Anyone Played The Wii? I Didn't Like It...

[Komag]

I finally played a Wii today at Circuit City, and I'm very disappointed.

 

I only played the Wii Sports game, and I played tennis, baseball, and golf. It seemed that the controls were very awkward and unresponsive. For instance, I couldn't casually and slowly move my tennis racket around. Only if the system detected that I had made a swiping swing would the character on screen then suddenly do a swing animation. I felt it was not me controlling it at all. It was more like "do this swinging motion instead of pressing a button - get the same result".

 

It was nearly the same with the baseball game, although before the pitch came in I could twist around the controller and my bat would twirl around very weirdly, so it was something, but still not precise by any measure of the word. (The baseball game is extremely retarded but that's not the system's fault at least).

 

In the golf game it was the same thing, it would hardly react to what I did unless I moved big and exaggerated, and then it would just read my motion and apply a translated animation version to the character, never exactly what I did when I did it. It was constantly frustrating, imprecise, limited, and just disappointing. I felt hamstrung the whole time, trying to figure out what the system demanded from me rather than doing what I wanted to do.

 

Even just pointing the dang thing to move around the startup menus wasn't smooth and easy. Instead, the hand was kind of jerky all over, and only because they made the buttons freakin massive on the screen are they possible to "click" on without driving a person nuts.

 

I'm open to the possibility that other games somehow play much much better, that the remote actually can be perfect, smooth, tightly responsive, and clear, but I doubt it. Maybe the store had a terrible setup, but it looked correct to me.

 

My impression right now is that the Wii system is a gimmick with potential to actually work correctly in the next system 5-10 years from now. I shudder at the thought of trying to seriously play Metroid with that controller - hand me a nice responsive Gamecube pad any day (or better yet, a flawless Xbox 360 pad). I now know which version of Twilight Princess I'll be playing (and I'll save money from not having to buy a Wii for just one game too)

[Crispy]

I played Wii Sports on a poor setup and did encounter some difficulty with the controls. I think it would have been better if I'd (A) been playing a different game (I did for a bit and it wasn't so bad), and ( been playing on a better setup.

 

Golf and baseball just suck though. I don't think that's the fault of the controller. Tennis and bowling were OK.

[sparhawk]

I plan to purchase one. Just don't know when, as this is mostly a money issue. So far, most poeple seemed to like the controller, and I heard only good reports about it. Are you sure, that it was not just the batteries being low? Maybe that might cause bad or slow responses?

[Unstoppable]

Takes getting use to. I played DBZ, Zelda, and Wii sports. Sticking with my PC and sold it on Ebay. Also sold my 360. Nothing beats what the computer can do.

[Komag]

No the batteries were fine, because they had another one with a low battery it would keep losing the connection with a message stating such.

 

I would say at least that you should definitely play one before buying it. I'm also complaining from a relatively hardcore gamer's perspective, and I can fully see how a casual market would eat it up without any of the complaints I had, with the exact same experience. So to each his own.

[Domarius]

@Komag - you got to give it longer than a short go at circuit city. If all these old fuddy duddys are picking it up and loving it nearly straight away (my mum really LOVES the Wii, and she really doesn't like games much) you don't have much excuse

 

We took it over to some friends of the family's house, and all the parents were duking it out in bowling and golf, having a great time.

 

You have to get over the fact that it's not perfect "virtual reality", each game expects you to move it in certain ways, but within that, you have a lot of natural freedom - it shows how in bowling, if you have a curve to the left in real life, you'll get a curve to the left in Wii bowling too

 

Also if there lots of other reflective glassy surfaces in view that can reflect the bar thing that the pointer uses, it will see multiple points of light and that can confuse it and make the jerky movement you described. The sun and candles give off ultravilot light, so if it can directly see the sun (in a reflection) or some flame, that'll confuse it too.

[Unstoppable]

Correction on my earlier post worth noting I took my 360 back to Circuit City for a full refund within 30 days .

[Komag]

@Komag - you got to give it longer than a short go at circuit city. If all these old fuddy duddys are picking it up and loving it nearly straight away (my mum really LOVES the Wii, and she really doesn't like games much) you don't have much excuse

 

But that's my last point - I can see how those casual folks would love it, not realizing how lousy it really is because they are just having fun with the motion and the whole novelty of it. I'm too serious of a gamer to view it that way. I mean, can you imagine trying to beat Halo on Legendary with that thing???

