A look back on the Wii

[Sno]

So with the Wii U out and the Wii mostly behind us, how does everybody feel about six years of the Nintendo Wii?

What were the disappointments and successes? which games stood out?

[Joewintergreen]

Holy shit, six years?

[Sno]

Dude, the 360 is 7 years in and still has another year or two in it.

This has been a stupid elongated hardware cycle.

[JonCole]

I'm the idiot who saw the Wii U and decided to run out and buy a Wii. So... I don't know what that really says about my experiences with the Wii other than I haven't had too many, though I am a bit excited to go back and fill in some of the holes in my experiences this generation - Skyward Sword, Galaxy 2, The Last Story, Xenoblade Chronicles, Donkey Kong Country Returns, and some other junk.

[Sno]

I wouldn't skip the first Super Mario Galaxy. Galaxy 2 tends to feel like the leftovers, and speaking personally, i really fell in love with the strange melancholy story-book thing the first one had going. (It was, apparently, by the request of Miyamoto that Galaxy 2 get back to Bowser kidnapping Peach.)

Some other things worth looking at - Silent Hill: Shattered Memories, Sin & Punishment: Star Successor, The two Endless Ocean games, The two No More Heroes games, Mad World, Metroid Prime 3/Metroid Prime Trilogy, Super Paper Mario, Kirby's Epic Yarn, Zack & Wiki, Excitebots, TvC, SSBB, etc. (Monster Hunter Tri is a great way to make friends hate eachother.)

[subbes]

I'm trying to work out how many games used the balance board. Two, was it (Wii Fit and Wii Ski)?

[Roderick]

The Wii, for me, is a console tainted by disappointment - which may not at all be very fair. The first two years were so exciting, it couldn't but fail to live up to the hype. After the glory of Galaxy and the novelty of the Wii Remote wore off, some awful things came into perspective:

- Third party support was mainly relegated to shovelware of the worst kind, or flailing ports

- The motion controls were hardly ever, not even by Nintendo, used in a meaningful way. Apart from a few on-rails shooters (Umbrella Chronicles!), there was little that couldn't have been accomplished with traditional controls.

- The SD graphics turned sour extremely quickly. It didn't take long before it was painful to look at in comparison to Xbox 360 games.

- The online aspect turned out of no interest. The Mii's and the 'always connected!' stuff disappointed.

And so, the Wii left me hanging, is the overall feeling I have towards it. But if you actually look at the library of games, that seems a crazy stance! The Wii has so many amazing games, outshining almost easily the Gamecube. Metroid, Mario, Donkey Kong, Kirby, Zelda, they all had fantastic games on the Wii. This year alone saw three JRPG's on the console, which, if they weren't perhaps all brilliant, were all of them unique and interesting in various ways.

So here is the crazy thing: if I had bought a Wii today, as a sort of 'retro' thing, I would have nothing but praise for it. I'd take the low resolution and failure to exploit the innovation for granted and just enjoy the amazing library of games. But since I went along for the ride and expected a console that would lead the way to the future, it disappointed emotionally. That's ultimately why I'm not diving into the Wii U at the moment.

For the sake of context, I am a big fan of Nintendo, but have always been far more in love with their handhelds, which have offered some of the finest gaming experiences in any giving period.

[tegan]

I'm trying to work out how many games used the balance board. Two, was it (Wii Fit and Wii Ski)?

It was a surprising amount.

I think that the strangest thing about the Wii was that it was the Negative Gamecube. While there wasn't much there to separate the Gamecube hardware from its peers, its software was full of huge departures for Nintendo's cavalcade of flagship titles. Mario had a weird jetpack, Metroid became an FPS, Donkey Kong was controlled with a pair of bongos, etc. The Wii on the other hand promised us crazy new experiences, but seemed to cater to our expectations much more frequently than usual. We got a 2D Mario console game, a new Donkey Kong Country, a new Kirby game that was actually developed from the ground up as a Kirby game for once, a new 3D Metroid that deliberately played like a 2D Metroid, etc. I think the largest source of disappointment for me personally was the tendency of first-party games to deliver something safe rather than something new.

I also don't remember any new first-party games not based on existing franchises apart from Xenoblade and the Wii _____ lineup.

