Tagged: Wii RSS

  • Chris Till 7:29 pm on February 24, 2010 Permalink | Log in to leave a Comment
    Tags: , Mario Galaxy 2, Metroid Other M, , Wii   

    Nintendo News 

    So in the last couple of days Nintendo have been holding press conferences in Australia and the US where they’ve announced several things. The most obvious being the release date of the DSi XL in the US while the surprises were that Mario Galaxy 2 and Metroid Other M have both been given release dates, and not just release dates in the autumn like we all expected, release dates in the May to June timeframe, with Galaxy 2 coming first and Metroid no more than a couple of months after. These are also presumably coordinated worldwide launches for both.

    Whether or not I actually buy these games when they come out or not (Mario Galaxy 2 is more likely but I need to play more of the first before that), I am excited for everyone who is either a hardcore Nintendo fan or just a gamer wanting good stuff to play regardless of platform. Nintendo could have easily just done what we’re so used to seeing in the games industry, which would be to just put out both games in the Autumn / Winter timeframe and just rely on the long term successes like Wii Fit and Mario Kart and all the others to carry them through the year until then. After all, New Super Mario bros. will eternally have new in the name so therefore it will continue to sell.

    However, Nintendo haven’t sat back and let the profits roll in for once and instead are being really aggressive by putting both these big games out in mid-year. Of course, they’re partly doing this to leave room in their release schedule for Zelda and possibly another game or two later on in 2010.

    The sceptics will surely be pointing out that with the massive profits they make on hardware and software (which costs far less to develop than for other systems) they should have been making much more great games since it became clear that the Wii was going to be a runaway success, which of course it has.

    While that is true, take solace in the fact that Nintendo are seemingly finally getting their act together.

     

  • Chris Till 3:39 am on December 20, 2009 Permalink
    Tags: , , , Wii   

    3DGalaxy 2009 Game Awards – Wii 

    Wii 2009 Awards

    Quick note: Only games that I’ve played / am excited to play soon will be eligible to win awards.

    Best Platform Game - New Super Mario Bros. Wii

    NSMB is a good Mario game. It does what you expect in that it takes an established formula and adds new elements to it including local multiplayer and a little motion. Some of the motion is implemented well, like the tilting platforms. Some is annoying to use, like the helicopter hat jump. Overall the game is fun, it just didn’t blow me away, plus I found it to be too picky and frustratingly difficult, which isn’t new to the Mario series or this genre of course, but it hurt my enjoyment as I just wanted to blast through the levels just having fun.

    Best Racing Game - F1 2009

    There hasn’t been a new F1 game for several years, and as someone who has become a huge fan in recent times, it was a bit disheartening. F1 2009 isn’t HD, it doesn’t have online and the default controls are the ever-awful motion steering. It even comes with a cheesy Wii Wheel plastic housing for the remote. However, as long as you play this with the classic controller, and you enjoy driving fast cars, you will almost be guaranteed to love this game. You get an intense sense of speed and great driving mechanics which on default settings feel satisfyingly easy to get to grips with, while also giving you enough of a challenge where you really feel as if you’re on the edge a lot of the time. Turn the driving aids off and you get a much more hardcore racing sim for the more hardcore player who’s waiting for the HD version to come out next year, or hardcore Wii owners. Aside from F1 2009, Excitebots (if it had come out here) would have been right up there with it fighting for best racing game, but as we know, it wasn’t released here, which is a real shame.

    Best Shooter - Modern Warfare Reflex Edition

    While Dead Space Extraction is generally a better game, I don’t really enjoy light gun games so I didn’t play that game. Modern Warfare Reflex therefore wins best shooter by default, in a similar way to how NSMBW won best platform game, without any competition. MW was a pretty good port of a two year old game and to its credit, did have very good online for a Wii game. Especially when compared to The Conduit, which was a big let down in the online play. It practically never worked. It then got shown how to do it by a two year old port. I just find that to be particularly sad. Not only this, but this year I also learned that I don’t like playing FPS games with the Wii remote IR pointer because Dual Analogue is just so much more comfortable and precise. My brother summed it up when he said that he would have come back to the game a lot if it had included classic controller support.

