I shoot things with my Wii

[miffy495]

Sorry 'bout the horrible title there, but it makes sense, so hear me out. Given the current situation with a sort-of light gun renaissance on the Wii, I figured the games deserved their own thread where we could compare, contrast, recommend, etc. I'm talking about Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles, Ghost Squad, Link's Crossbow Training, the upcoming House of the Dead 2 & 3 pack, and anything coming down the pipe I may be forgetting. I've always had a soft spot for light gun games. Maybe because it's gaming at it's most refined/simple. Maybe because the first time I ever tried a game was when as a 4 year old my best friend had to show me his big brother's NES so I could try this "Duck Hunt" thing out. At any rate, this new bounty of Wii light gun gaming has me overjoyed and I can't think of a much better place to try to discuss the games.

Starting us off:

I just picked up Sega AM2's Ghost Squad between classes today and finished my first run through the Arcade mode about 10 minutes ago. Great fun, this. All the cheesy voice over you'd expect from such a game. "Wilco. We're going to rescue the President now." made me giggle with joy for a bit. Gameplay is solid, no problems aiming or any issues at all with control. I'm playing with the Wii Zapper (hell, it was $20 and I love the genre. Why not?) which from reviews was made out to be a bit clunky, but I really like it. No more clunky than Area 51 or Time Crisis 2 seemed back in the arcades I used to play them in, anyways.

On a technical front, it's damned impressive that Ghost Squad's calibration is advanced enough that you don't even need a reticle on screen. They give you the option to turn it off and, providing you've used the calibration tool in the options menu beforehand, it's smooth as all hell and incredibly playable. Major props to AM2 on that one. The graphics are what you'd expect from a Wii port of a 2004 arcade game. Read: nothing special. Gets the job done well enough though, and there's nothing stand-out bad about the visuals.

Lastly, it's really damned short. Like, 20 minutes for the arcade mode short. Still, given the huge amount of unlockables, multiple branching paths in each mission, and what seems like it will be a perfect co-op experience, I can't say it'll be ignored anytime soon. If you're a fan of light gun games (if not, why are you still reading?) I'd go for it. Especially as it's budget priced at $30. Little things are more forgivable when the game is cheap.

I also have Link's Crossbow Training, as it came with the Zapper. There's a lot of good and enough bad to warrant discussing in that one, but it's almost 4 in the morning now so I should probably not get ranting about it yet.

[BigJKO]

But is the Zapper much different from just using the Wiimote to shoot things? I remember being quite satisfied with that in Rayman Raving Rabbids.

[miffy495]

Not really, I just love having something that feels like a light gun. It doesn't change the mechanics of the games at all, just the feel of them. Something about shooting things with a little plastic wand when I could be using a little plastic gun seemed wrong. Also, it allows both hands to rumble, as the Wiimote's shake is enough to get the whole thing going. Didn't realize that I missed that in Wii games until I got it back. It makes getting to the A button a bit awkward, but all the games designed for use with the Zapper take that into account. I certainly wouldn't try playing Metroid with it, at any rate.

[brkl]

But shooting stuff with a wand feels like you're in Star Trek!

[DanJW]

Now there's a thought. A Star Trek adventure/FPS...

[Roderick]

Haha, brilliant. Anyone tried out Umbrella Chronicles yet? Is it out in the US already? Maybe at trade shows or something? I refused to stand in a huge line at the Nintendo booth last week. so I'm pretty weak I guess.

[miffy495]

It's out, it was just that Ghost Squad was $20 cheaper. Besides, the back of the box had a picture of the main character in a panda costume. I couldn't resist.

I'm looking forward to UC, but hear it's around 20 hours, so not so much for the sit down, play, go back to whatever you were doing sort of game that I'm looking to fill the spaces between Mario Galaxy runs and Mass Effect. It's one I'm saving for when I have some more free time to play it in. Also, my birthday is in three weeks so I may as well hold off on some of the more "holy hell, that looks awesome" games that family members I game with have heard me talking about until after the holidays.

[Marek]

But shooting stuff with a wand feels like you're in Star Trek!

Oh man!!! Z trigger for stun! Also... nunchuck is your tricorder, use the joystick to scan all around you!!!

[n0wak]

shooting stuff with a wand

I'm mostly interested in the impressions of Link's Crossbow Training. It seemed like a throw-away game (like Wii Play) but some early reviewers liked it well enough on its own.

Ghost Squad never sounded good though. They should release Virtua Cop on Virtual Console (VC on VC!) and find a way to get it to work with the Wii-mote, but it sounds like it'd be too much effort for them...

[BigJKO]

They should release Virtua Cop on Virtual Console (VC on VC!) and find a way to get it to work with the Wii-mote, but it sounds like it'd be too much effort for them...

