Great Preview Video of Mario Super Sluggers 83
Kotaku has what looks to be a great preview video of Mario Super Sluggers, seemingly ripped from the Japanese Nintendo Channel. The video is quite long and does a great job of showcasing the game's control set. While the controls look relatively limited (especially the pitching), haven't we all wished for a few bombs to throw on those unfortunate pop-ups?
Re:When are the real Wii Games coming? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:When are the real Wii Games coming? (Score:4, Insightful)
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meta review [metacritic.com]
trailer [youtube.com]
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Re:ugh, this again? (Score:5, Insightful)
I invite you to explain to me exactly what a "hardcore" gamer is. In addition, please explain why I - being a person in possession of a Wii and a DS, who plays approximately an hour on the former and half an hour on the latter each and every day - is not within your arbitrary definition of "hardcore".
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I invite you to explain to me exactly what a "hardcore" gamer is. In addition, please explain why I - being a person in possession of a Wii and a DS, who plays approximately an hour on the former and half an hour on the latter each and every day - is not within your arbitrary definition of "hardcore".
That's exactly the problem, and why "hardcore" is in quotes in my post.
The "hardcore" audience itself is poorly defined. I have basically every Ninteo System ever made, a few of Segas, a Playstion and PS2, and an Xbox 360. But I've never spent more than five hours a week playing videogames. Am I "hardcore" because of the amount of systems I have? Or does it come down to game time?
And if it comes down to game time, then there's the stigma of the Wii and that it's for "fanboys and little kids". So, eve
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I don't think it's a matter of defining the audience, but the games themselves. Casual gamers play casual games, hardcore gamers play hardcore games. Now, defining the difference can be difficult. Certainly traditional FPSs, RPGs, and RTSs are, or can be, "hardcore". They are games that tra
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That's exactly the problem, and why "hardcore" is in quotes in my post.
Ah, OK, so we're kind of on the same page then.
The "hardcore" audience itself is poorly defined. I have basically every Ninteo System ever made, a few of Segas, a Playstion and PS2, and an Xbox 360. But I've never spent more than five hours a week playing videogames. Am I "hardcore" because of the amount of systems I have? Or does it come down to game time?
I'd go one step further and ask whether it even needs to be defined in the
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i think Smash bros is an example of a game that can be casual, or hardcore, depending on how you play it, in general a good acid test is whether or not you consider practicing your moves, and working to become a more proficient gamer to b
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You've been modded funny, but I think you're probably nearest the truth.
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Incidentally, the Wii game I've enjoyed the most, and put the most hours into, is Fire Emblem... which does not use the Wiimote at all. Other hardcore suggestions: Metroid, of course, and No More Heroes. Resident Evil 4 was terrific, an example of a game transformed from Very Good to Great by the addition of the Wiimote.
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Ugggggggggg WHY WILL NO ONE USE THE WII (Score:5, Insightful)
Take this game and its pitching, from the video, - how would you expect to pitch with the wiimote. Obviously, how you pitch in real life. It would take the velocity of your swing, the twist of your hand, the motion and direction into account for a pitch. Instead we get the same fucking motion-equivalent-to-button-push bullshit. Watch the video, you pitch by tilting your hand down. Who the fuck pitches by tilting their hand down. The tilt down can easily be replaced by a button press, since they serve the same purpose. If you want to immerse people in the game with unique controls, why the hell don't the actually do it. How is tilting down a controller to pitch any more immersive than pressing a button.
I have been very, very disapointed by the Wii, since it seems that no one, apparently not even Nintendo, cares to make a game that actually uses the wii-mote in any meaningful way besides as a crosshair or as simply being another way to push a button (shake to attack!). The game that came closest to something like this was Boxing in Wii Sports. Sure it was flawed, but it gave a hint about how to make immersive gaming by showing how to use the controls to that effect. Everyone waited for a boxing-like game to come out, one that was more polished and really responsive - basically just improve upon what seems like a tech demo in Wii Sports. But it doesn't exist, hasn't been made.
