I believe in the Wii, I really do. I don’t care that it’s basically a GameCube with a white case and fancy controller. I don’t care that the graphics made the original Xbox look l33t. I just wish they would put out some decent games. And believe me, I’ve played most of them. And here’s what I think so far. And if, after reading this, it seems like there’s something wrong with every game, that’s because there is something wrong with every game.
Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess I may have found a bunch of pieces of something called Forged Darkness, but I’d gladly trade it for the last 100 hours of my life back, please.
Super Paper Mario Read, read, read, jump, read, read, read, flip, read, read read, power off.
WarioWare: Smooth Moves Is it just me, or was half of this game made using Corel Paint in Windows 95?
Trauma Center: Second Opinion No matter how hard I try, I can’t properly stitch up a wound.
Raymen Raving Rabbids: After approximately 4 hours of trying to slam the same privy doors shut, I give up.
Wii Sports The stripped-down version baseball actually makes me yearn for Bases Loaded.
Elebits After a few plays, this game was playing hide and sneak in my drawer.
Metal Slug Anthology There is absolutely no reason I should have to shake my hand to toss a grenade.
The Godfather: Blackhand Edition The lengths they go to try to tie the game into every iconic scene from the movie are just implausibly ridiculous. Seriously, why on Earth would somebody kill 10 people while sneaking into a house just to leave a horse’s head in their bed?
Dragon Ball Z: Budokai Tenkaichi While I didn’t understand a word of what anybody in this game was saying, I was able to win fights by randomly shaking my hands.
Mario Party 8 For a minigame game, it’s awful hard to find the minigames.
Red Steel Annoying racial stereotypes don’t make a game bad, repetitive motion disorder does.
Cooking Mama: Cook Off This should have been one minigame in WarioWare: Smooth Moves. The end.
TMNT Run, jump, flail arms around wildly, stop playing out of boredom.
Shrek The Third I honestly couldn’t figure out how to get out of the very first room in this game. Seriously, and I tried for about 30 minutes. Considering I’m about 15 years older than the target audience, that is a very bad sign.
Bionicle Heroes How is it that a game can make absolutely no sense, yet be unforgivably easy at the same time?
Wing Island Not quite PilotWings.
Happy Feet Half of this game felt like Dance Dance Revolution played on a controlpad, the other half I didn’t bother playing.
There you have it. Flame on.
Seth Porges writes on future technology and its role in personal electronics for his column, The Futurist. It appears every Thursday and an archive of past columns is available here.
You’re not the target market. The average person who wants to play games (not the average gamer) doesn’t want to devote their lives to learning the intricacies of the game. They want to pop in a disc and have 30 minutes of fun. Nintendo’s not trying to take the gamer market, they’re trying to get the mainstream market into games. The real test will be if the mainstream market gets bored of the candy then decide they want some substance and depth.
I hate to be the guy that does this, because I always hate these people on comment threads, but. Your commentary has really felt lacking to me in the last few weeks, less clever insightful stuff. It’s felt more like base internet trolling :(
Trolling aside (yeah, Seth, stop trolling!) you have to admit that a game like Zelda was supposed to be for the non-casual set and that as magical as it was, I too felt that I deserved my 100 hours back. The Wii falls short for me, pure and simple. I had one good time playing it at Thanksgiving last with 4 people but I haven’t enjoyed it much since.
The Wii is a paradox. One one end, it’s supposed to be easy for even grandmas to “pick up and play”. However, you have to learn a completely new control scheme for most of the games, and they are often far less intuitive than simply pressing buttons. Also, games like Zelda suck your life away. They are NOT for casual gamers. I gained 10 pounds playing it and it nearly cost me friends and loved ones.
Seth writes:
>Shrek The Third … I honestly couldn’t figure out how to get out of the very >first room in this game. Seriously, and I tried for about 30 minutes.
>
>- Considering I’m about 15 years older than the target audience…
that’s the problem… my 12 year old sister figured it out in under ten minutes.
It’s a generational thing. Older folks can’t hack even simple games.
I find it humorous that someone who hates somthing so much would dedicate so much time to videogames!
Get a life moron. Oh, and if you do find somthing you yourself enjoy.
You are right about Happy Feet. My kids dropped it within one minute of play. However, my kids are crazy about Wii Sports and Wario Ware. I guess the target audience of the Wii is NOT for seasoned gamers. Kids and retirees love the Wii. Nintendo did a great job of opening an unexplored demographic for the industry.
Many of those are third-party games, anyway. Those are supposed to suck. It’s almost a rule.
You missed out SSX Blur:
Carve, groove, carve, jump, flail remote around madly, carve, carve
Still fun though.
lol…..most of the games, like Zelda, Super Mario 8, RedSteel and Wiisports are
all great games, much better, different, new – type and enjoyable than ps3 or
xbox360’s games, which are ALL based on the same thing!!!!
mii
July 27th, 2007 at 1:43 pm
“lol…..most of the games, like Zelda, Super Mario 8, RedSteel and Wiisports are
all great games, much better, different, new – type and enjoyable than ps3 or
xbox360’s games, which are ALL based on the same thing!!!!”
Yeah, because, obviously, racing cars, fighting against an evil cooperation,fighting through WW2, being a knight fighting massive armies, saving a medieval-aged world from demons, being a super-cop in a near future city, and controlling large armies of either humans, elves, dwarfs, or orcs are obviously all based around the same concept, obviously.OH WAIT! I forgot, FIGHTING ALIENS(that is fairly common type of game though).
Are you talking about Super Mario Galaxy or Mario Party 8? Neither are new, and winning in Mario Party is based on chance in the board game part, Wario Ware is a bunch of repetitive, low-quality mini games and this is the 3rd or 4th one. Red Steel had the potential to be good, but the sword fighting with the wii remote i pretty darn bad. Zelda is good, Wii sports is pretty fun(except the golf) and I can’t wait for SSBB. Wii is a lot better than the PS3 though, SO DAMN EXPENSIVE, and not many good games out yet, it’s killing sony.