I had a good run with the Wii, though. It really opened me up to third-party games, for one, and the combined abilities of Gamecube backwards-compatibility and Virtual Console spoiled me rotten.

Highlights:

-Muramasa: The Demon Blade secretly turning out to be arguably the most beautiful game of this generation, or at least the most beautiful game on the Wii. Having mostly excellent boss fights doesn't hurt either.

-Xenoblade Chronicles had a moment where a Hode ran past me on my way through Makna Forest. I was accustomed to normally aggressive minor enemies ignoring me as I had been level grinding on the Bionis' leg for a while beforehand. A few minutes later while in a fight with a stronger enemy I gradually realized that I could hear a rhythmic thumping in the background, followed gradually by the first notes of the "you are going to get your ass kicked" battle theme beginning to fade in. I shifted the camera around and saw the same Hode tearing across the clearing I was in, being chased by a giant fucking dinosaur that was now more interested in me than in the Hode. I got chased for a few minutes and then got killed as soon as it caught up with me. I never thought a JRPG would contain a "the grenade rolled down the hill" moment.

-Having never really played a Metroid game or a first-person game before buying it on impulse, Metroid Prime Trilogy is probably the best sixty dollars I've ever spent on a game.

-Flying through open space for the first time in Super Mario Galaxy. I know it's just there to hide load times, but it's just so darned majestic.

Letdowns:

-The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword seemed to be determined to ruin its fun moments (like the boss of the fourth dungeon) by making every other part of the game be either feel tacked-on, badly-designed, or barely-functional. The crowning moment for me was a tie between making the last dungeon be a goddamned sliding tile puzzle and repeating my two most hated bosses over and over again throughout the game.

-Metroid Other M has a number of "pixel hunts" in which you attempt to find a minor detail in a landscape. One of these involves finding a white woman in a white coat in the window of a white house on the other side of a white landscape. In a blizzard.

-Super Paper Mario somehow managing to excise everything that made me care about the NPCs in the previous games. There was something about Flipside and Flopside that just made them tedious to navigate. It was kind of heartbreaking to see my favourite Nintendo series turn into some different, unfamiliar animal.

[I_smell]

I read this awesome story recently, and along with watching some of Gamespot's Wii Launch event in 2006, it really reminded me how Nintendo flipped the damn table of what Video games were all about.

It's like one day you're playing Timesplitters and Halo and Star Wars Battlefront, then Brain Training happened and now fucking look! My mum literally has her own Video games console. I think this whole GIGANTIC world of games that people like us don't give a shit about all rolls back to Nintendo (and facebook games).

and they succeeded in spades 20 years later.

So reading that article really just makes ya feel sad about the Wii U. I think Nintendo should stop pretending to appeal to "HARDCORE GAMERS" and just build a stellar relationship with people who're getting into this for the first time, like my sister who plays Zumba or whatever. Maybe it's asking too much for them to pull another "The Nintendo Revolution" though.

As for what I liked on it: Wii Sports and Mario Galaxy are hall-of-fame amazing. Those other 5 years are kinda whatever. This Nintendo Land game on the Wii U DOES NOT feel like it's from the people who made Wii Sports, and that kind of annoys me. A couple minigames are perfect, but the package as a whole feels really cheap.

[Yasawas]

I've had two - one about five months after launch which was the first time I saw one available on Amazon which I really tried to like and then sold after about a year of buying disappointing games, and then another last year because it was cheap, there was a new Zelda coming out and I figured I'd like to be able to play my previous Virtual Console purchases again too. Oh.

It's the most disappointing console I've ever owned. I adored the Gamecube before it and the success of the DS made me think that the lack of power might play to its strengths, taking it out of competition with the others and with the introduction of a unique control method giving us new gameplay experiences. It didn't really work out that way. I was thinking about it recently and I honestly don't think there's 10 Wii games I'd pay money for. From a personal standpoint:

+ Aesthetically a wonderful looking bit of kit, feels solid and reliable.

+ Virtual Console! I think Mario 64 was available at UK launch with a handful of other greats and I was very excited about the prospect of back-catalogue stuff being playable through a crisp component connection without having to faff about with old consoles.

