Nintendo’s Wii is certainly struttin’ its stuff this holiday season, doing, in my honest opinion far better than the videogame behemoth, Sony. I’m certainly rootin for the little guy here, even though they were bitter rivals with my favorite game company, Sega, in the past.
However, I have to wonder whether the underdog will be able to hold the line against the other two giants, the X360 and the PS3. Sure, its cheap, has a good line-up, and has a recognizable brand, but the big thing about the Wii is the novelty of immersion. The wii-mote and accessories all have sensor technology to detect motion, orientation, and acceleration. This allows the gamer to shake the controler or swing it like a sword and have their avatar react in the same way. Yes, its clearly very cool, but is it just a gimmick? Will people just decide… oh, the wii? Yeah… it had that sensor thing but that got real old fast.
Personally.. the sensor thing kind of cheeses me off… I mean, especially when you base gameplay on how well you can chuck the thing about. Having the guy on screen swing its sword when you shake the controller is one thing… but having the character swing the sword a certain way at the same speed with some percision is another one. Now here’s the disclaimer. I’m writing this rant as I just got completely whomped at Wii-sport’s golf. It’s one thing to play Jack Nicholas’ Links or whatever and go: “Crap… I shoulda just went for the more conservative path.” It’s wholly another different thing to say… “Damnit! I swung it a little too soft and to the left.” It was really frustrating when the thing started misreading movements, like where i would want to smash the hell out of the ball, only to have it misread the upswing as the real swing and then gently tap the ball… or when i wanted to just nudge the ball… and have the thing register a smash. I mean, losing because of bad tactics is one thing… Losing because the equipment and the game decided to not act in the way you want it to is another thing.
I know someone out there is going to say: “But golf in real life is hard!” Yes. Yes it is. But in real life… when I swing hard (and assuming I don’t suck enough to just whiff the ball on the ground), it should go far. And in real life… when I gently tap, I shouldn’t crush it 80 feet away with a putter. It’s just a frustrating experience to sit there and fight the equipment, not the other players, who were far more familiar with the magical dance you have to do to get the Wii-mote to work right.
So I don’t know about the future of this generation of video games. Who knows, my X360 might be the next big thing.