Sounds more like something they'd Wii-ify for a WiiWare release.

[miffy495]

Sorry to ressurrect this absolutely ancient thread, (especially in light of recent developments...) but I finally got around to actually buying House of the Dead 2 & 3 Return. Oh man, this is so fun. This is, of course, with the qualifier that they are straight ports of games that are almost 8 years old. HotD 2 in particular looks like the old N64 version of Resident Evil 2. That aside, it's just so fun I don't care. And the voice acting! My god! The horrible, horrible voice acting! I think I heard the exact same sample of "What... kind of person... could do this." (question mark omitted intentionally) about 6 times in 10 minutes. It's impossible to play this game without grinning like an idiot. Splatters of green blood everywhere. Ridiculously small, fast moving weak points on bosses. The fact that the game, by default, gives you game over after you've used up what would be $5 in the arcade. (I never had more than $5 to spend at a time back when these machines were around) It's all so perfect.

My only gripe with this game is that the things that you can unlock will only do so when you no longer need them. Want infinite continues? Beat the game on hard. Congratulations, you now don't need them. I'm hoping that my recently unlocked longer hit counter will help me get there. Still, so many fun times. I actually kinda want to fire up Ghost Squad and Crossbow Training again now and spend my day off doing nothing but shooting things with the Zapper.

That said, the Wii Zapper does feel a little awkward with the nunchuck in it. I find the cable that connects the remote to the nunchuck presses irritatingly against my right thumb. I'm seriously considering getting a Nyko Perfect Shot as they're $20 at my work and seem like they'd give a far more realistic arcade-style gun feel. That, and the ability to keep your left hand moving freely, make it a very appealing purchase for me.

[Roderick]

I saw the trailer and the voice-acting seems hilariously awful =D

What I wonder though: how does House of the Dead fare against the much newer Umbrella Chronicles? I always viewed that title as a mature outcropping of the rails shooter genre. Does it show when playing House now? Does that one feel significantly more static or less scary?

[miffy495]

Well, given that UC is about $20 more expensive, I still don't have it. I fell behind on my games buying when I went for 2 months without a job. Now that my debts are being paid off, I'm starting to have a little disposable income here and there. It's on my list, but in my current financial state I felt I could justify a $30 game now, but not really a $50 one. Soon I shall know how UC plays. For now, it's HotD, Ghost Squad, and Crossbow Training for me...

[ThunderPeel2001]

Sorry 'bout the horrible title there

Are you kidding? It's the best thread title this year!

[BooJaka]

Are you kidding? It's the best thread title this year!

And last year apparently...

[lobotomy42]

Umbrella Chronicles is fun. Pointless and kinda stupid, but, you know, fun. If you enjoy, uh, reminiscing about Resident Evil, then it's slightly more fun.

I mean. You point and shoot. It's hard on single-player, but pretty easy on co-op. I don't think they adjust the difficulty or ammo or anything when you switch modes.

[miffy495]

Fair enough. I'd mostly be playing single player myself, but as I'm an RE fan, I'll still probably pick it up in a couple of weeks. This paycheque is going to Mario Kart, next to UC. Hopefully by then, I'll be completely dug out of debt and ready to get back into some serious gaming in time for things like Too Human...

[miffy495]

Sorry to resurrect this thread once again, but it does seem oddly appropriate for a genre that largely focuses on zombies. On that note, I just finished my first (of many) run-through of House Of The Dead: Overkill. Overall, get this damn game if you have a Wii.

It's not as hilarious as some reviews made it out to be (I get the feeling game reviewers experience so little [intentional] humor while working on reviews that when they see something pretty funny they build it up more than it's worth) but still has a handful of moments that had me laughing out loud. Oddly, for a game this short, it took me around 2 weeks to beat. Lots going on lately, and my game time has for the most part come only in half hour bursts. About the length of one of the game's levels, then. This means that each time I've had a free half hour, I've booted up the Wii. And yeah, it's excellent.

I don't know how much detail I can go into without spoiling things. All the best moments of this game are due to how insanely over-the-top it goes, and describing that would ruin the fun. All I think I can really talk about are the game mechanics. Shooting works as you'd expect. You point at something, press the B button, and that something explodes. How it explodes is up to you. Given that the game is one-handed, I have a couple of complaints. Oddly, both of these stem from the fact that I'm playing it with a Nyko Perfect Shot. Since getting it and playing lots and lots of shooters for the Wii with it (or really, the same 4 shooters over and over) I've come to love that tiny little plastic hand cannon. Why then is the biggest excuse to bust it out in a long time seemingly designed without it in mind?