 

Maybe you're right about giving it more time and making sure the setup is ideal, but I have my doubts about whether anything would improve, and that probably won't ever happen for me anyway, so I'll most likely pass on the Wii this generation. But I'm not saying "never", I might change my mind sometime along the road.

[sparhawk]

I would say at least that you should definitely play one before buying it. I'm also complaining from a relatively hardcore gamer's perspective, and I can fully see how a casual market would eat it up without any of the complaints I had, with the exact same experience. So to each his own.

 

Well, I also want to play with the Wii, because it sounds fun, but mostly it would be for my kids. Surprisingly enough my wife is also interested in it, so this might be a chance to lure here into computer gaming.

[sparhawk]

But that's my last point - I can see how those casual folks would love it, not realizing how lousy it really is because they are just having fun with the motion and the whole novelty of it. I'm too serious of a gamer to view it that way. I mean, can you imagine trying to beat Halo on Legendary with that thing???

 

I guess it depends on the game. I read an article about Farcry (or some other shooter game) ported from the PC, and it also sucked. I guess the shooter genre is not really a good thing that plays to the strengths of the Wii.

 

Maybe you're right about giving it more time and making sure the setup is ideal, but I have my doubts about whether anything would improve, and that probably won't ever happen for me anyway, so I'll most likely pass on the Wii this generation. But I'm not saying "never", I might change my mind sometime along the road.

 

I guess that other consoles will also adopt this kind of controlling mechanism. But since for the Wii it is the native controler, I don't know if it will catch on. I think there is such a controller even for the XBox 360.

[Crispy]

I've never liked console control schemes for shooters anyway. They've always been clunky, and had to use auto-aim to compensate for that. The Wiimote is an improvement, though still not perfect. When it comes to shooters, give me a mouse and keyboard any day!

[oDDity]

Talking about sports games, I've never seen the point of them.

IF you want to play golf or hockey or football etc, go out and play it for real, don't sit in front of your computer pretending to do it.

Those are games anyway, so you're actually playing an artificial game of a game.

It's quite bizarre.

[Domarius]

No it's not, it's convenient

It's a trade off between quality of experience and convenience.

 

@Komag - Wii motion interpretation will only get better with time, as the techniques for interpreting motion improve and develop.

[Komag]

That's a good point, perhaps even now some games handle it better than others.

[oDDity]

No it's not, it's convenient

It's a trade off between quality of experience and convenience.

 

@Komag - Wii motion interpretation will only get better with time, as the techniques for interpreting motion improve and develop.

 

Christ, you really are fucked up if you find the idea of going to have some fun and play some games in real life an inconvenience.

What next, a nightclub game where you pretend to go and dance, drink and meet girls, and at the end of it you get some porn to wank over?

I mean, it's so inconvenient actually having to physically go out of the house with your friends.

[Ishtvan]

What next, a nightclub game where you pretend to go and dance, drink and meet girls, and at the end of it you get some porn to wank over?

I think that one's a multiplayer game called IRC, but most of the girls you meet are played by men or federal agents.

[Crispy]

What next, a nightclub game where you pretend to go and dance, drink and meet girls, and at the end of it you get some porn to wank over?

I'd say so, yes. It's only a matter of time. I'm sure there's a market for it, so eventually it'll get made.

 

Isn't capitalism wonderful?

[Domarius]

Lol, are you for real oDDity? No one is playing Wii bowling instead of going real bowling anymore than they're playing GTA instead of going out in the street and shooting real people. It's just a fun game with realistic attributes - is that such a crime?

[Nyarlathotep]

In oDDity's world...yes!

[Gildoran]

What next, a nightclub game where you pretend to go and dance, drink and meet girls, and at the end of it you get some porn to wank over?

Leisure Suit Larry, anyone?

 

In fact, it was so popular, they even made several sequels.

[Domarius]

A few games follow a similar path already - the add-ons for the Sims 2 let you go to a night club, scope the room for members of the opposite sex, try and tell if they like you, etc.