back memories of those days where it was just you and your reflexes better than a game like Mega Man 9.

Secondly, the retro graphics work as a style. Lots of games for for style over raw, realistic power. Some games go the cel-shaded route (Wind Waker) whiles others go a more anime or hand drawn cartoon route (Wario Land: Shake It!). Mega Man 9 adds a whole new route to go in stylistic graphics, and it works.

And finally, though it may not matter to some (especially those buy games on the 360 and PS3), a game like Mega Man 9 takes up very little space in your console's hard drive. I read somewhere earlier today, that Mega Man 9 will only take up 66 blocks of your Wii's memory (which is pretty nice, seeing as some other WiiWare games, LostWinds for example, take up over 200). It may seem minor, but it really does matter to someone who downloads a lot of games onto their Wii, until we seem some form of storage solution from Nintendo.

That just about it for today. Hope you enjoyed the article. Any comments or questions can be left in the comments section.

Tuesday, September 23, 2008

Mega Man (Virtual Console) review

As my first true Virtual Console review (my Super Mario Bros. 3 review was a mess), it's time for some explaining...

About the Virtual Console reviews: I'm not rating these games necessarily by today's standards, otherwise my graphics and lasting value categories would score very low. But I'm also not reviewing these games by their original system's standards. Think of it as a combination of the two and overall just if it's worth a download or not.


Developer: Capcom
Publisher: Capcom
Date Released: NES: December 1, 1987 (USA); VC: August 18, 2008 (USA)
Players: 1
Genre: Action/Platform
ESRB Rating: E (Everyone)

Many of today's popular video game characters and series started on the NES. Mario, Castlevania, Zelda, it all started on the NES. The popular franchise of Mega Man also started on that very same system. Even though Mega Man 2 was the best received, the original Mega Man still serves it's place as it laid down the basis for Mega Man games to come.

The story goes a little something like this: Dr. Wily is evil. He corrupts and reprograms six robots to do his evil deeds. Dr. Light, the original creator of the robots, is disgusted by what Dr. Wily did so he makes Mega Man to fight and defeat Dr. Wily and his six Robot Masters. That's all there is to it, and that's all there really needs to be in a game like this.

Platformers and side-scrollers made up a large portion of games back in those times. Mega Man is still a side-scrolling, platforming game, but what Mega Man did different than those multiple other games was include a whole different mechanic to fighting enemies. Instead of jumping on top of them or punching them, Mega Man shot baddies with his Mega Blaster. You start out with just a Mega Blaster, but a whole part of the game is getting different weapons, which brings me to my next subject...


Another thing that differs Mega Man from other games in the 8-bit era is that it isn't entirely linear. I say "isn't entirely" because you still move from left to right to the end of the level. What makes it nonlinear is the fact that you choose the order you complete which stages in. That is until you complete all six, then you're whisked away to Dr. Wily's castle, which does progress linear. In Mega Man there are six different stages. Each ending in a Robot Master. The real strategy in picking the stages is finding out each bosses weakness, since every boss is easily defeated with another Robot Master's weapon. While not as memorable as Mega Man 2's various blasters, Mega Man's different attacks are all pretty useful and each have their different uses. You're free to tackle the game's stages in any order you want, but if you want the easiest and most successful you'll have to discover the various weaknesses of each Robot Master.

Being a classic NES game you can be sure of one thing, it's difficult. Not broken mechanics difficult or over powered AI difficult. But controller-throwing-down difficulty in which you know it's not the game's fault; it's your's and your reflexes'. While it may not appeal to some people, the brutal difficulty is fun and very rewarding in my opinion (which is pretty much what this entire review is, my opinion, so deal with it).

Mega Man's bright array of colors (for a NES game) and detailed 8-bit backgrounds sum up to be a nice looking NES. Again, while Mega Man 2 is known for it's awesome music, the original appearance of the Blue Bomber sports some pretty nice music too.


Six bosses and several Dr. Wily stages are what you'll find in Mega Man. Definitely the shortest as far as Mega Man games go, it'll last your a few hours to five at best. But once you're done, you can always speed run or just play through the game again (as you should now know the best pattern to defeating the bosses).

Overall Thoughts

Gameplay: 9/10 Classic Mega Man, just as you remember. The rock-paper-scissors formula of progression is just as unique today as it was in the 80's. The game's a blast, end of story.

Graphics: 8/10 Crisp, colorful, 8-bit graphics.

