andygates

The Wii wants its perfect duelling game. The criteria are simple: sword(s), headset (for the sledging), online play. It's still not here, but by crikey, the new WiiMotionPlus gubbin brings it closer.

WiiMotionPlus is a new plug-in for the Wiimote controller which adds real-space dead reckoning to the deal. It makes it less of a wandy mousey thing and more of a virtual stick in a virtual space. And what do we do with virtual sticks? Hit each other with 'em! See, you could dispense with the nunchuck entirely, with real dead-reckoning, and have the avatar follow the sword. It would rock beyond rock.

( Demo of the new sexiness after the cut )

Nice article in Newsweek's Level Up gaming blog today, tracking the growth of game controller complexity from the old Atari joystick to the PS3's outrageously button-studded piece of mil-spec hardware.  It blames Streetfighter II - the first of the many-button combo-tastic arcade games - for changing the game from the old, pure waggling experience to that ubernerdy one where the elite weren't hopped up on speed but on memory drugs.  Could you remember all of Dhalsim's combos?  Nor could I.  spike150, this is your curtain call.

N'gai goes on to declare the Wii controller a second big change, away from the zillion-button pads and by extension, dragging games away from that sort of experience.  Looking at the pick-up-and-play goodness in boxing, bowling and surgery over the weekend, I have to agree.  Looking also at the cumbersome and frankly ugly controls for the Wii version of Marvel: Ultimate Alliance, I agree even more: the arbitrary combos make no sense when you have a physical control metaphor, but they're just fine on the Playstation version. 

The physical metaphor has its own rules, and games which break them are no fun.  And so the Wii remote as a space-mouse or glove is immediately obvious and elegant, even to kids and grannies.  N'gai is right: games which get it wrong will tank even if they're as lavish as Marvel:UA - I still feel cheated that Spidey's web isn't activated with a thwip action, but even if it was, I'm thwipping at the screen and Spidey can face any which way.  With a D-pad that's okay, but with a physical metaphor, it's jarring.  The Wii's first year has revealed this with the huge success of frankly dumb titles like Cooking Mama and Trauma Center and the really meh performance of the traditional shooters - it's all in the controls.

Clubbing a Playmobil opponent in the side of the head with friends yelling behind you is fun, pure and simple. 

Games like Okami - based around Japanese brush painting - are getting me excited for the second wave of titles, when developers get their engines optimised and start really creating.  [/wiifanboy]

I've just discovered Philip Reeve's Mortal Engines, shameless YA steampunk centred around vast moving cities roaming a war-and-ecotastrophe-blasted Earth scavenging old tech and preying on each other for resources.  While not anything like as filling a meal as Pulman's His Dark Materials, it's a grand ripping yarn.  Rubber coats and class strife and goggles and infernal weapons and airships... and Shrike.  "It will take a lot more than being run over by a couple of towns to finish Shrike."  I am already a Shrike fanboy.

China's internet authorities continue to be both egregious and inscrutable: they have ordered World of Warcraft skeletons to cover up.  Quite why skeletons must but zombies don't have to is beyond my paltry reasoning capacity. 

And in Wii news (yes, yes, I'll bring it along to the next surf weekend just for the bowling) Lego Star Wars look to be having conceptual problems wii-ifying - no, we don't want to waggle our arms furiously, we want meaningful movement - but Sega might have a winner with their fighter based on the Bleach manga.  Semi-cel-shaded always works for me, and from the looks of it it's meaningful combos to execute moves, rather like Eye Toy's Antigrav.  One to watch.