I speak here, of firing grenades and switching weapons. You can carry two weapons at a time, which you choose before entering a mission. Great idea, and some enemies (zombie cops with riot shields, for example) don't get phased by your standard handgun, so it's very nice to have a shotgun that'll still take their asses down on reserve. Unfortunately, each weapon is mapped to the 1 or 2 button, respectively. This means having to interrupt myself to bring my left hand to the controller and tap the button for the gun I want. Fair enough I guess, and they had to map it to something, but doing so on the fly is very disarming in the midst of a swarm. Grenades are mapped to the - button, and you get them rarely enough that it doesn't really make a big deal, but having to aim when I want the grenade to go and then tap the top of my controller is counter-intuitive. I can't imagine doing this with a standard Wii zapper, where your left hand is on the back of the controller the whole time. Nyko Perfect Shot is the way to go if you want a gun shell for your wiimote in this game. While we're on control issues, my first playthrough of the first mission in Director's Cut mode (extended levels unlocked when you beat the game) I got stuck in some reload loop. Reloading is done by shaking the controller, and the game thought for a minute that the controller was shaking a lot. As I got my face ripped off, this was quite bothersome. Luckily, it got reset when I died and hit continue.

The bosses are ridiculously easy. I died a couple of times throughout the game, but not while fighting them. Creative bosses, yes, but very quick to die. The game already flashes their weak points to you when the fight starts, so why does it need to circle them mid-battle? Bah, I say. I did die significantly more than usual when I played Director's Cut, so I suspect they may have upped the difficulty for this mode. Only played the first level yet though, so I can't be sure. They definitely added different guns you can buy. Dying is actually handled quite well in this game. Instead of having a limited number of continues like in 2 & 3 or Ghost Squad, when you choose to continue, the game lops off half of whatever score you've acquired so far. Theoretically, as long as you have more than 2 points, you have infinite continues. It's also broken up into levels, so you're much less likely to need continues. How many times can you die in a half hour chunk of not-that-hard game? Director's Cut brings it back to credits. Specifically, 3 credits to finish the level. I died twice that round. One legit, one because of that damn reloading glitch. I hate having a game that I've already paid my damn $60 for use a limited continues system. Feels like an archaic holdover from arcades and there's no need for it as I don't put quarters into my Wii to play. Still, this is the bonus mode that is completely separate from the main game, so I won't hold it against it too much. It's optional, so whatever. Unless it's WAY harder, 3 credits is plenty anyway.

What else can be said that's spoiler-free? Get yourself a perfect shot and play the hell out of this game. I'm excited for beating Director's Cut next to unlock the dual wield mode. I have two gun shells, why the hell not have two guns? Biggest workout my Wii has had since No More Heroes. Even the old HotD games I'd only play for an hour or so every now and then. It feels good to have a reason to dust off the poor neglected little guy for a reason other than the girlfriend wanting to have a go at Wii Fit.

EDIT: Oh, and I still don't have Umbrella Chronicles. This game has prompted me to order it off the interwebs though, so hopefully soon I'll be able to offer a comparison for those interested.

[T-Matt]

I've been thinking about getting a wii just because I enjoy these types of games so much.

[brkl]

Ehh, you should probably wait and get Dead Space: Extraction if that turns out to be good. Umbrella Chronicles is not... Well, maybe it is bad. It was fun playing with my brother for a while, but alone it's worthless.

[Roderick]

I really liked Umbrella Chronicles and played it lots. With friends, surely, but I think that holds true for all lightgun games. That's what they're made for It also felt like a rich, true Resident Evil product, with lots of backstory and atmosphere.

Overkill had me amused, until I saw the package and the HUUUUGE WHITE GUN it came with. At that point it became kind of a must-have. That gun is just ridiculous and awesome! And since the game is apparently good too, and I need some new multiplayer things to play with my girlfriend, I think I might be getting this soon.

[miffy495]

Wait, it has a specific gun? Damn, I wish I'd known that before I got it. It's nice to have a Perfect Shot and the standard Zapper, but I'd also quite like something like a sawed off shotgun. Imagining myself going through the dual-wield mode with a shotgun in my right hand and a pistol in my left makes me feel very happy.

brkl, Umbrella Chronicles is already paid for, so I guess I'll have to wait and see. Is Dead Space going to be light-gun styled? I heard first person bits, but I didn't realize that's what they meant...

[brkl]

I haven't read all that much, but it sounds like a light-gun game with more paths than most of them.

[miffy495]

I will absolutely be investigating this. Say, in about 10 minutes. Damn, suddenly I'm really excited for the possibilities of Dead Space Wii. First person light gun dismemberment? Yes fucking please!

[brkl]

With severed Sacks