At this point I'm beginning to wonder about the limitations of the wii-mote. It seems to me that the lack of games that we expect for the system - those with immersive, direct controls - may be fueled not by developers simply being lazy, but by the limits of what the wii-mote can do. Maybe we can never have a Zelda where the player directly controls his sword because its simply not possible with the wii-mote. Maybe we will never have a responsive boxing game because the wii-mote simply isn't responsive enough to do it. These are the things I and everyone expected from the system. Instead we have games that simply use the motions as buttons (does spinning in Mario Galaxy by shaking the wii-mote offer any benefit over a button?) or others that straight-up tell you to use a regular controller - Smash Bros. The only games we can say successfully used wii-mote it were RE4 and Metroid Prime as they actually used the aiming ability for it. Still, no actual games exist that actually uses the motion to any great benefit.
Sorry for the rant, but seeing yet another game completely miss the point of what the Wii SHOULD be just pissed me off.
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I agree with the OP that the Wii has really not been used to its seeming potential. Either it really is just a rubbish console, or developers are just too lazy. I submit it's both (developers too lazy to make the most of a rubbish console). I'm not an uninformed hater, either. I have a Wii, but the games I like on it are Mario Galaxy and Smash Bros -- both basically Gamecube games. (I have Twilight Princess, b
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I think you're partly right here... The pointer gets used well in Resident Evil and Metroid Prime 3, and a couple of others, but the motion controls are utterly wasted, outside of a few titles. They're good in Wii Sports, Mario Galaxy makes some use of them, and so does Metroid Prime 3, but by and large they are just another button, and a more aggravating one.
What I really can't agree with you on is the touchscreen on the DS being gimmicky, or the best games not using it - not when you've got games like Ze
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Mario64 DS (touchscreen obviously not necessary, and certainly less so than a joystick/thumbstick)
Mario Kart DS (touchscreen not even used really)
Castlevanias (touchscreen only used to finish off bosses -- insanely annoying)
Zelda: Phantom Hourglass (I admit the screen works... but I don't think it is an improvement over traditional handheld Zelda controls, and has almost no bearing on how much I enjoyed the game (except that my touchscreen is old and fubar so all my item s
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What did you want from tennis? some complicated system where you have to run your player around with the nunchuck only to have it go flying out of your hand as you deperately try to swing the wiimote in your other hand?
or maybe you wanted the bowling game to co
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It's the Xbox 360 not Xbox2. And it's brought a bit more than sweat... in fact, that's mostly what the Wii is trying to sell people, what with Wii Fit and all. And for the record, the Wii IS a rubbish console. If it weren't for, as usual, the decent first-party offerings, it'd be a complete waste of money. Really, it's the Gamecube with a gimmicky controller that isn't used to nearly its full potential and which has 10x longer loa
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Two words: Wii Sports.
Not really. A better example would be Tiger Woods golf. Yeah, you manually spin the ball after you hit it, but the trajectories are significantly different depending on how open/closed your club face is and how much you rotate as you swing through the ball. Maybe the wiimote isn't responsive enough, but they don't need to change the look of the swing on the screen, just run some math to calculate the trajectory of the ball. Regardless, it does feel a lot more realistic and good than pushing an analog s
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Re:Ugggggggggg WHY WILL NO ONE USE THE WII (Score:5, Informative)
Nintendo may not be taking full advantage of the controls, but someone is...
Re:Ugggggggggg WHY WILL NO ONE USE THE WII (Score:4, Insightful)
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Wow. I'd hate to be there when someone sits you down and explains the reality of movie CGI, or stuntmen, or how magicians make things "disappear", or any number of other "cheap tric
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Like some people further down, I don't want 1:1. There was a reason I never made the baseball team in high school. Let me hit my homeruns!
Re:Ugggggggggg WHY WILL NO ONE USE THE WII (Score:5, Insightful)
Let's use zelda. You swing your sword. The enemy blocks it with a shield, and Link gets thrown back a bit. But you do not. You arm is down, but the fact that you were blocked necessitates the sword to be up in the air, reeling backwards. How are you going to reconcile the two? You could disable user control for a bit as Link reels, but where do you pick up afterward, provided the remote doesn't move? Link's sword teleports from being up to down, and you've just confused your player.
Another additional concern that is less prevalent in zelda that it would be in other games, that a large part of balancing a game (not to mention setting a scene) is controlling what the player is able to do. The remote is nearly weightless, it would be simple to just run at enemies swinging the remote back and forth as quickly as possible (very fast) to have link swing his sword as superhuman speeds. This destroys the scene (ridiculous physics), but it also screws up balancing; does the developer assume everyone will swing like a madman and make it really difficult for those who choose not to, or make it really easy for those who choose to do so by balancing the game toward those less inclined to flail their arms wildly?