Sound: 9/10 While not as memorable as the sequals, expect some nice tunes overall.

Lasting Value: 7/10 The first Mega Man's the shortest of the bunch.

8/10
Mega Man's first outing is still one of the best. Plus, with a price of 500 Wii Points, equal to $5, I recommend this to any fan of Mega Man or for someone looking for some plain, old-school fun.

Monday, September 22, 2008

The history of Mega Man in pictures

To start off my Mega Man themed week is a little flashback as I explore the many boxarts of the original Mega Man series. Reflect on how crappy they were and what memories they bring back (if you're of that generation)... Enjoy!

Mega Man (NES)


Mega Man 2 (NES)


Mega Man 3 (NES)


Mega Man 4 (NES)


Mega Man 5 (NES)


Mega Man 6 (NES)


Mega Man 7 (SNES)


Mega Man 8 (PS1)


And finally... Mega Man 9 (Wii)

Hope you enjoyed the trip down memory lane. And if you didn't grow up in those times, hopefully you saw how horrific some boxarts were back then.

Friday, September 19, 2008

Seriously, check out this site and these videos

As the title states, I'm not kidding about this (don't know why I would). But check out this blog that I came across titled Gaming Pondering. It has some really interesting articles that weren't like some of the normal reviews/previews/etc. that you come to expect from other gaming sites (such as mine, except *ahem* minus the previews).

And while I was there, I came across to videos from YouTube that are actually from continuing series titled Game OverThinker and Game Historian. They're both really well thought out series and you guys should check them out.

Here's the links:

Gaming Pondering
Game OverThinker
Gaming Historian

Release date, IGN review, DLC, and more for Mega Man 9


From Capcom official blog:

"The wait is finally over: Mega Man 9 hits North America next week!

The game will be released for download on the September 22 for the Wii. Playstation Network gets it September 25th, and XBLA will have it October 1!

These dates are for North America ONLY."


It cool that WiiWare getting it first. And I'll definitely be downloading it. OK, onto next bit of news...


From Games Radar:


- hits October 6th for 200 Wii Points
- has the ability to slide, and charge shots
- some bullets can be deflected with shield
- contact with bullets pushes Proto Man back twice as far as Mega Man
- charge shot is interrupted when Proto Man is hit
- no Rush adapters, they are Proto adapters (sled, coil, more)


He's pretty much an alternative for those who liked Mega Man's skills and controls after Mega Man 2 (and onward). DLC sounds pretty cool. Wonder what other kind of downloads there'll be? New bosses? Bass as a playable character? I can only hope.


And finally, to round out my little bit of Mega Man 9 news, is the first review for the game: IGN's Mega Man 9 review by Mark Bozon. Enjoy!


PS. Look forward to next week, because I'll have quite a few posts and maybe a couple of reviews having to do with Mega Man!

Tuesday, September 16, 2008

Poll #1 Results


My first poll's over and here's the results:

How many WiiWare games have you downloaded?
  • Quite a bit - 0% (0 votes)
  • A few, here and there - 85% (6 votes)
  • None - 15% (1 vote)
  • What's WiiWare? - 0% (0 votes)
I'm definitely in that middle range. Currently I've downloaded four WiiWare titles. But with the Strong Bad games coming out, Mega Man 9 coming soon, and World of Goo getting released sooner or later, that may change.

And finally, there's a new poll: Which Super Smash Bros. game was your favorite? So don't forget to vote!

Monday, September 15, 2008

Order Up! (Wii) review

Wow, it's been a while since I've done a review. Hopefully I can do them more often, as I have quite a back catalog of games in need of reviews.


Developer: SuperVillain Studios
Publisher: Zoo Games
Date Released: July 22, 2008 (USA)
Players: 1
Genre: Action
ESRB Rating: E (Everyone)

There've been many casual games on the Wii and DS. But one particular series that been praised as unique and casual is Cooking Mama. In it you preform different motions and touch screen controls to mimic the cooking and preparing of different dishes. Super Villain Studios' Order Up! is a like Cooking Mama and then some. The Cooking Mama games never were reviewed the best, so will Order Up! follow this trend? Let's hope not.

There are several gameplay aspects that make this game different (and potentially better) than Cooking Mama. The first being that the entire game isn't random minigames in which you make a dish of food. You actually have to manage your restaurant.