    Best Sports Game - Tiger Woods PGA Tour 10

    Sports games is a genre the Wii is able to excel at, and it’s where I had the most fun with the system this year. Tiger Woods 10 uses motion-plus in a way which shows off what the peripheral is capable of. It works great and is really enjoyable to play, and very satisfying. Grand Slam Tennis I also enjoyed a lot. Despite the fact that the motion-plus wasn’t utilised as well as it could have been (it doesn’t track the location of the remote constantly, like in Wii Sports Resort Table Tennis for example). Regardless, the game was very enjoyable and shows a lot of potential for next year’s game. Wii Sports Resort is fun, but doesn’t in my opinion falls short of producing the magic that the original Wii Sports had. There are some fun additions though. My personal favourites are basketball 3 on 3 and table tennis. Archery is impressive as a tech demo for motion-plus but isn’t something I would go back to.

    Also notable: Wii Sports Resort, Grand Slam Tennis

    Best Visual Quality - Grand Slam Tennis

    This may seem like a weird choice, but when you talk about Wii graphical quality, not a lot springs to mind in the last 12 months, at least of games that I’ve played. Grand Slam Tennis though has a very cool, cartoony art style which is very aesthetically pleasing.

    Best Use of Sound - Modern Warfare Reflex Edition

    Seeing as this is a port of the epic 2007 game CoD4 Modern Warfare, this version also brings the franchise’s staple chaotic but fantastic sound to Wii. Turning the sound up really heightens the excitement and the atmosphere.

    Best Multiplayer - Boom Blox Bash Party

    The original Boom Blox was one of the first console games that my Mum really got into, and we had a lot of fun playing it as a Family. While MW Reflex has great online for a Wii game and NSMBW offers the never before seen up to four player mario experience, Boom Blox has to take this award for how well it suits the Wii platform, and how it can appeal to almost anyone. There were other good multiplayer games too, but none match up in my opinion. Boom Blox can go down in Wii history as a casual game done right.

    Also notable: Modern Warfare Reflex Edition, New Super Mario Bros. Wii, F1 2009, Wii Sports Resort, Grand Slam Tennis

    Best WiiWare Game - Swords and Soldiers

    Swords and Soldiers is a very unique, stylish, side scrolling RTS game which has been really well received critically.

    Wii Game of the Year - Tiger Woods PGA Tour 10

    Sports games don’t often win awards outside of their own categories, if ever, but I’m going to buck that trend, even if 3DG isn’t exactly a huge site to say the least. Regardless, Tiger Woods 10 is a complete package, well designed and is a great example of how motion-plus can make Wii’s motion control useful for games other than Excite Truck / Excitebots.

    Also notable: New Super Mario Bros. Wii

    Up next: PC

     

  • Chris Till 6:04 am on December 18, 2009 Permalink
    Tags: , RROD, Wii,   

    Pro Tip: don’t buy 360s for a relaxing life. 

    I saw Jeff from TRS tweeted that his red ringed for the third time.

    I’ve had issues with my Wii and PS3. We bought the PS3 together but now my bro is buying a slim because our launch 60 has an f’d up blu-ray drive. I don’t trust discs anymore and he plays it much more anyway so he’s footing the bill.

    When I’ve had trouble with both of the generally more reliable systems, I can only imagine the joys being a 360 owner would bring.

     

  • Chris Till 2:05 am on December 16, 2009 Permalink
    Tags: , Wii   

    A new Nintendo Channel got released today. It looks so much cleaner and better. Everyone should go and grab it from the Wii Shop Channel.

     

  • Chris Till 12:56 am on December 12, 2009 Permalink
    Tags: , NPD, , Wii,   

    The NPD data for November says Xbox 360 outsold PS3 despite everything. I really feel bad for Sony. I mean they deserve better all things considered. The fact that PS3 does better here even though it’s more expensive than the 360 makes me wonder what the difference is between American and European consumers. The DS and Wii also had great months but that’s to be expected.

     

  • Chris Till 1:04 pm on November 28, 2009 Permalink
    Tags: , , Wii   

    New Super Mario Bros. Wii Review pt. 2 

    Following up on my early thoughts last week on the game, I have played more and I have come to a personal opinion on the game.