+ Super Mario Galaxy. Just astonishingly Nintendo. Full of invention and so much fun.

- Abysmal online functionality. Mario Kart Wii was a fine game I thought, and I fondly remember some great games online with friends over some pretty robust netcode considering there were player there from all over the globe. But Friend Codes? Come on. And over five years after the Wii they would launch the 3DS which still has them, albeit tied to console rather than game. Insanity.

- This kind of ties in with the above but one of the nice things about Live, PSN, Steam and a number of successful services which sells you digital products is that your purchases are tied to a central account and can be redownloaded when you like in a lot of cases, or at least retrieved in special circumstances under others. All Wii purchases are tied to a device which as a consumer only ensures I will spend less money on your service as I have no idea if I'll be able to get my games back if it gets stolen or breaks. They still do this on the 3DS. I have no idea why. They have the most glittering back catalogue in gaming and seemingly no clue how to sell it to us again.

- The games. They just weren't there for me. With the exception of Mario Galaxy I found nothing on the Wii that matched the standard of my favourite GameCube titles - Wind Waker (hey, I like it!), Killer 7, Ikaruga, Chibi-Robo, F-Zero GX, Viewtiful Joe, MGS: Twin Snakes, Pikmin, Paper Mario and the best game - Resident Evil 4.

I know there's a few I haven't played that I might like (Donkey Kong, Kirby's Epic Yarn looks delightful) but realistically I can't see me ever getting round to them now.

[Thrik]

To me it feels like a lot of people forgot all about the Wii after about 2009, including Nintendo. The fact that essentially nothing was added to it via firmware updates during years where the 360 has literally transformed itself multiple times only emphasis this. Even the PS3 has been improved, whereas with the Wii the same jankiness to the entire UI has remained there since launch.

Personally, I was very hyped for it initially because at that time I was used to SD games and didn't even have a proper HD television at the time. Getting another SD console didn't seem like such a big deal, but in this case Microsoft and Sony bet on the right horse because now the Wii looks so horrendously antiquated when spun up on a HD television despite its design not actually being so bad — you just can't get around the fact that SD looks blurry and shitty on a big TV, and this feeds into all the games and dirties the otherwise perfect sheen that games like Mario Galaxy and Skyward Sword have.

The pointing technology in the Wii is also mediocre at best. Compared to the near-perfect implementation that Sony managed with Move, the Wii's pointer is hideously inaccurate and has serious sensitivity/signal issues in larger rooms. Even on the maximum sensitivity I was finding my cursor jumping around. I avoided using it at any cost and it just annoyed me when a game tried to be imaginative and incorporate it into the experience. In fact, that goes for all the Wii's gyro and aiming shit — I just didn't welcome it, preferring buttons in almost every case.

I feel that while nobody can deny Nintendo accomplished their goal of creating a console that truly appeals to casual gamers and kids, those of us who even just wanted robust first-party games were left out in the cold due to shitty technical limitations that were only made worse as Microsoft and Sony continued to rub salt in the wounds. In many ways the Wii U is the console we all wanted back when the Wii came out, and now that fucker is too late too because everything I just said is most likely going to happen all over again, except with different technical limitations leading the way.

All that said, I had a great time with what I played of Twilight Princess; Mario Galaxy was sublime and I'm currently loving its sequel; and it remains an excellent all-in-one nostalgia device for experiencing legacy titles in a somewhat authentic way without all the extra hardware. It was far from a pointless console, but most definitely one that had so much more potential.

[Ben X]

Wii Tennis almost made it worth the buying price on its own. I just feel sorry for Nintendo that Sony and M$ immediately jumped on the bandwagon and steered it more expertly.

[Sno]

I remember spending months trying to get a Wii, they were sold out constantly. At a few points i was checking with some local stores on a nearly daily basis. It was a good six months before i found one. Red Steel was the first game i played and i was super bummed out. (Still the worst game i've played on the Wii, it was fucking broken! It's barely playable.)

Wasn't the best first impression.

Anyways, I think the thing that stands out to me the most about the Wii was the "blue ocean" strategy, trying to reach for that broader market. I mean, it worked! Nintendo found their new audience, but then that audience changed and they didn't try to keep up. They didn't keep providing new software for those people, and the best things were completely lost amongst the shovel ware, while smart phones showed up and offered similar experiences for vastly cheaper, and many more people still simply lost interest.