Outside your restaurant

The gameplay is broken up into days for each restaurant. You start off each day outside your restaurant. There you can check a number of things. Those being: hire new employees, upgrade things in your kitchen (oven speed, knife sharpness, etc.), and make various calls to a food critic, the delivery guy, and a chef tip hot line. Once you've taken care of that kind of business, it's time to start up your day and enter your restaurant!

In a single day you'll wait on around four to five tables. In the beginning of the game, you have to prepare single and double orders, but towards the end of it, you'll be preparing food for tables of three and even four people. As the day gets going, you'll send your waiter (or waitress, depending on the restaurant) to each table to take orders. Then, you'll receive the orders back in your kitchen and it's your job to prepare each meal as good and fast as you can.

Each type of technique in the kitchen has it's own motion control, and it actually works. For example turn the remote all the way over will flip your burger, moving the remote rapidly, up and down like a knife will dice vegetables, and tracing a circular pattern will stir up a stew or soup. You'll get four different ratings for each thing you do: Perfect, Good, OK, and Bad, thus determining how big of tips you get. Some orders will require you to do the motion as quick as possible to earn the Perfect or Good rating. Other will have you stir or flip it every now and then to make sure it won't burn or catch fire.

A look at the kitchen gameplay

After you serve certain customers long enough, you'll begin to recognize certain things they want changed in their dish. There's a kid named Sweet Tooth who wants you to add sugar to his order and a cowboy who wants you to burn his meat to a charcoal every time. You'll get a bigger tip this way and earn a lot more money in the long run. Other than the in restaurant stuff, you can also visit a farmer's market to stock up on tip guaranteeing spices and chef's specials in the Farmers Market.

The story in the game is nice and serves it's purpose. You get dumped off a plane into the island of Port Abello and start out working in a lowly burger joint and raise to top of culinary expertise by purchasing and working at American, Mexican, Italian, and (finally) French restaurants. With each new restaurant comes new recipes and increased tips per table.

Each restaurant will have you complete five tasks to earn a five star rating (cleaning your restaurant, getting a good review from the food critic, etc.) While the new recipes do offer some variety, you can't help but feel a bit bored as you do the same five things over and over for each restaurant. With that said, you'll definitely feel a lot of repetition as the game goes by. Even so, if you do get the game, take my advice: play through the entire story. While it may get repetitive, the ending sequence, a spoof on Iron Chef, is worth it.

One major disappointment of mine was the lack of multiplayer. It would have been the perfect fit, seeing as it's been done before in Cooking Mama and the such. A disappointment it is, but at least the single-player can still make up for it.

Order Up!'s visuals are cartoony and pleasant to look upon

Visually, it's nothing extraordinary, but the cartoony look fits the gameplay and is nice to look at at least. Along with that, the music is generic (Mexican for the Mexican restaurant, etc.). But there is actually some impressive amount of voice acting for each patron, assistant chef, and waiter/waitress.

The game isn't the longest of games, but it'll last you a decent time. I clocked around nine to ten hours through the story. So it does have some depth.

Overall Thoughts

The motion controls actually work, and aren't waggle the hell out of your controller. The characters and setting are charming enough to keep you playing. Overall, it's a very nicely made casual game, that I'd recommend a buy to most people; plus with a $40 price tag, it's cheaper than a regular priced title.

8/10

Comments or questions? Drop an email to kylehogg@gmail.com or leave a comment below...

Tuesday, September 9, 2008

Top 9 - Third-Party Wii Games


Time for a new column for my blog: Top 9 lists. I'll be posting them once a month, always on the ninth day of the month. Why you ask? I don't really have a reason. Why Top 9? Because I feel Top 5, Top 10, and even Top 100 lists are way to overused. What better way to break that trend than to compile a list of 9 things?

The first topic? Third-party games on the Wii. Nintendo has never been known to have great relations with third-parties. And the Wii isn't much different. Nonetheless a lot of developers have been pushing to make unique experience on the Wii. And some of them are up there in terms of quality as some of Nintendo's own first-party games. Enjoy!

9. Blast Works: Build Trade Destroy
A horrible name but a great game. Blast Works' most promising feature in the stage creation mode. Which allows you to make just about any shooter you can imagine. The campaign is surprisingly fun and difficult too.

8. Order Up!
One of the few non-Nintendo made casual games that's actually a lot of fun to play. You start out as a lowly burger flipping chef, and rise to the top of Mexican, Italian, and finally French cuisine. Other than Cooking Mama like motion controls, you have to juggle multiple orders and add just the right spices to please the patrons.

