FPS me, ASAP! (OMG)

So last night I got in (read as "picked up") Medal of Honor: Heroes 2 for the Wii. I wanted a good First Person Shooter, since that system is built for FPS's, and I wasn't in a Metroid mood. And that, it seems are your options. Unlike the Xbox 360, which is awash in shooters, the Wii gives you funky alien worlds and a fantastical setting or Americans versus Nazi's in WWII. That's the extent of your choices, unless you want to play Red Steel, (which, trust me, you don't). Seriously, you can't even spell WWII without "Wii".

...I apologize for that...

It's been that way ever since the only FPS's on the market were Doom and Wolfenstein. Okay, so you get the odd Portal or Duke Nukem or Goldeneye that is a stand-out by being different (different and AWESOME, in some cases), but most FPS's fall neatly into column A or column B. I get column A. Bright colors, weird larger-than-life monsters, bizarre worlds, futuristic weapons. Much as this column holds both the Metroid and Halo and Half-Life franchises (yes, I know H-L takes place on Earth, but stick with me, here), the games are all markedly different from each other.

Then there's column B. Realistic war-time games, which almost always involve Americans fighting the Germans in France in the early 40's. All of the Call of Honor and Medal of Duty games fit here (except, notably, Call of Duty 4) as well as all the Wolfenstein clones and spin-offs. Why?

Well I'll tell you (he's going to tell!). For the same reasons war movies that aren't anti-war all take place in the same time/place (well, mostly). It meets all of the following criteria.

1. We won. No one would have a war game set in Vietnam. That'd be crazy. No, even if you won the game you'd have this weird experience of having won a war that America lost. It wouldn't sell.
2. The enemy was clearly in the wrong. It's impossible to sympathize with the Nazis. They have a name for that type of person. It's "Nazi-sympathizer"... ironically enough. And while I'm not one to ever throw the word "evil" around loosely*, most people are, and to most people Nazi = Evil, which is why they kept showing up in Indiana Jones movies as late as 1989.
3. The style of warfare is very game-able. To have an FPS, you really need machine guns. And WWI was more of a hide-in-a-trench-and-then-stand-and-get-shot war. Actually, come to think of it, WWI might be good fodder for a real-time strategy game.
4. All of the combatants where white. Not in real life, I know, but any that you would encounter in a movie or video game certainly were. Don't believe me that this is a factor? Fine. When they make The Tuskegee Airmen for PS3 I'll buy you a copy. Or just look at any game in your library and ask yourself how many of them star some grizzled Caucasian. Resident Evil 5 is making waves because it will take place in Africa, and the main hero will be somewhat black-tinted.

So there you have it. But, coming back to my original point, the Wii has awesome FPS potential over a controller-based scheme. I don't know why, but I could never get the hang of left-stick-moves-you-right-stick-moves-your-head controls. Too many years playing Goldeneye, I guess. Left sticks moves you forward and back and rotates you. Right stick is for looking up and down and strafing. Totally not intuitive. I'll set up my controller to handle that way on something like Halo, but it still doesn't feel right. I long for those C-buttons. Digression.

But on Medal of Honor: Heroes 2, I had a learning curve of about three minutes. Use the stick to move. Use the remote to aim and turn. It's so intuitive. And if that's too complicated for you, there's always rail-shooter mode. It's very engaging, until the story interrupts you and you're reminded that you're in a game with little-to-no imagination with regards to plot.

But it should tide me over until next Spring, by which point we should have The Conduit (a sci-fi FPS in which you fight aliens) and Call of Duty 5.

Le sigh.

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*I've said it before, but I'll reiterate. The Nazis weren't evil. They did "evil" things, but they were motivated by socio-political and economic factors, not some well of malcontent that surged up under the Rhine in 1937.