Geek Rant: What's Up With the Wii?

Ah the Wii... how you taunt my fanboyism.

I'm inexplicably torn.  I loved the idea when I first heard about it, loved it when I finally got to try one out, loved it when I first owned one.  Still love playing it today.  But something feels a bit off.  Almost like it's not a real gaming console... I can't quite explain it.

Granted, my enthusiasm for the Wii is at least realistic.  I am well aware of its short-comings compared with other 7th gen systems.  The 360 and PS3 (incidentally, did you notice that all of these can be easily represented with 3 characters--to say nothing of the PSP or the excessively brief DS) both have more computing horsepower and the 360 has, hands-down, the best controller of the generation.  The Wii also wants desperately for on-board disk space, and the online gameplay is pretty limited, and the motion controls are sometimes a bit unresponsive.

And the motion controls are gimmicky-yes, I admit it, but "gimmick" is not always a bad thing.  Nintendo has a long history of experimenting with gimmicks, many of which fail horribly--Virtual Boy, the Power Glove, the Power Pad (for that ill-fated menstruation game... okay, I apologize for that joke).  But then, there are the gimmicks that worked and were coopted by the competition, such as the now-ubiquitous analog stick or the Game Boy.  Then there are the gimmicky accessories like the Light-Zapper that not only worked, but worked extremely well and added whole new levels of depth and interactive fun to game-playing.

Or would have, if there were more than three games developed for it.  Were there even three?  I can think of Duck Hunt and Hogan's Alley. Surely there was at least a 3rd.  Right?  Anybody?

Maybe that's the problem with the Wii's motion controls--they're underutilized.  The Wii is simply untapped potential.  

Yeah, that's it.

The games put out by Nintendo (including franchise favorites Mario, Zelda, Metroid, MarioKart, and Smash Bros) have all been well-received and make at least some kind of use of the new controls.  But 3rd parties seem focused on releasing graphics-intense games with negligible gameplay rather than trying to create something interactive and fun.  I'm trying to think of games that make good use of the Wiimote's motion controls, and I'm having a hard time coming up with anything, especially anything 3rd-party.  There are plenty of good games that don't invoke movement at all (Super Smash Bros. Brawl) or do so only superfluously (Super Mario Galaxy comes to mind).  The infrared control gets some nominal traction star-collecting in SMG or in the few shooters out there (a la Metroid Prime 3: Corruption) and point-and-click fare (Zack & Wiki or the oddly-appealling Trauma Center games).  But as far as motion controls go...

Well, okay, MarioKart is dead-on.  As is The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, although you could argue that the controls are superfluous since the exact same game is available on GameCube.  And I haven't played it, but I understand Boom Blox is pretty good.  Then you have the shallow games with good motion controls (Mercury Meltdown Revolution) and the good games with okay motion controls (WarioWare: Smooth Moves).  And WiiSports fits in there somewhere in the "okay-ish" section, because baseball and bowling are great, tennis is frustratingly bad, boxing is in-between, and golf is too difficult to call because no one actually plays it.

Mostly you end up with games that don't need motion controls having them tacked on because of the Wiimote's shortage of buttons and lack of a second analog stick.  In Sonic Unleashed, which was released this week, the motion controls are completely optional.  Other games force them on you, to mixed results.  Red Steel is abysmal and with Marvel Ultimate Alliance they just get in the way, resulting in players attacking the air or rotating the camera because someone set something down to scratch himself or take a drink.  And due to the limited processing power, 3rd party franchises either skip the Wii altogether (Grand Theft Auto) or make a dumbed-down versions with some motion addends.  I think that's what bugs me the most.  Third party developers seem to regard the Wii as the retarded kid brother of this console generation.

Inexplicably.  I mean, the damned thing is outselling it's competition by huge margins.  After two years, you can finally find without going to three different stores (or... at all).  But it's going to take some special attention from developers to develop worthwhile gameplay at the sacrifice of fancy graphics.  Instead, we get shoddy half-baked ports of blingy 360 games.  The most grevious (pardon the pun) offender is Star Wars: The Force Unleashed.  I mean, the motion controls mostly work (that is, you generally do on screen what you sort of think you're supposed to do), but the presentation is just poor and the game is so waggle-intense that it's hard to play more than a level without wearing out your right arm.  But the Wii version is still kind of fun (whereas my friend with the 360 version gave up at the end).

Ironically, the Wii port of these games is usually a near-clone of the PS2 port.  What's wrong with that?  Well, the PS2 is last-gen, so why is Sony still putting out new games for it?  Okay, full disclosure, I have no love for the PS3.  I like the 360--probably won't ever get one, but I enjoy playing it.  But I tend to regard the PS3 as a bit of a tragedy, all those extra horses to pull the weight of a video format no one cares about and its sadly short list of exclusive titles.  Sad, really--because the PS2 was indeed the king of 6th gen.  But when Square Enix pulled it's deal with Sony to release Final Fantasy XIII as a PS3 exclusive, you know there's trouble.

I digress.

Here's my other gripe: if the Wii is supposed to be about gaming as a social experience, where are the local multiplayer games?  Specifically, where are the local multi-player shooters?  The Wii is born for shooters, and if you can't go to friends house and all sit around blowing each other's brains out on split-screen, what can you do?  Actually, this isn't just a Wii complaint, because it's hard to find 360 shooters with local split-screen multiplayer (at least we have Halo, right?), and the 360 charges you for online play.

At least the Wii let's you do that for free.

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