In a lot of ways, it's kind of been Nintendo's track record, to innovate and then stand by while everybody else is eating their lunch. So somehow the Wii, Nintendo's most successful home console ever, has become a symbol of failure.

The direction the 3DS and the Wii U are going, doubling back down on their core audience, i think shows that Nintendo isn't prepared to continue the fight for that broader market.

As for the hardware...

- It should have been HD, even if it wasn't as powerful as the 360 or the PS3, it should have been HD. Games like Xenoblade, Metroid Prime 3, and Super Mario Galaxy would look phenomenal in HD.

- The motion control never worked, and the motion plus brought with it many new quirks.

+ I think the pointer does work and i think it ended up being a fairly successful addition. (Just be careful about bright light sources drowning out the hidden sensor bar LED's the Wii-remote uses to track position.)

+ The shitty little speaker in the Wii-remote was a fun gimmick, i think some games put that to good use.

+ The core Wii-remote is an interesting piece of hardware in that pretty much any way you can think of to hold it, is a viable way to hold it. The way it cleverly evokes both a TV remote and a NES pad makes it just the least intimidating thing ever. (It's super strange to see the Wii U have, essentially, the exact opposite design philosophy.)

- The creeping realization that because of all those shitty peripherals, i have actually ended up spending way more on Wii hardware than i have on 360 hardware.

+ I actually really love the Wii-remote/Nunchuk combo as a way to play games. Give me a sweet split ambidextrous controller like that on the other systems, just nix the motion control, and that's something i would use. (You can be soooooo lazy, you don't even have to hold up your arms!)

- The online functionality is busted. The most advanced online implementations on the Wii are quite obviously straining against some really primitive infrastructure and technology.

- WiiWare is a near wasteland.

+/- Virtual Console is too expensive, but there are some incredibly rare games available and the emulation is nearly perfect. I appreciate what Nintendo is trying to do with this service, and i was willing to support it. I feel like if everything was a dollar or two cheaper, just across the board, Virtual Console would have been an unqualified success.

- The lack of an account infrastructure is bizarre and continues to be bizarre.

+ The universal backwards compatibility for the GC is pretty stellar. (Compare to what a trainwreck backwards compatibility has been on the PS3 and the 360.)

As for the games, there have been some pretty dire stretches, and just so fucking much shovel ware. Still, I think here on the final stretch, the Wii ultimately ended up with a library that has just about as many great games as the GC did, but it got there in a span of time twice as long and with far more market share and success, which does not draw a favorable comparison.

That said, looking back, the games that stand out most to me are:

Xenoblade - I looked at that Nintendo Channel thing that tracks usage statistics about the games you've played, and apparently i played Xenoblade for over three times longer than any other individual Wii game. (Around 180 hours.)

I think there is a case to make for Xenoblade being one of the best RPG's in years, and it is absolutely insane that it took nearly two years for it to be released in North America, and then only through the european localization and largely in response to fans losing their shit about it not being released in North America.

If you need any proof for how much Nintendo stopped giving a shit about the Wii in the last couple years, that is it. The thing is, Xenoblade is exactly the kind of game they need out here if they're really going to try and have the Wii U be another go at the hardcore.

Either way though, it's out and it's an incredible game, people should play it. It's a briskly paced, open ended, and uncharacteristically modern game that is quite unlike what that JRPG's have come to emblemize.

Super Mario Galaxy - Is, i think, the best Mario game Nintendo has ever made. I think that game inspires a childlike sense of wonder, i absolutely love it.

Metroid Prime Trilogy - So, Metroid Prime being one of my personal favorite games, i immediately noticed a lot of the things wrong with it in Trilogy. There are tons of small visual effects that are completely missing, and it makes for a visually much less interesting game. That said, it plays really well with the Corruption control scheme, and so does Echoes, which is much more faithfully represented in this collection and even benefits from a number of rebalanced boss encounters.

