What's up with the Wii?

I think it's very telling that sprite graphics haven't completely gone away, and they're actually a stylistic element in a lot of modern games. I think there is an understanding that simpler, sprite-based graphics are more universal and appealing to a lot of people. It's part of this odd thing that I see going on cross-culturally where things that are old/dated are now not really eschewed like they once were because there's more accessibility to them. Look at RHYTHM HEAVEN- if that game came out in 1997, it would have been completely trashed because of the crude graphics and simple style. Now, most people really like the quirky charm and basic visual presentation because it turns the focus to the gameplay and it has A BILLION TIMES more personality than GEARS OF WAR. Same with CHRONO TRIGGER DS- the sprite graphics of those characters has a magic that no amount of polygons can _ever_ match.

I keep seeing this KILLZONE 2 commercial. Oh, wow, those are some great looking graphics. But so what? It's DOOM all over again. Sorry, you can't convince me otherwise. The game does the same stuff that every FPS has done, but I guarantee it doesn't match the level of stress and paranoia that you got in the original DOOM game- and that was with blocky sprites that you could barely make out.

Old school fans definitely should look at DARK SPIRE for the DS. It has two graphic modes. One is an incredibly awesome still-image comic book style but the other is a REALLY old school (think Apple II) style vector graphics thing. The surprise is that the game has just as much atmosphere and presence in the barebones wireframe presentation.

I honestly don't care if I ever play another game like all these huge PS3/360 games again in my life. I've said it before, I'm sick to death of power-suited commandos with goatees and giant guns. Yawn.

I will have to post a Top SNES games list.

I am waiting for the release of "Super Smash TV" for the Wii, it was one of my favorite SNES games.

One of the most frustrating SNES games for me was "RoadRunners Death Valley Rally"

The Roadrunner was running so fast you it was impossible to control him.

I think it's very telling that sprite graphics haven't completely gone away, and they're actually a stylistic element in a lot of modern games. I think there is an understanding that simpler, sprite-based graphics are more universal and appealing to a lot of people

It is kind of like what they tried to do to Underdog in that terrible Underdog movie.

This is how Underdog should look!

In a way, the graphics on these recent HD systems need to get better or worse. Right now they have an uncanny valley problem that makes them less palatable to me. If you make them "worse" like out of Legos ; with hand drawn sprites , or even make them not people , you have a cool, awesome experience. Make them better, so they actually look human--it'll be awesome again. I don't think that's going to happen this generation though. I was trying to find a game where people look like people, say GOD OF WAR III or FINAL FANTASY XIII, but they aren't there yet. The graphics are -awesome- mind you, but they still look fake.

Steve and Michael are making a point about gameplay over graphics, and that's how all this will end in ugliness. For me, I don't need my graphics to be better than the PS2, or even the SNES for the most part, and I really don't want to pay a premium for it. There's awesome games on every platform, and not all platforms are for everyone. Me, I'm as happy now as I have ever been with respect to video games. I have a SNES in my pocket, a PS2 on my TV, and a fucking mountain of awesome games from 1984 through 2009 available to me. Why spoil it with bickering?

Thinking about it, the graphics issue is really kind of a red herring. Great graphics don't make a game bad or less than classic games, just as they don't make a good game.

The problem is, I think, mostly this notion that video games should be playable movies and have all these cinematic elements. This results in heavy scripting/reduced freedom, piss-poor dialogue, extended cut scenes, and a greater emphasis on visceral impact than actual gameplay.

Going back to THE DARK SPIRE, it's pure gameplay and that's why I like it so much. You can take whatever party you want, you're not made to play "squares" like Fluff Windbreaker or Stormy Monsoon. You develop them however you want, and there's a real sense of freedom in the game. If you do the wrong thing, you're punished with death. In most modern games, you can't really do the wrong thing because there's only so far off a certain path you can go. As much as I love RE4, it's pretty much everything I don't like about modern game design.

