Excellent Wii video on .... IGN

[Marek]

http://media.games.ign.com/articles/693/693580/vid_1657122.html

Watch it.

[BigJKO]

Man, that's taking a long time to load. (BWii looks nice, though)

EDIT: Curses! The video decided to render itself completely unviewable right after I made this post.. like it knew something.

[Roderick]

Yes, never expected Batallion Wars to look so fun. Especially multiplayer would be super.

[hitoshi]

Red Steel is...awful. Not the game itself, but the controls - the aiming is bad as hell, i don't know why they decided to use THIS method: it would be a lot easier if the wiimote could be used as a mouse with a fixed crosshair, and the analog stick could be used to strafe - move around.

It looks like Wii is not as good for FPS's as it may look like. Rail shooters please...

Still waiting for a decent game, not Mario / Zelda / Samus Aran. Show use MORE from Heroes please, Suda51!

[miffy495]

Mmmm... more battalion wars. Not that the original was the best game ever or anything, but it was a damn fun little diversion. I gladly welcome a second installment, especially if it has wifi multiplay. Same goes for Strikers, although most of the fun of that comes from having 4 people in a space of about 4 cubic meters huddled around a TV trash talking each other. Damn that game is fun when you get a good crowd. Sequels for two of the better end-of-run gamecube games? I'm in.

PS: I always kinda thought Red Steel was a dumb idea. This has validated that sentiment. Thank you, IGN.

[brkl]

The most complete tour of wee ever. Yeah, I'm sorry, but

[brkl]

Red Steel didn't seem so bad.. The guy keeps saying he's too close to the screen and that throws off the aiming.

[miffy495]

which either means that the aiming is only good when you're sitting a certain distance from the screen (not exactly good practice when trying to make a game accessible) or he's too proud to admit that he can work at a games website and still be bad at a game once in a while. The equivalent of a five year old complaining "Mom! Stop cleaning this room while I'm playing! You're distracting me!"

hmmm... now that I think about it, I'm a bit ashamed of how many times I blamed Mario's death on my mother back in the summer of '92. That last little bit of Mario World was freaking hard.

[Aussie Ben]

Hooray, Strikers still has Kremlings as goalies, it gets a

Batallion Wars II looks like it will be fun, but I'm terrible at those types of games, so sadly it's not for me.

Red Steel...the look of Red Steel actually makes me think of Perfect Dark Zero, of all things. (I don't know if this is good or bad.) Looks interesting, but I'm terrible at first person shooters too. Oh well.

Also, does this Fran guy know how much he sounds like a total prat? "Opening doors, you just shake it like that. I thought it was gonna be gimmicky, but you know, it's great."

[Thrik]

Red Steel doesn't look too amazing, but I think it's a bit early to make sweeping statements like "Wii is not as good for FPS's as it may look like". That's pretty much comparable to saying the PC isn't as good for RTS games as it looks because Act of War was a pile of TOSH. I think a good implementation will come at some point; after all, they made it work on the GameCube.

Now that I've mentioned RTS though, that's definitely an area where I think the Wii will shine over time. I don't know about you guys, but I've never enjoyed RTS games on consoles due to the lack of a pointer. The wiimote 'n' nunchuck could — with some loving — be a terrific way to control an RTS.

The most basic implementation I can think of would be to simply use the nunchuck stick for moving the screen around, and of course using the pointer like you'd use any PC mouse. But with both the wiimote and nunchuck's abilities for all sorts of gestures, it could take RTS games to a whole new level of intuitiveness.

Anyone who's played an RTS game knows that excessive buttons/keys are an issue with most. Being able to offload a lot of that clutter to gestures like we saw in the Batallion Wars video would be superb, and it'd also help draw a lot more people into the genre since it's the complex controls that can turn a lot of people off rather than the strategic gameplay.

[Twilo]

Battalion Wars certainly looks like a decent buy considering the multiplayer. Plenty of so-so games become super-excellent when you throw in internet play, and it looks to have enough depth to stay interesting over a large number of matches. I don't think that I would say the same about mario football, though obviously I shouldn't be making judgements at this stage; the special shots remind me of the special shots in Mario Hoops, which are fun.

In all, the video has me warming up to battalion wars and giving up on the other stuff. I don't think the launch lineup is all that great, to be honest. TGS might change my mind.

[Wrestlevania]

I don't think this was the best setup to demonstrate the Wii. If you watch carefully, the IGN presenter - and, later, the Nintendo representative - struggles to control the various avatars consistently--Wii Tennis being particularly note-worthy in this respect. This could be for any number of reasons, not least the lack of space and custom calibration.

Having said that, the guy from IGN spends quite a lot of his time in BWii shooting his own units in the back. So maybe both he and the Nintendo rep weren't on top form that day anyway...