By inclusion, Metroid Prime 3: Corruption is also relevant to this, and it's a fine game. It's obviously the most technically impressive, and with the action having been specifically designed around the higher fidelity control scheme, it manages some really excellent things. It's one of those few games that actually makes really great use of the wii-remote. It is also, however, much more cinematic and linear than the other two games, and while by no means a disappointment, is my personal least favorite of the three.

No More Heroes/No More Heroes 2 - They're crass, clunky, and aggressively strange. There's some clever use of the Wii-remote on, a debatably worthless open-world component, and some relatively competent core action. For the most part, though, they get by on buckets and buckets of style. Love it or hate it. (I do really like the games, but i don't love them like i love Killer 7.)

Mad World - The other mature-rated Wii brawler oozing style, though i personally found it to be a much duller and less interesting game. (Subjecting generic enemies to the same canned environmental kills over and over so you can grind out enough points to progress through the level ended up, to me at least, being incredibly boring.)

Sin & Punishment: Star Successor - I've been a big Treasure fan for a good long time and i think this game really exemplifies what those guys do so well. They've taken a well worn formula and put together a game that is absolutely bursting with clever and creative uses of that formula, while holding it together with tight control and demanding challenges.

I'd also really recommend checking out the original Sin & Punishment, which was made available to the west for the first time through Virtual Console. (Sales of that game through VC led to this sequel being made.)

The two games are also quite amusing for being narratively incomprehensible.

Silent Hill: Shattered Memories - It's definitely a growing trend now, but Shattered Memories was kind of at the forefront of survival horror games doing away with combat entirely to focus on puzzles and stealth. It makese sense, of course. Giving you weapons makes you feel empowered, and that is counter intuitive to creating horror.

To cut it short, i think Shattered Memories is a wonderful game filled with clever ideas, and i think it's a small tragedy that this was regarded as essentially a dead end for the series as Konami instead continues to chase the post-RE4 survival action design.

Metroid: Other M - Other M is baffling. It is filled with plodding narrative, linear progression, and offensively sexist undercurrents that completely undermine Samus as a character. (Other M was developed by Team Ninja of Ninja Gaiden and Dead or Alive fame, go figure.)

It's a real bummer then, that there's some pretty solid character action here, and some really interesting not-quite-2d gameplay going on. It controls well and plays well... When it's not asking you to flip the wii-remote around mid-fight and suddenly point it at the screen, throwing you into a first-person aiming thing that is as clunky as it is jarring.

Baffling. (I never said I liked all the games i was going to talk about.)

Monster Hunter Tri - When friends talked me into playing Monster Hunter Tri, i thought i was going to hate it, and i kind of do. That said, i still ended up playing like sixty hours of it and will probably end up buying Monster Hunter 4.

So the first rule is that you absolutely should not play Monster Hunter if you don't have a friend to mentor you through it, because it is a gruelling learning curve and a huge grind. Once it clicks though, it's completely enthralling, it is a profoundly deep and demanding game. So there's a great game in there, but it's buried in layers of shit. There are definitely ways to be both a hardcore experience and even the tiniest bit accessible, but Monster Hunter is completely blind to them.

As for Tri, specifically, it's the only game in the series that you can play online in the west and it's... Well, it's the Wii, right? My group usually just ended up skyping alongside the game to communicate, while the game itself struggles with tons of latency and just a weird, massively convoluted in-game infrastructure.

Monster Hunter is great though, you should probably play it, but maybe not. (Seriously though, If you're the kind of person that was into Dark Souls, you might also find things to like in Monster Hunter, but you absolutely need to have a mentor and a party.)

Endless Ocean/Endless Ocean: Blue World - I really got into these very chill and relaxing games, they're definitely worth shining a light on. Just huge, largely unguided exploration games with some very loose goals to pursue.

... I think those are mostly the games i want to talk about, yeah.

There's definitely other things. The Art Style games on WiiWare are pretty great. (Check out Cubello and Light Trax.)