7. SSX Blur
Electronic Arts actually managed to pull off an SSX game with motion controls. Simple flicks with the Wii remote will make your characters do tricks, while tilting the Nunchuk controls your character's directions and speed. It works surprisingly well.

6. Medal of Honor: Heroes 2
There are only two reasons you even need to think about getting this game. Excellent control scheme and the best online game the Wii offers. As for the former, it's a lot like Metroid Prime 3's great first-person controls but with more sensitivity and customization. While the campaign and graphics of the game are pretty bland. The online is where it's at. The first game to offer 32-player online for the Wii. Plus it uses EA Nation, which lets you get around those annoying friend codes and set up one account to use through all EA games for the Wii; it's nice.

5. No More Heroes
Probably the most bad ass title of this list, No More Heroes is one of the uniquest Wii games around. Not only is there over the top action and tons of blood, the wacky bosses are some of the most fun I've had in a game for a while. While the over world may be seriously lacking, the entertaining combat and awesome bosses are enough to warrant a purchase.

4. Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock
The best selling version of this game may not necessarily be the best graphically or feature-wise, but it's still one heck of a music game. The 70-something songs are more than enough to entertain you for a while.

3. Resident Evil 4: Wii Edition
Ports are the Wii generally aren't good news (see Ninjabread Man). But Capcom really pulled it of with Resident Evil 4 for the Wii. The graphics are basically the same as the GameCube, but the controls have been entirely revamped for the Wii remote. How is the action? Just like you remember it!

2. Boom Blox
From the creative mind of Steven Spielburg comes a unique game with some of the deepest physics in a game to date. Another unique experience on the Wii, Boom Blox shouldn't be missed.

1. Zack & Wiki: Quest for Barbaros' Treasure
Don't let the cel-shaded graphics fool you, this game is tough, and you'll get stuck quite a bit. But it's fun too, and the point and click controls work excellent with the Wii remote. Every action you perform is usually linked to your Wii remote, whether it be shaking a bell or pulling a lever. If you pick up only one game from this list, make it this one.

So there you have it. You may be thinking I left out quite a few gems. Okami, Geometry Wars: Galaxies, and Bully: Scholarship Edition? All three of those alone look worthy enough to put on this list and bump a few of mine off, but the thing is: I haven't played any of those yet. I'll definitely have to get around to doing that.

What do you think of my choices? Tell me in the comments...

Monday, September 8, 2008

(Wii) Music to my Ears (linked article)

Yes, I know, I've become lazy. But I kept having headaches today, so I'll link to someone else's article and have mine up tomorrow. As for that someone else's article, it comes from a blog a lot like mine that's starting out small, I've Never Liked Your SpinachPuffs (I know, awesome name). It's about Wii Music. Can't say I necessarily agree, but it's definitely a good opinion. Enjoy!




I'll bring this point up again... I DIDN'T WRITE THIS ARTICLE! I don't want to take the credit for this well-written article. See any typos? No, exactly why it's not mine.

Saturday, September 6, 2008

Club Nintendo interview with Reggie and Miyamoto (summary)

A Latin America Nintendo magazine, Club Nintendo, recently had an interview with Reggie Fils-Aimé and Shigeru Miyamoto. Two GoNintendo readers, Demian Chrisanti and worrybomb, translated the most important parts, which I have posted below.
  • Miyamota confirms they're working on Zelda and Pikmin but says nothing about Wii Motion Plus.
  • The Zelda team is working on a special version for the Wii as opposed to Twilight Princess since it started out on the Gamecube.
  • Shigeru says that the Wii Remote will fit very well with a title like Pikmin.
  • When asked about a new Zelda DS title, Shigeru said nothing since Eiji Aonuma is a very busy man (he last oversaw Link’s Crossbow Training).
  • Club Nintendo says that Wario Land: Shake It! plays just like the past versions. When asked if Mario and Metroid will follow suit one day, Shigeru says he can’t say anything now but that Nintendo always makes top notch products and that they will have to see them (Nintendo) in the future to know more.
  • Miyamota says there won't be a lot more (first-party) peripherals, they have enough already.
  • When asked about hard drive solution, Miyamota says to expect an announcement in the future since they're working on possible technologies. Reggie says they’re not making a “hard drive” but will come up with a better solution.
  • Reggie says Animal Crossing is not casual and that they’re gonna have GTA on the DS for the hardcore gamers.
  • When asked if Animal Crossing will be the new beginning point on how you play a game online on the Wii, Reggie says Mario Kart functions very well through the Wi-Fi connection with no problems and that Animal Crossing will be a fantastic experience on Wi-Fi with the Wii Speak being a great addition.
  • When asked about Microsoft's avatars, Reggie says "imitating is a way of flattering, so we're very flattered."
  • When asked about DS redesign, Reggie says a console redesign will happen when the sales go down, not up.
Quite a bit of information in there. Hopefully the hard drive solution is the holographic storage solution that Nintendo looked into a little while ago. Or more likely it's just SD Card or USB support.

