Idle Weekend March 25, 2016: The Way Wii Weren't

[Chris]

Idle Weekend March 25, 2016:

The Way Wii Weren't

The Weekenders ponder the strange case of the Wii U, a weird console from a company that only makes weird consoles these days, with some of the best games of the last few years. Has Nintendo Splatooned its way into the Wii U's demise? Is the Wii U the new Dreamcast?

Discussed: Wii U; Splatoon; Game Boys: Triumph, Heartbreak, and the Quest for Cash in the Battleground of Competitive Videogaming; The Private Eye

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[sclpls]

The conversation about how much leniency to give a TV show reminded me of a similar insight I had with getting into a band's discography. I've always detested the Grateful Dead, but have plenty of friends that that have gotten inside that bubble. And they always try to tell me that I just always need to hear some particular track off of some particular bootleg (it's always different depending on who you talk to...) and that will be the missing key that suddenly unlocks the revelation that actually this band is amazing, or at the very least that there were these nuggets to be found. But eventually I realized I just wasn't hearing whatever the fans were, and even if there was stuff I might like there is a ton of stuff I know I will appreciate on a deep level that doesn't involve having to wade through a bunch of trash. And I bring a similar approach to getting into TV. If I'm not feeling it after two episodes I'm more than happy to just stop. That might sound a bit extreme to some people, but I'm not interested in watching that much TV anyway, the point is everyone needs to find their ratio of BS they are willing to put up with.

[SignorSuperdouche]

I thought I'd chime in just to say that the real secret best Wii U game is Affordable Space Adventures. It's a small, download only indie game that makes better use of the game pad's touch screen than anyone has else by a goddamn country mile. It also has awesome asymmetric two player co-op which is the best way to play it (three players are supported but the third person just ends up doing nothing most of the time)

 

This game shows just how much potential the Wii U has to give us something we've never had before, something fresh and exciting that simply could not work on any other system, but we'll never see because developers, not unreasonably, need to make a profit. It makes me sad.

 

Anyway, if you have a Wii U and you don't already own this game, go get and play it with a friend.

Edited March 26, 2016 by SignorSuperdouche

[noahghola]

Regarding the conversation about good sci fi needing a season to rev up, have any of you heard the expression, "the beard"? It refers to the moment something gets good. For instance, when you get to the creamy center of a twinkie, that's "the beard." Will Riker doesn't grow out his beard until season 3 of Next Generation--hence the phrase.

 

Also, for good Netflix sci fi check out Dark Matter. Actually a really enjoyable first season (now let's see if the second lives up).

 

Cheers!

 

 

Oh hey look, my first post!

[Henke]

I've always detested the Grateful Dead, but have plenty of friends that that have gotten inside that bubble.

 

Hah, that reminds me of the podcast Analyze Phish, which was about one guy (Harris Wittels, RIP) trying to get another guy (Scott Aukerman) to like the band Phish. It was always some jam section 14 minutes into a liveshow bootleg that was finally gonna to make the case for Phish and win Scott over.

 

 

Oh hey look, my first post!

 

As a guy with 2 posts, let me just say: NOOOOOB!

[TychoCelchuuu]

The conversation about how much leniency to give a TV show reminded me of a similar insight I had with getting into a band's discography. I've always detested the Grateful Dead, but have plenty of friends that that have gotten inside that bubble. And they always try to tell me that I just always need to hear some particular track off of some particular bootleg (it's always different depending on who you talk to...) and that will be the missing key that suddenly unlocks the revelation that actually this band is amazing, or at the very least that there were these nuggets to be found. But eventually I realized I just wasn't hearing whatever the fans were, and even if there was stuff I might like there is a ton of stuff I know I will appreciate on a deep level that doesn't involve having to wade through a bunch of trash. And I bring a similar approach to getting into TV. If I'm not feeling it after two episodes I'm more than happy to just stop. That might sound a bit extreme to some people, but I'm not interested in watching that much TV anyway, the point is everyone needs to find their ratio of BS they are willing to put up with.