Re:Ugggggggggg WHY WILL NO ONE USE THE WII (Score:4, Informative)
I agree on its mis-use in Twilight Princess. It's blatantly obvious that it's a Gamecube game that somebody said "you must make this use motion controls!"
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Until picking up Mario Kart for the Wii, I hadn't played any of the MK games for nearly a decade. If I had played any of them more recently then I'm sure that I wouldn'
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My mother, who's never played a consol game in her 60-year life, managed a first place on her first go using the wheel. Me, with my 25 years of game experience, struggled with the wheel and have returned to the nunchuck.
One set of races away from getting 2 stars on all levels now! I've seen people with 3 but god knows how they managed that.
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but Link's sword continues to the spot
If I was "fixing" it and I was told I had to do something to make it work but was free to do whatever I wanted, I'd show Link's sword arm bounce back, but also a "ghost" arm that continued through the motion, and the player would have to move his arm (the ghost arm) back to the general area of Link's arm before he can swing again (thus, Link is "stunned" until the player recovers, and perhaps if Link is hit he drops his arm back to where the player's is). If the player realizes the attack is going to be b
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The guy's home page seems to be down, though. It's normally found here: http://wii.hl2world.com/ [hl2world.com]
Here is an alternate: http://www.moddb.com/mods/8775/half-life-2-wiimote-mod [moddb.com]
Here is a YouTube video of the thing in action: http://www.youtube.com/wa [youtube.com]
Re:Ugggggggggg WHY WILL NO ONE USE THE WII (Score:4, Insightful)
What they didn't do was invest heavily in the hardware. I agree with you in that the Wiimote, for all the potential it encompasses, sucks as a precision sensing device. The system doesn't even use a DVD drive, let alone a HD-DVD or Blu-ray drive and the console's internal memory has been surpassed by most smart phones. All of those things were, however, cheap off the shelf hardware. Nintendo made money on a new console with new ideas, how much did Microsoft and Sony make on their glorified Xbox and PS2?
Building on that, making a game for the Wii is still a huge gamble. If you're a third party developing for the system, you have to develop for a platform that is still feeling out the general game controls. You can make the mistake of dumbing down the controls too much (e.g. almost every sports game so far) or you can make the controls silly, cryptic, and horribly delayed (MLB the bigs).
You've also got to balance gameplay factors. Maybe you can make an amazingly real swordplay engine using the wiimote, but I don't think that's going to make LEGO Star Wars that much more fun, especially since the master fencing / wii player demographic isn't all that big.
The Wii has been fun, it's been a nice way to get off the grinding of button smasher games and into something that's been both fun and different. I think the overall success of the console (Which from a tech standpoint is basically N64 V2.0) has opened the door for a Wii 2.0 that has the things that real gamers want.
Don't forget that Nintendo has carved out a nice slice of market for themselves. They've shown Mom and Dad that video games can be fun, now Nintendo is in a position to show that same segment that games can look as good as movies and have stories that are just as immersive.
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Did Microsoft also "go cheap" by using DVD?
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Re:Ugggggggggg WHY WILL NO ONE USE THE WII (Score:4, Insightful)
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They could always give you an option to switch between "standard" Wiimote controls (what's currently used in most games) and "advanced" Wiimote controls (the more realistic controls). There's already different control mappings for different controllers, and different mappings for the Wiimote, so it shouldn't be that difficult to map the so-called "standard" and "advanced" controls.
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I don't know for RE4, but Metroid uses the nunchuk for the grapper and even if a button would do the same, after all it's just a video game, the way you launch the nunchuk seems really realistic for me.
BTW the Wii and Metroid in particular are what caused an old video-game addicted like me (during three years, 20 years ago) to become really addicted again. I couldn't stop to play until I had finished this damn game (33 hours, not so bad
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Why does absolutely no developer actually use the damn wii-control in the way people want/expect.
DragonQuest: Swords for the Wii. Your "slashes" translate to the 2D plane of the screen. up/down slashes are up/down on the screen. Horizontal are horizontal and diagonal are based on your direction given.
Go play that. Then come back here and remind us why it's better game play to just "shake = B". DQ:Swords isn't horrible, but I'll be damned if it's very easy to do a proper directional slash because what you *think* was a horizontal slash was actually a diagonal slash because you twisted the remote
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That's contradictory. First, I've not played RE4:Wii, only Gamecube. But Metroid's use of the Wii controller was of great benefit to the game. Thus, there's at least one "actual" game that uses it. And according to you, there's a second, RE4.