Friday, September 5, 2008

Why Wario Land: Shake It! will still sell, despite no advertising


Wii games in general, get very little advertising via TV and magazines. There are some exceptions (i.e. Boom Blox, Mushroom Men). But with the Wii, the only games that really get any commercials are Nintendo first-party games like Super Smash and Mario games. And who can forget those "Wii Would Like To Play" Nintendo commercials.

But one particular game that was an awesome game, got very little advertising from Nintendo (even though it was a first-party game), and in turn didn't sell great was Metroid Prime 3: Corruption. A disappointment, as the game was real fun and one of the best for the Wii.

And now, with Wario Land: Shake It! about to be released in a few weeks, Nintendo seems to have "pulled another Metroid Prime 3". But I'm not worrying about it selling bad for namely three reasons.

Number one, Wario is a lot more popular than Metroids and Samus. When the casual folk (excuse me... expanded audience) hear the word "Wario", they might have a clue what you're talking about or what they're seeing. His appearance in the best selling Super Smash Bros. Brawl only increases his popularity more. So while the casuals may know a bit about Wario (since he is a Mario character), most people don't know too much about Metroid and the Metroid story.

Number two, kids will be drawn to Wario Land's art style and humor a lot more than MP3. Don't get me wrong, I love Metroid's graphics and style, but I'm also equally impressed with Wario's hand drawn style. And I think a cartoon art direction will appeal to kids more than a more realistic graphics of Corruption.

An example of Wario Land's art...

Number three, the core will pick it up too. As long as it gets good reviews from popular magazines and websites, the core audience will probably buy it, boosting up those sales even more. I know I am.

That rounds it up for me. What about you? Think Wario Land will sell? Tell me in the comments.

Wednesday, September 3, 2008

Captain Rainbow and Alien Crush Returns video tours

I was originally going to embed some videos from Josh over at Wiifolder, but I couldn't get the sizes right on Blogger, if anyone can help me (either by emailing me at kylehogg@gmail.com or post it in the comments, that'd be great). So instead I posted the links.

Josh, over at Wiifolder.com, does some really great video tours of games, especially first-party Wii games that he's imported from Japan. Recently he did two in one day, and you guys really need to check them out if you haven't. The games he made videos of were Captain Rainbow, for the Wii, and Alien Crush Returns, a WiiWare game. Both games are out in Japan.

Captain Rainbow Video Tour

Alien Crush Returns

Monday, September 1, 2008

The Wii doesn't mean limited games

There's been an increasingly popular trend with multi-console games that I'm coming to like a lot. That is, not making the game with limited features just because it's on the Wii.

Take Rock Band for example, it was released a few months after the PS3 and 360 versions, and what do we get for extra features? 5 new songs! Not only that, but the World Tour and character creators have been scratched. Why? I'm pretty sure both of those could be done on the Wii. Not pretty sure, positive. But Harmonix feels they need a quick cash in, seeing that Guitar Hero III sold the best on Wii.

I mean I understand if the graphics aren't nearly as good. The Wii's doesn't have a top notch processor. But if parts of gameplay are left out, or if certain actions that were originally button presses have been made into waggle, I feel cheated.

Fast forward to the present and a lot of developers are doing their best to make the game equal on all consoles (excluding graphics of course). Two that come to mind are Guitar Hero: World Tour and Call of Duty: World at War (both by Activision). The developers have both stated that they have no intention of making the Wii versions any less featured than their 360/PS3 counterparts. Guitar Hero: World Tour is even going as far as offering DLC, a first for any Wii game.

So now that the Wii's been around for almost two years, I think developers are starting to realize with lesser graphics doesn't equal lesser gameplay on the Wii. And I'm liking that (as I only own a Wii).