I think one difference is that TV is fucking long - if I have to sit through a couple episodes of a show before it gets good, that's already an entire album's worth of time, or more. Even worse, I can't do anything else while I'm watching TV. I have to give it my full attention. Meanwhile, I can write, cook, clean, etc. while listening to music. So if someone says "you really ought to listen to album X" or whatever I can do that in the time it would take me to watch a tiny slice of a TV series. I don't even have enough free time in my life to watch good TV, so there's no way I'm wasting any of it on shitty TV just to wait until it gets good, but for music it's not really much of a time investment.

[sclpls]

Yeah I agree, TV series are actually worse for the reasons you mentioned. But I didn't make clear in my example that even if the person was like, "oh well you just need to hear this one part" that of course gradually transforms into, "well you should really check out A, B, C, D, E, F, and..." which of course is much more involved than just listening to a song or album, and which leads me to check out.

[Junah]

Thanks so much Danielle for the mention; I'm so glad someone else knows about DK Tropical Freeze! It's the best platformer in recent memory and I feel like I'm taking crazy pills when friends who purportedly are really into platformers brush it off so callously because they don't like Nintendo. It's hard and it's gorgeous and it's straight from the vein of what's always been great about DK Country games. Just about everything Retro Studios makes is pure gold and I wish everyone everywhere would give them a fairer shot. DK Country Freeze along with DK Country Returns are truly great platformers for the sake of platforming, in an old way you just don't see enough of anymore. I wish they were as huge as they deserve. 

 

SO happy to hear the mention. I now have to re-listen to the second half of the podcast 'cause I was too busy joining the forums and typing this up to hear any of it.

 

Sincerely,

Also a Danielle

[malkav11]

For my part, the biggest reason I didn't get a Wii U is the same reason I don't have a PS4 or Xbox One: I prefer playing on PC and at this point I have so many PC games competing for my time (my Steam library alone rapidly nears 2000 games) that I just can't get that worked up about missing a tiny handful of console exclusives that I might be interested in. Secondarily, for a long time I also thought the Wii U had continued to use the Wii's motion controls, which I absolutely hated and ruined that console for me. I guess that's not the case after all (though it's backwards compatible with Wii games that do), but then we hit the question of whether its exclusives actually interest me. And the thing is, I'm not a Mario fan. The only Mario games I care about at all are the RPGs (Paper Mario etc). I think there's one of those for Wii U now, but I have a whole series of DS Mario RPGs that I haven't touched yet, so I'm not in any hurry. I also have a backlog of Zeldas and no real interest in Smash or Splatoon, etc. So I'm not sure there's actually much I'd be interested in.

[marginalgloss]

Just wanted to echo SignorSuperdouche's point about Affordable Space Adventures - it's a really impressive little game that could only exist in its current form on the Wii U. I would also make a case for Pikmin 3 being one of the most underrated games of recent years. Everything about it is just delightful.

 

There's all kinds of reasons why that console hasn't done as well as anyone could have hoped. Much as people on the internet might complain about it, I suspect the lower-than-expected hardware specs were mostly irrelevant. I'm sure they might have made it harder for some devs to get software on the platform, but if the audience had been there from early on, it could still have been worth the the time taken to optimise in order to reach that player base.

 

I guess the main problem is that Nintendo have done a really poor job of explaining to the world what the Wii U does, and who it is for. In general, brand awareness of the Wii and DS families still seems to be strong, but I feel like a lot of people just didn't realise that the Wii U was a totally new console which offered new and unique experiences. That original idea of having a discrete, moderately-priced box in your living room that plays Nintendo games from every era, either for the whole family or for one person tucked up in a chair with a gamepad - isn't that a wonderful dream?

 

There are so many current games that'd be enlivened by the control options the console offers. It's sad that we'll probably never see games like Sunless Sea or X-Com 2 on the gamepad with touch controls, or Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes, or that weird Keita Takahashi game with the controller with 16 buttons. All of those would be perfect for Wii U! But on the other hand, those extra possibilities offered by the tension between the gamepad and the TV create their own problems: if you want to dedicate yourself to mechanics based around  that (like ZombiU or Splatoon or Affordable Space Adventures) you effectively rule out one of the other core features of the console, which is playing solely on the gamepad. It's a tricky thing.