I'm on your side, but what he said wasn't contradictory. RE4 and MP3 primarily use the pointing (ie IR camera) function of the Wii remote, not the motion-sensitive (ie accelerometer) mechanics he was referring to at that part of the paragraph (even though at the start of the paragraph he was talking about Wiimote as a whole).
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RE4 and MP3 primarily use the pointing (ie IR camera) function of the Wii remote
Very true. However, it wasn't the primary aspect of Metroid that make this version (compared to the previous 2 on the Gamecube) better, IMHO. It was the interactive use of the Wii remote to grab, twist, and pull power conduits out of the wall to push, twist, and lock them back into place somewhere else (to solve a puzzle). And then there was the grappling hook which you yanked your nun-chuck back to rip the shield off an enemy. That was also very cool.
Those little touches really enhanced the game fr
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Take this game and its pitching, from the video, - how would you expect to pitch with the wiimote. Obviously, how you pitch in real life. It would take the velocity of your swing, the twist of your hand, the motion and direction into account for a pitch. Instead we get the same fucking motion-equivalent-to-button-push bullshit. Watch the video, you pitch by tilting your hand down. Who the fuck pitches by tilting their hand down. The tilt down can easily be replaced by a button press, since they serve the same purpose. If you want to immerse people in the game with unique controls, why the hell don't the actually do it. How is tilting down a controller to pitch any more immersive than pressing a button.
Blame the dumbasses who pitched their wiimotes into their TVs while playing WiiSports for that.
Re:Ugggggggggg WHY WILL NO ONE USE THE WII (Score:4, Insightful)
The main reasons you can't do true 1:1 action have already been laid out and are pretty obvious:
1) No physical feedback, other than maybe a vibration. There is no known technology that could actually give true force feedback for something like the WiiMote
2) By having the controls generalized, you don't actually have to be facing the TV straight on, which helps when you have 4 people playing. Also, in a confined space, it keeps people from whacking each other in multi-player.
3) 1:1 action would make it impossible for the physically infirm, or just physically clutzy to enjoy playing. Part of the point of Wii design was to simplify video games for new players, as opposed to something like the potentially intimidating PlayStation controller (10 buttons plus a control pad and two analog sticks which also double as buttons, and some buttons are pressure senstive)
4) 1:1 action would also be much more physically tiring and could eventually lead to a lot of physical ailments like tendonitis or joint injuries (such as the Wii-itis reportedly caused by Wii Sports Tennis not long after release). Since there isn't full weight resistance on the end of your arm, you can move your arm too quickly and are more likely to cause injuries.
5) To get perfect 1:1 action would likely have increased the cost of the system too much.
There are a few games that have gotten pretty close to 1:1 action, but generally in puzzle solving situations, not in fast paced action; a good example would be Zack and Wiki
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Part of the problem is that the accelerometers in the Wiimote are set up to measure the movement of the remote, not its rotation. It's difficult, if not impossible, for the Wiimote to accurately detect fast rotation around its center of gravity, and this is one of the movements that would be very useful in some of your example scenarios.
Games like Mario Kart Wii measure "rotation" by the movement of gravity, but the user must hold the controller generally still or the overall acceleration will be affected
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Sounds like you might like driving with the Wii wheel.
(I mean, analog stick users will still drive circles around you, but at least you'll feel genuinely immersed in your defeat.)
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If movements had to mirror actual movement games would have an added layer of complexity. Now games would have to be able to move more precisely, while still maintaining good timing. It's a lot like an amateur playing an FPS online and trying to be competitive. It would pretty much be hopeless, and discouraging for many people.
So Wii remote movements have been ke
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That would be a bad thing. The problem of parrying has been gone into by a previous reply, but let's suppose that's been solved. We now run into a deeper problem: gamers suck at fencing. Perfect 1:1 mapping between the Wiimote
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Oh, wait, guess not
The technology to use a Wii-mote sized object to get full 1:1 movement would have made the controllers prohibitively expensive. Gyroscope chips are about 10 times the price of a 3 axis accelerometers*. The Wii couldn't have been sold at that price.
In the end, it's a controller. The game is not real life, and we've settled for pus
Seriously (Score:1)
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"The video is quite long" (Score:5, Funny)
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Nice video (Score:2)