    The first thing to mention is that it is fun. I do enjoy playing games like this, and LittleBigPlanet for example, but it’s hard to get over the feeling that this game is poorly marketed. It’s like Nintendo are trying to shoehorn a hardcore game into a casual package and the result comes out more on the hardcore side.

    For a family who are more casual in their gaming and generally play things like wii sports and wii sports resort, I can’t see them getting a great deal of fun out of this game.

    The first couple of levels will be great fun but after that it will really be difficult to pass the stages, even with perceived strength in numbers, although I don’t think it really works out that way. I did touch on this before though so I will move on.

    I also had trouble when I played it with my brother. I’m not sure what exactly it was that made us do so badly. Perhaps we were rushing, maybe we weren’t in the right frame of mind. Perhaps, but I did complete LittleBigPlanet, which is a similar game and does have some tricky parts to it, so it’s not like I just generally am unable to play this type of game.

    A few other issues I have with it, firstly the graphics are serviceable, but they don’t appear to be pushing the system at all. I mean there are some nice effects, but for the most part, it’s hard to see how this game couldn’t have been made on the GameCube. If you compare this to games such as Mario Galaxy, Smash Bros. Brawl and Metroid Prime 3, I think you’ll notice the difference.

    While I understand why Nintendo had a focus for local multiplayer in this game, a lot of people have criticized the lack of online support. On the other hand, when you consider how poor Nintendo’s friend code based system is, maybe they were doing us a favour by leaving it out. Regardless of how cumbersome it is though, the fact is that a lot of people who could have played it online with friends who live elsewhere, will be forced to play solo.

    So I think in conclusion, I would recommend this game to either the long time Nintendo fans who clamour for more 2D Mario games and the casual families / couples who want to have fun (but preferably only if you have at least one gamer who can carry the rest). If you’re on the fence, the fact is that despite its shortcomings in some departments, this remains one of the best Wii games of the year, if not the best.

     

  • Chris Till 7:58 pm on November 21, 2009 Permalink
    Tags: , , Wii   

    New Super Mario Bros. Review pt. 1 

    I just started playing New Super Mario Bros and I’ve got to the second world so far. I’ve mostly played 2 player so far and we had fun but at the same time, the game can be very frustrating when you mess up something you know you can make, and then have to restart the level because of it. I suppose that’s nothing new for a Mario game, I had the same annoyances with the DS game recently too.

    I do like the game and multiplayer is definitely more fun. When I went back to the game a little while ago today by myself, I ended up giving up without completing a level because I made a couple of mistakes at critical times. I guess you just need to be in the right frame of mind and I wasn’t today.

    It’s very weird for a game that’s so traditionally punishing to be marketed by Nintendo as a casual family game.

    As if it isn’t difficult enough single player, multi-player really ups the ante the more players you add in. This is partly because of the camera which in a similar way to LBP, zooms out and makes things tricky. Not only that but you can’t occupy the same exact space as each other. This means that on tight areas of the course, you have to spread out to avoid pushing each other into the lava or bottomless pit by accident.

    For this reason, it’s definitely advisable to stick with 2 players if you can, but obviously you’ll have chaotic fun with more also, it’s all about personal preference.

    Check back soon for part 2 of the review, but just to clarify for the time being, you should own this if you have a Wii. Just be prepared to take the frustrations with the fun.

     

  • Chris Till 4:58 am on November 21, 2009 Permalink
    Tags: , , Wii   

    F1 2009 Review 

    F1 2009 may have bad graphics, it may have limited modes and no online play. But what it does provide is fun, and in the end, that’s what matters.

    As a huge F1 fan who is also a big gamer and Wii owner, clearly this game was made for me. While I would have bought the PS3 version instead had that been an option, this version didn’t disappoint me.

    The game has a fairly limited list of modes but it covers everything most people would want. There’s a standard season mode where you play as any driver in the game. While the list of drivers does include everyone who started the 2009 season, by this point, a large amount of the teams and drivers are out of date. Several drivers who are in the game were replaced in the middle of the season, and now that the season is over, almost all the drivers are switching teams, not to mention two teams leaving and about 5 joining for next year.

