We had a chance to try out Disc Dog, Power Cruising and, our favorite, Sword Play. Nintendo says the Wii MotionPlus gives 1:1 control, but that's stretching the truth just a little. The controls certainly feel more precise than the Wiimote in its current state, but we're not exactly sure just yet if it'll fulfill gamer fantasies of precise lightsaber duels.
Let's get the other two games out of the way with the quickness so we can talk Sword Play, the standout of our hands-on time. Disc Dog is a game where a frisbee gets tossed and a dog will go and try to catch it. No buttons are pressed, it's all about making a frisbee toss motion and flicking your wrist like you've released a frisbee at the correct time. There's a target on the screen that the player is trying to make the dog run to catch the frisbee. The easiest way to play is to look at where the target is on the screen compared to the Mii, imagine yourself as the Mii, and just flick your wrist at where the target would be if it were in the real world. For example, if the target is at the Mii's two o'clock, just flick at your two o'clock -- ignore the TV.
Power Cruising is simplified Wave Race 64 ... um, yeah, that's pretty much it. Hold the Wiimote and nunchuk like a handlebar to steer, twist the Wiimote to boost like one would on a Jet Ski. Easy-peasy.
OK, Sword Play. This minigame ended up creating laughter, humiliation, cheering, agony and glee. Basically, it's sword fighting and everything that we thought Red Steel should have delivered, which we now feel could happen with Red Steel 2 using Wii MotionPlus. The controls aren't perfect, but it certainly feels good. It would be absolutely worth purchasing Wii Sports Resort for this minigame alone ... if, it had more depth, which it doesn't. There is much potential found in Sword Play which we hope developers take advantage of. The minigame takes the waggle out of the Wiimote and shows how it could be a more elegant instrument.
Wii Sports Resort is an excellent showcase for the Wii MotionPlus. Although we could go without every playing Disc Dog or Power Cruising again (although they both have their charm), we'd certainly like to go back and try Sword Play again and imagine the potential for future products.
(Page 1) Reader Comments
http://nintendoe32008.ytmnd.com/
Yay! for shallow mini-games with no depth.
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Kind of like the Novat Falcon except about $1000 more.
I actually work with one of those devices. We are using it to create a surgery simulator. It's awesome. I think such force feedback is going to be the future in videogames.
I'm now ecstatic that was no Zelda this year because it means they have time to implement this into a new Zelda game for the Wii. That would be amazing. I can still remember how easy the bow and arrow was from the first Zelda with the IR. It was my first real experience of the ability of the IR.
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And thats all because of the game. Yup. People are paying $50 for Wii Play. They're totally not buying it because it comes with a controller. Nope.
Fail in terms of quality - possibly, but there are a lot of games that fail the quality test on all three systems. Wii's primary target audience doesn't seem to care much about quality like the core gamers do, so you're going to see more of that.
i guess the next Zelda Wii title will finally have somewhat respectable graphics for a current gen system and voice acting...
and Metroid Prime 4 will have an online mode (which the same fanboys who currently say it doesnt make sense in a Metroid game will praise)
see the trend? tsk tsk tsk Nintendonald's.
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So go read up about it and the technology behind it before you go and say that it should have been there from the start. It just couldn't have.
how about you try to form your own opinion instead of letting the suits think for you?
here's my opinion: the only reason why this add-on tech wasnt incorporated into the Wiimote from day 1 is because it would mean Nintendonald's healthy hardware profits would decrease by a slight bit. the Nintendonald's faithful will call that "a good business decision". i call that milking your gullible customers like a bunch of Swiss cows a.k.a. immoral/unethical consumer treatment. and bullshitting for months about how the original Wiimote is so revolutionary and will change gameplay forever and 1:1 and this and that doesnt help with their image either.
they should have added this tech from day 1 and absorbed the slightly decreased profits per hardware sale, especially since they made such grand statements about the REVOLUTIONARY Wiimote! take a page from MS and Sony who lost $100 of dollars initially on hardware sales which cost them billions. but no Nintendonald's is the good guy!
Oh, and, uh, stop being a moron. Zelda isn't the kind of game that would need voice acting (although a graphical update would be nice), and the only people who were clamoring for Multiplayer in Metroid Prime 3 were twits who hadn't played a game in the series before. We've had multiplayer in two Metroid Prime games, and neither had GOOD multiplayer (Metroid Prime Hunter's entire focus was Multiplayer. Did fans 'praise' it? Nah, when it comes to Metroid fans, that's usually the most universally disliked title in the Prime series).
So if I'm reading this correctly you're saying that Nintendo should have done this for the get go. When the whole point of Linkman2004's post was that it wasn't possible to do when the Wii was originally released.
Where exactly is your proof that this was possible 4+ years ago when the Wii was being designed?
That's complete BS.
The motion sensors used in the Motion Plus are not of a level beyond what was available when Wii came out. They're not gyroscopes, BTW, they're just more MEMS devices.
This is way overblown, there's still no way to do 1:1 movement with dead reckoning (as these motion sensing systems use). I'm sure it'll be better, but I wouldn't go expecting miracles.
And before some person asks me for "proof", these MEMS devices were used in the Macbook Pro laptop in that timeframe. Ask Linkman to offer proof of his statement.
Of course, I would downvote Curmeo anyway based on everything ELSE that's wrong with his posts.
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Strange that Nintendo's big software titles now seem to be driven by included hardware (like GH and Rock Band). It used to be common wisdom that games needing peripherals didn't sell well because the buying audience was automatically limited. I guess that doesn't apply when you bundle the peripheral, especially if it doesn't push the cost of the game much higher (in Nintendo's case, anyway…the price is bumped quite a bit for GH and RB).
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Umm, Wii MotionPlus most definitely uses Gyroscopes (thee in fact), and non MEMS.
This was confirmed by Invensense, the company responsible for the technology inside the MotionPlus. GameSpot then confirmed that the device uses three of them for accurate tracking.
1) http://kotaku.com/5025650/how-exactly-does-the-wiis-motionplus-work
2) http://www.gamespot.com/features/6194443/index.html
Also
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From Nintendo's E3, it looked like Power Cruising might not be that bad - it looked a bit enjoyable, actually - if there was no objective, I would enjoy just cruising around.
Sword Play looks good, though.
But seriously, unless they give this game a good price, it seems a lot like a gimmick to me.
P.S. Here was the (only) good part (imo) of the E3 conference by Nintendo: http://img151.imageshack.us/img151/2411/lole3nintendomx1.jpg
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