Nothing needs to be said about Super Smash Bros. Brawl, and i don't think anybody would care to hear about Tatsunoko Vs Capcom. (It's awesome though.) Super Paper Mario is kind of dull, but has a wonderful and hilarious localization. Kirby's Epic Yarn is a profoundly charming and clever game, but as slight an experience as there can possibly be. I found Donkey Kong Country Returns to be a slightly misguided revival, but challenging and totally competent. Wario Land: Shake It is a frequently overlooked gem. Boom Blox is in equal parts Jenga and Angry Birds and is better than that sounds. Battalion Wars 2 offers more of what the first game did, but done better and with online play. Super Mario Galaxy 2, of course. Dead Space: Extraction is probably the best light gun game on the Wii. The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess is a fine enough game, but one i have some problems with. The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword is a game i am enjoying a lot more than i thought i would, I only didn't include it up top for the fact i am still playing through it. Geometry Wars: Galaxies is a surprisingly elaborate spin-off of Geometry Wars that never gets the attention it deserves. ExciteBots is a hilarious and awesome arcade racer. Zack & Wiki is a charming and surprisingly ruthless take on old-school adventure games. Wii Sports Resort is what Wii Sports should have been in the first place.

[tegan]

Metroid: Other M - Other M is baffling. It is filled with plodding narrative, linear progression, and offensively sexist undercurrents that completely undermine Samus as a character. (Other M was developed by Team Ninja of Ninja Gaiden and Dead or Alive fame, go figure.)

It's a real bummer then, that there's some pretty solid character action here, and some really interesting not-quite-2d gameplay going on. It controls well and plays well... When it's not asking you to flip the wii-remote around mid-fight and suddenly point it at the screen, throwing you into a first-person aiming thing that is as clunky as it is jarring.

The weirdest part is the gradual realization that Team Ninja is responsible for the solid Metroid gameplay parts and that Yoshio Sakamoto is responsible for the terrible narrative parts.

I've been hoping for years that some fan community somewhere would make a fan patch that replaces all of the dialogue to make it less insultingly awful. For example, they could have easily made some excuse as to why Samus doesn't turn on the Varia Suit function until she's already gone through a large chunk of the volcano section, but they didn't. Just toss in a dubbed line of Adam telling Samus that the boss is giving off interference that jams her suit or something.

[Sno]

As it happens, i don't like Metroid Fusion much either.

You can definitely see a lot of what was wrong with Other M all the way back in Fusion. The uncharacteristically linear progression, the extremely deliberate narrative pacing, and the goofily ponderous navel-gazing introspection. The game is meant to be finishable in under three hours, but like half an hour of that ends up being fucking incessant unskippable dialogue scenes! A huge chunk of their fanbase are speed runners because they specifically fostered that culture with the multiple endings, but Fusion is just bursting with unskippable dialogue scenes. (Were those incredibly overlong cutscenes and events in Other M unskippable? I can't remember, but if they were, fuck that too.)

I feel like the Prime branch of the series has had an infinitely better grasp of what made those first three games so incredible. (Which is insane! Those dudes in Texas are making better Metroid games than the actual direct sequels to Super Metroid.)

The story in Other M is just so offensively bad though, the way it casts Samus as this weak willed girl desperately in need of a father figure's approval, it's gross and it doesn't fit that character at all. When Samus loses her shit because Ridley shows up, in the chronology of the series she has already fought and defeated Ridley multiple times, without even counting the Prime games. (Never even mind Other M's numerous plot holes and heinously awful writing.)

You put all that aside though, you have a pretty tightly designed character action game with impressively precise 3d platforming and some interesting, albeit clunky gameplay mechanisms. It's more linear than most people would like to see the series be, and it definitely has other problems as well, but at least it's an interesting game doing new things with the series.

It's just, then you have the story on top of all that, and it's so up in your face throughout the game, and just... uggh.

So yeah, maybe not Team Ninja's fault.

[I_smell]

The more I think about the shift in design philosiphy with the Wii U, the more it just baffles and annoys me. The Wii was this stand up, dance around, get everyone together console- how can you go from that to a tablet!? A tablet is the symbol of hunching over a screen on the couch and not looking up to speak to anyone! It's the ultimate "by myself" device.

I hope whatever the next generation of Kinect is will pick up where Nintendo left off, but even then assuming it'll be tied to the "Microsoft X Box" it probably won't be half as much of a lightning rod.

[shammack]

The more I think about the shift in design philosiphy with the Wii U, the more it just baffles and annoys me. The Wii was this stand up, dance around, get everyone together console- how can you go from that to a tablet!? A tablet is the symbol of hunching over a screen on the couch and not looking up to speak to anyone! It's the ultimate "by myself" device.