I don't really think this clears up any doubts, all told. If anything it's confirming what people may have only seen in print before now; that Wii is an initially-awkward beast to get to grips with, and that at least some of the first generation of games won't control all that well. Which is to be expected in all fairness. I'm disappointed that Red Steel's supposedly updated sword controls are still pre-scripted, and not an accurate reflection of the player's real time Wiimote movements. Fingers crossed that LucasArts can pull it off.

But I'll be damned if the graphics don't look sufficiently detailed and fluid--every game shown fairly whips along, and I don't think I noticed any slowdown either. Some of the special effects in the Red Steel demo are extremely pleasant too and the textures don't look half-bad either.

[Roderick]

I'm not sure how far the WiiMote will actually get in approaching the mouse. I've played with it a bit, and the pointer was usually all over the screen. It might and will obviously get better with practice, but for especially RTS games you'll need swiftness yet precision. The WiiRemote might not be well suited for it, because it doesn't have any friction to prevent it from flying all over save for straining your grip. The mouse has a surface that acts as a proxy of the screen. The remote doesn't have such a thing and will not offer the same precision because you have no reference to the screen, no frame to your actions.

But I might be proved wrong by experience, say, come the 10th of November.

[baconian]

I havent looked at Wii in a while, and now this video and thread have made me completely reverse my point of view on it. It's all sorta crap, and I don't want one any more.

[Thrik]

From how you've described it Rodi, that could be something worked on by having a lesser sensitivity. Or perhaps more subtle movements don't move the cursor on-screen as much, preventing you from accidentally shifting your cursor five metres when you only moved your hand a few mm.

Another possible solution would be for the cursor to only move when you hold down the wiimote's A button, stopping you from throwing the cursor all over the joint when you casually move your arm around.

It sounds like something that's a matter of software implementation rather than technology, anyway. We'll soon see.

[Roderick]

You'll still have no physical way to ground your movements. You're still balancing the thing in the air. But yes, my testrun was probably with too high a sensitivity. And stuff like Wii Orchestra benefits from it. I'm just not sure PC/mouse-centric games will be equally enjoyable with the remote, though that may have only been the pipedream of a few but never the intention of Nintendo.

Err, still, the proof is in the pudding.

[eljay]

Rodi - You're balancing it in the air if you play standing up, sure, but if you're sitting down surely you can just have the wiimote resting on your lap? I would be surprised if you ended up playing standing up the majority of the time.

hitoshi - The analog stick IS used to strafe... Using the control method you suggest for the wiimote part creates a different problem, i.e. How do you turn around?

N.B. the proof of the pudding is in the eating

[Roderick]

I kick ass in the name of proverbs everywhere.

[hitoshi]

hitoshi - The analog stick IS used to strafe... Using the control method you suggest for the wiimote part creates a different problem, i.e. How do you turn around?

My mistake, you're right! Mea culpa

Thrik: My opinion is based on the footages seen from Red Steel and Metroid Prime - the two suffers from the same problem, to aim accuretly, you have to "go out" from the screen, it not just looks really bad but i assume it feels ankward too.

It's a great ide to use the wiimote for strategies, and that's true, it isn't as effective as a mouse would be, but it's hell a lot better then using the standard controller - it gives you a bigger movement freedom than anything else on consoles. Except of specially designed first/third party mouses of course

[Wrestlevania]

Except of specially designed first/third party mouses of course.

...or a touch screen. We've not seen anything of the Wii/DS connectivity - and therefore possibilities - just yet.

[General Fuzzy McBitty]

Actually, I read somewhere that it will be conectable, and that Spore is comming to Wii with DS compatibility ... let me go see if I can find the artical.

[General Fuzzy McBitty]

Ok, gang, here we are: (Edited so the link works)

The REAL deal on Spore for Wii/DS, straight from EA

As you all know, today has been a pretty big day for Wii info. There is all sorts of info coming from many sources. Last night it seemed to be kicked off by IGN’s Wii Mailbag feature, which said that Spore for the Wii had been confirmed. We were all left scratching our heads, wondering when the confirmation happened! Then the next morning we come to find out that UK Magazine NGamer had the same information, as well as some DS talk. I think many of us were surpised as to all this info popping up, with not a word from EA! If you were up in the early morning hours, you saw that I was hunting all around to find out where IGN got its info, plus confirm the NGamer stories as actually being printed. A busy morning indeed!

Well that all has changed now, no more need for hunting! I was lucky enough to get an official statement from EA on the topic of Spore on Wii and DS. Check it out below.

“Right now we’re 100% focused on finishing SPORE on the PC and PC only. Though we’re investigating the possibilities of bringing the franchise to other platforms in the future, any announcements or confirmations for the Wii or any other platform would be premature.”

There you go, the official word from EA. As to the IGN Wii Mailbag and NGamer info, I cannot explain how those came about. I am going to trust EA’s word on Spore…seeing that they are the publisher! EA also promised to keep me in the loop with any future announcements concerning Spore on Nintendo platforms…so once it becomes official (if it does) we will know! Huge thanks to the team at EA for providing me with the official statement.

This refutes the original claim in another artical that I read. Sorry that I was wrong.