Going back to the Wii, the fact that it isn't a graphics powerhouse SHOULD NOT MATTER to anyone who really cares about gameplay. However, the games haven't delivered in the gameplay department apart from the examples already mentioned. Some of that is the fault of the developers, but I think some of it is that, again, the expectations some of us had for it to revolutionize game control haven't been met. THE CONDUIT might be a fun FPS, but it's still going to have the same problems and limitations that come from making movies more like games.

Yes, we all agree that graphics don't make a good game. And that's why I bought a Wii! I don't need the most absolutely stunning graphics, it's gameplay that counts. That's why I loved the GBA. And the Wii is doing something revolutionary with motion controls! This'll be awesome!

3 years later, and nobody still knows what to do with the Wiimote besides make light gun games.

Good graphics should help gameplay and not be a crutch that designers will lean on. I love the Call of Duty stuff, but I hate the linearity of the stories. I hate being railroaded into one solution to the problems, it's a big world, why should I always have to go through the bad guys.

I will admit the WII has interested me, but I barely play my PS3 at the moment as it is....

hancock.tom wrote:

Has anyone played no more heroes? I always hear that is a great wii game, but I am surprised not to see in anywhere in this thread.

No More Heroes IS a great Wii game. It gets around the Wiimote's (god what a stupid name) technical limitations nicely. Most important however, it's ridiculous and knows it - the whole game is basically making fun of/paying homage to gaming. For example, you save by standing on a giant pixelated rotating S, hitting a button, and watching your character go into the bathroom and take a dump. The only downside is that in between the fantastic boss battles there's very little to do and a whole big town to do it in.

Other great Wii titles include:
Pinball Williams Collection - absolutely one of the best pinball simulations ever.
House of the Dead 2&3 - awesome zombie lightgun shooting. (House of the Dead Overkill is supposed to be good but I haven't played it yet.)
Ghost Squad - awesome lightgun shooting.
Resident Evil: Umbrella Chronicles - more lightgun that's supposed to be awesome which I haven't played yet.
Excite Truck - I don't particularly like racing. This is my favorite racing game ever. You get points for doing ridiculous stunts and the motion controls are terrific once you learn them. The "sequel" ExciteBots just came out to great reviews also.
Final Fantasy Fables: Chocobo's Dungeon - a nice roguelike (in the Japanese Mystery Dungeon vein) with the wrinkle that you can get "jobs" (as in FFV or FFTactics) which convey special powers. Only downside here is that the cutscenes are painfully slow.

Anyone play Madworld yet? I have my eye on that one and Deadly Creatures.

iguanaDitty wrote:

Pinball Williams Collection - absolutely one of the best pinball simulations ever.
Excite Truck - I don't particularly like racing. This is my favorite racing game ever. You get points for doing ridiculous stunts and the motion controls are terrific once you learn them. The "sequel" ExciteBots just came out to great reviews also.

Yeah, I forgot WILLIAMS PINBALL HALL OF FAME. They did such an awesome job with this. The interface is annoying as fuck all sometimes, but man, once you're on a machine you get into it fast. I think we talked this to death in another thread.

EXCITE BOTS is on my wantlist in a huge way. EXCITE TRUCK is a ton of fun, and this thing adds on robots and clowns and shit. How can this miss?

iguanaDitty wrote:

hancock.tom wrote:

Anyone play Madworld yet? I have my eye on that one and Deadly Creatures.

I've got Deadly Creatures I'm looking to unload. Got anything you want to trade?

The whole graphics ruining games thing is bullshit. There were tons of totally fucking horrible games for the early systems just like there are tons of totally horrible games for current systems.

Great games are great games and making it nicer to look at is something everyone can enjoy. I'm a huge fan of the SNES 2D look, but 1. that doesn't mean I can't like something else and 2. sprites can be cleaned up and look even better (see SFII HD, same fun game but with the graphics polished up and looking ultra fresh). You know we all popped little boy boners the first time we saw Dragon's Lair at the arcade, HOLY SHIT a CARTOON game! But it wasn't really. So now they can do full on amazing looking cell shaded cartoon games only they play like actual games.