Having played Nintendo Land, this is decidedly not the case. It doesn't involve as much physical activity as Wii Sports, but it's every bit as social, if not more. The games are extremely focused on encouraging the players to communicate outside of the game.

Look at something like Mario Chase -- all it is is four players chasing one other player around. That doesn't sound very interesting on paper, but it's actually one of the most fun minigames because of the way you get everybody shouting at each other about where Mario is going, trying to coordinate strategies to surround him, etc. Pretty much all of the multiplayer games are designed around that kind of communication to some extent.

The philosophy of the Wii U tablet, I think, is that it allows for asymmetrical gameplay where one player is seeing different information than everyone else, but with everybody in the same room. There's potential for that to be used in all sorts of interesting ways that are not hunching over a screen and not speaking to anyone. I just hope that the Wii U actually makes use of that potential more effectively than the Wii ended up making use of motion control.

[BFrank]

The new version of the Wiimote that has M+ in it is probably my all time favorite controller. I hope it keeps getting use on the new hardware.

[lobotomy42]

It's funny how the GameCube has become a critic's darling after death, while everyone trashes on the hugely successful Wii. I'm not saying it's wrong to do so, but I definitely recall the gaming press starting to write off the GCN circa 2004 as a joke, despite Nintendo's slow-and-steady stream of fantastic releases.

I do agree that there is a weird contrast between the two. GCN was a me-too console with a library of crazy ideas seemingly haven sprung from Nintendo's desperate situation. Meanwhile, the Wii was an incredibly inventive console whose major releases were often just updated versions of Nintendo's past, for better or worse.

For me, the console itself holds up better than the games. I've always loved the fuzzy Wii home screen with its elevator music and "channel" concepts. (You guys know you can press + or - to flip through the "channel" screens, right?) It's also, frankly, the first console with a web browser that was usable in a meaningful way. (Even now, the idea of pulling a website up on my PS3 or Xbox for everyone to look at on the TV seems laughable.) The hardware itself sacrifices fidelity for the sake of pick-up-and-play usability, which I still think is the right call for the Wii Tennis crowd. I also never seemed to mind the Wii Shop the way everyone else does. It's there, it works, you can buy stuff, what else do you care about? For casual friends of mine who hadn't owned a console since the NES, the Virtual Console was a surprisingly big selling point.

I guess my main disapointment is that I feel like I'm still waiting for the game that the Wii was made for, some huge big idea that NEEDS motion control. Aside from Wii Sports and Wii Fit, most of the library - even Nintendo's - seems like it could have more-or-less worked on the GameCube. Even traditional PC point and click games, like adventures and RTSes, never really made a splash.

All things considered, I still think highly of the Wii. My biggest complaint is that it never quite lived up to the promise of its early ambitions, which is essentially a compliment in disguise.

(Typed on my Wii U tablet.)

[Sno]

It's funny how the GameCube has become a critic's darling after death, while everyone trashes on the hugely successful Wii. I'm not saying it's wrong to do so, but I definitely recall the gaming press starting to write off the GCN circa 2004 as a joke, despite Nintendo's slow-and-steady stream of fantastic releases.

It think it's a natural evolution. People gradually forget about the drek and consistently champion the highlights. Whatever the platform is, a canon of games is established and extolled. I mean, look at what a goddamned nightmare the Saturn was, but people still remember it with incredible fondness based on the strength of a few specific games.

Give it another ten years and all the shovelware and software droughts will be a distant memory and people will remember only games like Xenoblade and Galaxy. (I'll probably also still be telling people that they really need to check out Sin & Punishment 2. Seriously you guys, it's so fucking good! Shattered Memories too! Play that!)

I guess my main disapointment is that I feel like I'm still waiting for the game that the Wii was made for, some huge big idea that NEEDS motion control. Aside from Wii Sports and Wii Fit, most of the library - even Nintendo's - seems like it could have more-or-less worked on the GameCube. Even traditional PC point and click games, like adventures and RTSes, never really made a splash.