    In other words if you were expecting the game to feature the teams and drivers as they were towards the end of 2009 then you will be disappointed. It would be unfair though to expect next years roster in this years game however.

    Like I mentioned before, the graphics aren’t much to write home about, even compared to the PS3 launch title F1 Championship Edition, which still looks fantastic by comparison to this, and still a very high quality visual game by any standards.

    My judgement on this games visuals isn’t going to be definitive. While the graphics are poor by PS3 / 360 and PC standards, it’s hard to tell whether or not it’s actually pushing the Wii’s graphical limits. If it is then I have no issues with it, if it isn’t then I’m not. But from a personal standpoint, I found the graphics to be serviceable. They didn’t blow me away at all, but the gameplay did that.

    Speaking of the gameplay, it is incredible. I can’t remember many other occasions I’ve had such a lot of fun playing a driving game. I absolutely love the way this game feels to play. Before I go on, I have to clarify that I love playing using the classic controller. I played a bit with motion controls but only to see how it was. As I predicted, it just felt inaccurate and after a while gets uncomfortable and frustrating. I wouldn’t recommend playing that way. If you have your heart set on that type of play style, I suggest you pick up Excite Truck instead.

    Playing with the classic controller is so satisfying. The analogue sticks are the most accurate I’ve seen on any controller so far. The PS3 is close and the 360 one is poor in my opinion. The reason why this matters is because it allows you to make small turns in a smoother way than having to move the stick multiple times for one corner.

    The reason why this game is so fun to play is a mixture of control and sense of speed. The handling mechanics work close to perfection and really make you feel like you’re driving an F1 car while also not making it so hard to drive that you’ll end up going off the track often as with other games when you first start playing them.

    The modes in the game aren’t exactly amazingly well done in terms of the content off the track. The career is a very simple 3 years of building up your reputation and establishing yourself as a driver. What it is really there for though is to give you a reason to drive the tracks, not that you need a reason, because they are the stars of the show, and they are all a lot of fun to race on.

    Possibly the coolest mode and the one which has made me excited about split screen multiplayer for the first time in a long time is the co-op / competitive career mode, where you can team up or compete with someone next to you on the couch.

    This mode is surprisingly great fun as you attempt to help each other out and fight for the constructor’s championship, while also being their rival for the driver’s title at the same time. The only real negative of it is that, as with all split-screen games you sometimes can’t see what you’re doing very well because of the smaller viewing size, but that’s a minor issue.

    The lack of online may be a bit disappointing but in a game like this, it’s the feeling of driving that will keep me back. Online play isn’t really necessary but I do hope it gets into the PS3 game next year though.

    Overall, I do recommend the game. It certainly does help if you’re an F1 fan or at least a driving game fan, but I think that a lot of people could potentially really enjoy the F1 experience. If you own a Wii, it might be worth your time and money.

     

  • Chris Till 6:33 am on November 18, 2009 Permalink
    Tags: BBC, iPlayer, , Wii   

    iplayer Wii Channel Thoughts 

    I played with the BBC iplayer channel for wii and it’s good. About as good as the virgin set-top box on demand and certainly better than the ps3 version. That version though is essentially a rush job link to the browser rather than a standalone app. You can really tell the difference and it’s nice to see the BBC put in the effort for this channel.

    It’s also nice to see nintendo open up the wii menu to 3rd parties and it will be interesting to see where they go with this with regards to partnering with other content providers.

    Regardless, this is a good first step and something that quite a few people will find useful.

     

  • Chris Till 4:38 am on May 23, 2008 Permalink
    Tags: Wii   

    WiiWare Review: FF Crystal Chronicles, My Life as A King 

    Ok so I downloaded this almost the minute WiiWare launched here along with LostWinds (which I’ve played some of but not much yet). This game is probably the best £10 I’ve ever spent on a game before. Most games this price are good but don’t really keep me coming back for more. Games like Super Stardust HD, Pain, Calling all Cars and the others. This game however, although it can feel frustrating at times when your guys keep failing a dungeon or the slow progress you sometimes feel, it’s still a great game with tons of depth especially when you consider all you’re really doing is staying at home the entire time.