There is no reason to not like things having the capability to be shown in the widest variety of possible ways. You can still have some total shit looking Atari visuals if you want, but if you want to do something else, you can.

Dudes were pretty stoked when the talkies came out but it didn't mean that you could just give up on making a good movie once you had sound. Graphics really don't make a bad game good, but they can enhance the experience quite a lot. If there are designers who rely on graphics over gameplay, well that's their problem that they make shitty games, not an indication that having nice graphics means you'll have to have a shit game.

An article up on 1up.com http://www.1up.com/do/feature?pager.offset=0&cId=3173978 with Ubisoft and EA on developing games for the Wii, what they've learned and a little on where they're going.

Interesting, but doesn't really have any big revelations. I think it's kind of funny that publishers thought people wanted to play ports of games but with motion controls. If I wanted to play Assassin's Creed, I'd get an Xbox 360. But Nintendo has fallen into the same trap, if I wanted to play Pikmin or Mario Tennis, I'd just buy the Gamecube games.

I thought it was pretty obvious from the get-go that people want new games with motion controls. Not sloppy ports with waggle tacked on.

Lets be honest here, everyone likes some sloppy waggle at least once in a while.

Yeah, I mean, come on...who wants a four year old RYGAR port? Design the game from the ground up AROUND the control scheme and it might be something special.

The thing is, the only game where I really felt the IR control was indispensible and really great was...WII SPORTS. It was cool in TRAUMA CENTER, METROID PRIME 3,and MEDAL OF HONOR HEROES 2 but those were three games that come from other sources that were traditionally controlled.

MARIO KART DS, I actually really liked the stupid wheel but there again, the Gamecube or classic controller was probably better overall. GALAXY had some fun control, but shaking the wiimote to do ANYTHING gets really, really old fast. See: WARIO: SHAKE IT. You could play both games without it.

Oh, in WILLIAMS PINBALL (one of the best all-round games for Wii and an absolute steal at $10) it was good too...but it was just emulating a real pinball table. It worked, and it was good.

But WII SPORTS, whether you take it as a tech demo or not, really showed at least some of the potential that motion control had. I still think the bowling there is the single best implementation of the motion control.

The tacked on waggle stuff sucks. I didn't really like OKAMI to begin with (blah blah blah- nonstop talking, crap action, and boring story led amazing production design to ruin) but the IR controls were ATROCIOUS. Trying to "paint" a circle seventy five times is not fun. Likewise in TWILIGHT PRINCESS, there was one of those sword training exercises that I had to do like fifty times to get right. I found myself kind of wishing I had just gotten the Gamecube version. RE4 did tacked on OK, but it was sort of minimal.

But seriously, who needs IR in games like BRAWL? I tried it once and immediately plugged up the classic controller. Even worse- GUILTY GEAR ACCENT CORE XX. Try playing that with the wiimote/nunchuck setup. Oh no, worse than that- METAL SLUG ANTHOLOGY with IR controls. Oh my god.

I'm not bothering with any of the "New Play Control" titles myself...what a waste. I have the PIKMIN and METROID titles already. I don't need to waggle to enjoy them.

I'm hoping that WiiMotion's accuracy and greater range of movement inspires some developers to do _something_ with it. Please.

It's another example of how the Wii has been kind of misleading, too. All those commercials with people posing and stunting in their living rooms with the wiimote...and what you really get is a fancy pointer.

Lightgun games are awesome with IR control.
Also I forgot to mention Sam and Max Season 1 which is a port of the PC adventure games. And Strong Bad on WiiWare. Adventure games are great with IR control since they're point and click.
And the whole graphics ruining games thing is not completely bullshit - developers have limited resources and the more time they have to spend developing graphics the less time they have for something like writing. I haven't played it but the bad dialog in Gears of War is pretty legendary. Plus there are plenty of stories of big publishing houses forcing 3D on projects when the whole thing would clearly be better as a 2D game.