I think Skyward Sword comes awfully close to being that game that finally actually justifies motion control as a trend that could be good for Video games, it is a real game that is doing things you legitimately could not do with any other device. Still, at the end of the day, and even with their matured understanding of how to design around that technology, that game still has big problems. The Wii Remote just doesn't work, and neither does the MotionPlus. None of the motion control solutions we've seen this generation have lived up to the promises that were made.

We're definitely going to see more of it though, the games industry is obsessed with motion control, and it honestly always has been. (Sure, you remember the Powerglove, but do you remember the Sega Activator? If anything gives me hope for the seemingly inevitable Kinect 2.0, it's how far we've come since shit like that.)

[Roderick]

The only games I can think of that really needed the pointer thingy were the lightgun games (Umbrella Chronicles/Darkside Chronicles/House of the Dead Overkill/some other ones). Those worked wonderfully on the Wii. All the other games, not so much.

[Sno]

I don't think of the pointer as being part of the motion control equation, since it's really more of a primitive light gun. (Unless you consider light guns to be motion control.)

I think the pointer works, I like the pointer. Skyward Sword tried to "fix" the few issues it had by using a weird motion-driven pointing scheme, and it ended up being way worse than simply relying on the system's usual sensitive-to-bright-lights camera/LED combo.

But yeah, light gun. Light gun games found a pretty good home on the Wii, I really liked Dead Space: Extraction. Also: Sin & Punishment 2. (It's so awesome!)

The thing is, even games that were not explicitly about shooting ended up being about shooting stuff at the screen. Galaxy has that weird star shooting mechanic, and WiiWare's awesome Cubello has you trying to match four by shooting bricks at a slowly spinning ball of bricks.

There were also all of those really terrible first-person shooters. I think Corruption is one of the only implementations of a pointer-driven FPS control scheme that really works, and it's ultimately because of a cheat. Simply, it's that the lock-on that doesn't leave you trying to do that stupid screen push stuff in the middle of a fight.

[JonCole]

People are dumping on it, but let me ask anyways - is The Other M worth playing? As I said, I just got a Wii and I like Metroid, so the $11 bargain basement price of this game is beckoning me. =/

[tegan]

People are dumping on it, but let me ask anyways - is The Other M worth playing? As I said, I just got a Wii and I like Metroid, so the $11 bargain basement price of this game is beckoning me. =/

Gameplay wise, Other M is a 90% great action game. Most of the combat and movement (and especially some of the boss fights, particularly the secret boss in the post-credits sequence) is smooth and engaging, though anything you do in first-person is going to feel rather clunky. Unlike previous Metroid games you'll be following fairly direct pathways most of the time, but it's still less linear than most sidescrolling action games. And you can always go back to previous areas later with new tools to get more stuff.

The writing is a different matter. A few changes could have easily saved it, but it's frustratingly idiotic at times. Consider playing through it on the couch with a friend (it's a fairly short game, 10 hours or so) and just riff on it. Don't take it too seriously and just pretend it has nothing to do with the Metroid series as a whole.

Also: whenever you get forced into a first-person perspective to look for something, just use a guide if you don't immediately know where it is, just use a guide. It's not worth the effort. On that note, look up how to beat the last two bosses in the main story (not the secret boss!) to save yourself some frustration.

If I had paid full-price for Other M, I probably wouldh ave been angry with it. I paid $15 for it and enjoyed it. You'll probably be fine for $11.

[Sno]

I don't think "a few changes" could have saved it, the story is a total train wreck. You can't fast forward through it either, the game is deep with lengthy, unskippable cinemas and story events.

There's a solid action game in there though, it does some legitimately competent and interesting things. The way it handles the first-person aiming gimmick is clunky, but everything else is pretty excellent. Rather than a platformer or a shooter, it feels like an top shelf 3d brawler. (Given who made it, this makes sense.)

It is also a really, really beautiful game. As far as visuals go, it's one of the standouts on the Wii.

It's not a game i would recommend, but it's not awful either, it wasn't a complete disaster. You could do worse for ten bucks.

If you really like Metroid, grab a copy of Trilogy instead, and when you're done with that and if you still want more, then check out Other M. (It's actually fairly interesting how the weakest gameplay element in Other M feels like a direct, but completely misguided response to Retro's games.)