    There is a lot of satisfaction to be had from building up your kingdom and keeping your people happy.  The town will never feel bustling and alive since its not an MMO and the people are computer controlled, it will never feel like logging into wow and seeing people everywhere going about their business. However it does do as good of a job as it can. I would say it would have been nice if they could have a wider array of things to say when you talk to them, but on the other hand I often don’t read what they say anyway.

    The game at first is very basic but when it builds up and you unlock new buildings, it actually starts to get pretty complicated. You’re faced with making sure you train your adventurers in the right jobs, create balanced parties, and send your guys to suitable dungeons. For a WiiWare game there is a lot of depth here and the game will keep you coming back for many hours.

    When I do get to the end of the game, (although I’m not exactly sure if it ever does end) or at least finish all the dungeons in the game, I’ll probably check out some of the downloadable content. Some of the stuff here doesn’t really add to the game at all, costumes for the king and Chime aren’t really necessary and are from my point of view a waste of the 100 points each you’ll spend on them. On the other hand there are dungeon packs which will offer prizes for completing them which will up your limit on various buildings like houses which in turn will give you more gil for spending on various things. You can also get a triple pack of new races. This allows you three different building types, for each of the races, these races each excel at various jobs and so looks like it can really extend the life of the game.

     

  • Chris Till 1:36 pm on May 18, 2008 Permalink
    Tags: Wii   

    The Conduit 

    This is definitely a must-buy wii game when it comes out, although for me personally its going to be about online no matter how good the rest of the game is, in the same way as prime 3.

    High-Voltage are doing some really cool stuff on the Wii, Animales looks great on wiiware, and they have another wiiware title which is a space shooter I’m also looking forward to.

     

  • Chris Till 1:26 pm on May 18, 2008 Permalink
    Tags: , Wii   

    The Wii Storage Issue 

    Theres always been a lot of talk about how the wii doesn’t have enough storage space available. While I do agree that there is a problem, I would also say that the president of Nintendo, who said recently that they are addressing the problem which effects a small percentage of Wii owners in the near future. IGN guys said that this is a joke and that everyone is running out of space, but that’s probably because they are all heavy virtual console downloaders and therefore have clouded judgement, when in fact most people have probably downloaded either one or two virtual console titles, and a few free channels. I am that way, I downloaded the mii contest channel, everybody votes and two VC games, columns and 1080 snowboarding. I am probably someone who has downloaded more than a large percentage of wii owners because for one thing, a lot of them have probably never been connected to the internet, and even those who have may not have even downloaded any channels or games.

    Now that WiiWare is coming out though, and for those people who are the hardcore retro gamers who downloaded loads of games, Nintendo really need to open up the SD slot to allow running of channels and games straight off them instead of having to copy and delete channels in order to play them.

    I’m also wondering what will happen when people have more than 48 channels on their wii in the future, which can happen. Will the Wii menu continue to expand or will there be a limit to how many channels are possible?

    So in conclusion, the probably isn’t as bad as some people think, but it is for a small percentage of owners, and in the near future it will be for many more players too. We’ll probably hear about what Nintendo’s plans are at E3 and a firmware update will probably follow shortly after that opening up the SD slot. I can’t see them bringing out a hard drive or anything like that, but maybe they will allow usb drives and SD cards to give people a choice. It will be either of those things, and definitely won’t be telling people to buy another wii if they want more storage. I really hope not at least.

     

  • Chris Till 4:41 am on May 18, 2008 Permalink
    Tags: Wii   

    WiiWare is looking good 

    With the US launch of wiiware last week and the UK / Europe launch on Tuesday, I’m excited with how the service is making an impact and showing its potential right from the start. With two must have games in the launch line-up with many more to come, WiiWare I hope will be a success for Nintendo and more importantly, the (mostly) small developers that are making innovative original games for the new Wii download service.

    I’m definitely going to revisit this to give reviews of Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles, My Life as A King and LostWinds, the two must-have launch games on tuesday or whenever I’ve played enough of them to have my own opinion.

