Cloral
05-12-2006, 10:20 PM
Clearly the Wii was the star of the show this year, and today I found out why. I had to wait several hours in line to do so, but it was worth it. I got to play four games today: a tennis game, Wario Ware, Metroid Prime, and Zelda. In the tennis game, you didn't control your character's movement, instead just swinging the racket. I wasn't very good at it, but it was fun to swing the racket rather than just hitting a button.
Wario Ware was a great example of what you can do with the console. I think it should ship with the Wii. In traditional Wario Ware fare, you play a bunch of games that take a few seconds each. Between games, they sent you to a weird-looking drawing of a room with an elephant standing outside. On the bottom of the screen was a list with about a dozen icons in it. Each icon represented a different way of holding the controller - that should give you an idea of the level of variety the game encompassed. The game would select an icon, you change your grip to that style, and the game starts. They ranged from swatting flies (hold the controller vertically and flick it at the screen), to driving a car (hold the controller sideways with both hands and turn it like a steering wheel), hula hoop (hold the controller at your hips and then make a hula-hoop motion), and many more. This is definately going to be the most fun Wario Ware game yet.
Metriod looks to be another great game. As you might expect, you use the 'nunchuck' to move and the remote to aim and look. This setup takes some getting used to, but looks to be a really good way to handle FPS-style action. In one area, I was attacked by a swarm of flying robots with shields. One by one they deactivated their shields to fire at me, which made for some great target practice. Another area had me scan a console to activate an elevator. After doing so, I was informed that the elevator required manual interaction to activate. This meant going up to another panel with a cylinder-shaped rod and hitting A. The cylinder needed to be rotated a quarter turn, which was accomplished by pulling the controller back, rotating it, and pushing it back forward. This may sound kinda stupid, but touches like that really make the game much more immersive. But by far the best part was the grapple beam. The grapple beam is shot out by flicking the 'nunchuck' (the analog stick you hold in your left hand) towards the screen, which is the same motion Samus does in the game. In the demo, the grapple beam was not used to swing over pits, but to pull things towards Samus, like gratings that got in the way, or shields the enemies were carrying.
Zelda looks to be really good too. Here you didn't use the remote to move the camera, which was really a relief in this style of game. Down, left, and right on the D-Pad were used like the 3 C Buttons on the N64 for your 3 selected items. B is your sword, but moving the nunchuck produces other types of attacks. Swinging it in a circle produces a circle slice, while flicking it up and down produces a vicious finishing move where Link jumps on the enemy, stabbing his sword through its gut. The example level gave Link a bow which you aim with the remote, a boomerang that can lock onto mutiple targets like in Wind Waker - but this one when 'thrown' actually produces a tornado that travels to the targets you select (which I suspect means in the final version means it will use up magic power). They also give you steel boots, which in the demo were used to latch on to an electomagnet that carried you upside-down over a gap. All in all, Zelda looks to be really good, it would definately be worth picking up on either system.
The other fun thing about the Wii booth was near the front of the line, they had large screens in the wall where people in booths could talk to you. The last screen had the guy who does the voice for Mario, who despite how Mario sounds in an old-ish guy who isn't the slightest bit Italian. The line stopped with me right in front of the screen, so I got to talk to him for a few minutes. I asked him if he liked hearing himself in the games, and he said that he really does. His favorite thing apparently is seeing how people react to his voice. He did a number of Mario's quotes and sounds for us, like the 'woah woah woah woah woah' sound Mario makes when you fall off a cliff. He also did Wario and baby Mario, and he did what Mario would sound like if he were 'Grandpa Mario'. It was so funny to hear those sounds coming from him and not the characters you associate them with.
In summation, I am going to get a Wii. I would suggest others to do so as well. I think there is a lot of potential fun to be had here, even if the graphics aren't as 'high-res' as the other platforms.
Wario Ware was a great example of what you can do with the console. I think it should ship with the Wii. In traditional Wario Ware fare, you play a bunch of games that take a few seconds each. Between games, they sent you to a weird-looking drawing of a room with an elephant standing outside. On the bottom of the screen was a list with about a dozen icons in it. Each icon represented a different way of holding the controller - that should give you an idea of the level of variety the game encompassed. The game would select an icon, you change your grip to that style, and the game starts. They ranged from swatting flies (hold the controller vertically and flick it at the screen), to driving a car (hold the controller sideways with both hands and turn it like a steering wheel), hula hoop (hold the controller at your hips and then make a hula-hoop motion), and many more. This is definately going to be the most fun Wario Ware game yet.
Metriod looks to be another great game. As you might expect, you use the 'nunchuck' to move and the remote to aim and look. This setup takes some getting used to, but looks to be a really good way to handle FPS-style action. In one area, I was attacked by a swarm of flying robots with shields. One by one they deactivated their shields to fire at me, which made for some great target practice. Another area had me scan a console to activate an elevator. After doing so, I was informed that the elevator required manual interaction to activate. This meant going up to another panel with a cylinder-shaped rod and hitting A. The cylinder needed to be rotated a quarter turn, which was accomplished by pulling the controller back, rotating it, and pushing it back forward. This may sound kinda stupid, but touches like that really make the game much more immersive. But by far the best part was the grapple beam. The grapple beam is shot out by flicking the 'nunchuck' (the analog stick you hold in your left hand) towards the screen, which is the same motion Samus does in the game. In the demo, the grapple beam was not used to swing over pits, but to pull things towards Samus, like gratings that got in the way, or shields the enemies were carrying.
Zelda looks to be really good too. Here you didn't use the remote to move the camera, which was really a relief in this style of game. Down, left, and right on the D-Pad were used like the 3 C Buttons on the N64 for your 3 selected items. B is your sword, but moving the nunchuck produces other types of attacks. Swinging it in a circle produces a circle slice, while flicking it up and down produces a vicious finishing move where Link jumps on the enemy, stabbing his sword through its gut. The example level gave Link a bow which you aim with the remote, a boomerang that can lock onto mutiple targets like in Wind Waker - but this one when 'thrown' actually produces a tornado that travels to the targets you select (which I suspect means in the final version means it will use up magic power). They also give you steel boots, which in the demo were used to latch on to an electomagnet that carried you upside-down over a gap. All in all, Zelda looks to be really good, it would definately be worth picking up on either system.
The other fun thing about the Wii booth was near the front of the line, they had large screens in the wall where people in booths could talk to you. The last screen had the guy who does the voice for Mario, who despite how Mario sounds in an old-ish guy who isn't the slightest bit Italian. The line stopped with me right in front of the screen, so I got to talk to him for a few minutes. I asked him if he liked hearing himself in the games, and he said that he really does. His favorite thing apparently is seeing how people react to his voice. He did a number of Mario's quotes and sounds for us, like the 'woah woah woah woah woah' sound Mario makes when you fall off a cliff. He also did Wario and baby Mario, and he did what Mario would sound like if he were 'Grandpa Mario'. It was so funny to hear those sounds coming from him and not the characters you associate them with.
In summation, I am going to get a Wii. I would suggest others to do so as well. I think there is a lot of potential fun to be had here, even if the graphics aren't as 'high-res' as the other platforms.