    From looking at IGN and some other small review sites, LostWinds is by far the standout game of the bunch with my life as a king being more of a niche title, and more for people who are fans of games like animal crossing, sim city and other slower paced management games like that. The big mistake that some people may make is being My Life as A King thinking that it’s a traditional FF RPG style game, when in fact your just managing your kingdom and your people rather than venturing out to be the hero yourself. Me personally, I really like the concept, and the graphics, for a WiiWare game are stunning from what I’ve seen of it so far. LostWinds is also a stunning looking game for a WiiWare title and as IGN’s review says at the top, it’s better than a lot of full price wii games, which obviously shows WiiWare is off to a great start, unless your comparing it to data design games, but whatever.

    So basically the short of this post is that WiiWare is a great step for Nintendo to take and that if you’re out there and have some cash to blow on some games then you can’t go wrong with these when you consider the price. This is the kind of stuff people need to support on Wii. This and games like Boom Blox which really use the wii remote well, and suit the console. The sales of Pro Evo 8 on Wii are apparently pretty poor which is extremely dissapointing considering how they’re really innovating at Konami with great IR controls. That’s another game you should pick up to support Konami and the effort they have made to innovate on Wii.

    To quickly sum up WiiWare, great start and I hope they keep up the momentum with good weekly releases. There are some good titles on the way I’m probably going to end up buying. Especially Bomberman with 8 player wi-fi connection. That’s going to be so fun. World of Goo is coming and already frontier have announced LostWinds 2 which is great news.

     

  • Chris Till 11:46 pm on March 3, 2008 Permalink
    Tags: , , , Wii,   

    High Hopes for Gaming in 2008 

    2008 is going to be a really good year for gaming and thats not to say 2007 was a slouch at all. We had Super Mario Galaxy and COD4 last year among others, I almost forgot about The Burning Crusade and tons of other games I can’t remember right now. This year I’m looking forward to some great Nintendo titles like Mario Kart Wii, Smash Bros. Brawl and Wii Fit. All of which will be amazing for sure. Then on the PS3 side, although not a game, Playstation Home will be interesting to check out, plus a Gran Turismo 5, Metal Gear Solid 4, GTA 4, Haze and more to look forward to. On the PC side theres WoW The Wrath of the Lich King, Starcraft 2 and the impressive looking Spore. I’m not really much of a hardcore PC gamer but I’m really looking forward to playing these games. Then for those into the whole Xbox side of things, there’s Fable 2 that has been talked up for a while now, and of course Gears of War 2 which will be in the running for game of the year, but then again there are so many here that could win. I wouldn’t be too surprised if Wii Fit won to the dismay of hardcore gamers everywhere. Anyway, I’m sure I’m missing some from this list but I think even if I did this is still another huge year for gaming. Just not too kind to people’s wallets.

     

  • Chris Till 3:22 am on May 27, 2007 Permalink
    Tags: , , Wii   

    More on Nintendo for 2007 

    Since the last post, it has become clearer that the three main games: mario galaxy, metroid prime and smash bros are coming out this year in the US. There hasn’t been any mention of a european release for either of these three games and considering we haven’t been given a date for pokemon diamond and pearl yet or super paper mario, both of which are out in the US, I don’t have much hope for these games being released this year.

    One upside is that we do have mario strikers charged out a couple of months before the US but that’s going to be a small consolation for many gamers who are waiting for the big three titles for wii, not to mention zelda phantom hourglass for DS which has also been set for this year in the US.

    I’m planning to pick up strikers soon and hopefully I can get my wii replaced so I can get online and play the game and download some old stuff and the web browser and maybe if we’re lucky we’ll be playing at least one of those big three games by the end of the year. I’m also hoping for pokemon battle revolution but even though that has been out in japan since launch, I still have my doubts. I guess we’ll see what happens.

    Just touching on the other consoles briefly, I’m hoping for a very unlikely PS3 price decrease by the end of the year because I’d like to get the new NBA game and others because there’s just some games that don’t suit the wii remote and nunchuk and need better graphics to keep appealing to gamers. Plus it wouldn’t hurt to have a relatively cheap blu-ray player should blu-ray beat HD DVD which I would prefer at this point I think.

     

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