RPP Video Game Report
The Wii
game offerings- a review
By Cozmic
The Wii is rapidly nearing the three year mark, and with the console being the dominant one in sheer hardware sales, there clearly has to be a good supply of games for the console, right?
To date the Wii has sold over 50 million units, no doubt due to its lower price, compared to the Playstation 3 and the Xbox 360, and the motion controls. And every console needs to have great games, especially the ones that sell like hotcakes. Besides, why would you buy a console if there is nothing to play? This is a question one can seriously struggle to find an answer for, because looking at a shelf of Wii games at your local gamestore might make a seasoned gamer want to cry just a little bit. Behind the scores of mass-produced shovelware consisting of minigames containing a brand new way to shake your wiimote(up and down this time, not side to side! Innovation!), one can find the occassional few games that one would like to play had the controls worked. There is a reason the Wii Motion Plus was developed, after all, but spending money on what is essentially a patch sits quite wrong with me. Fortunately, almost no games utilize Motion Plus, preferring instead to support the waggle.
Barely any third party games actually seem to make money on the Wii, because the only titles people seem to buy in any large quantities is the ones developed by Nintendo themselves. Of course, here one can find classic titles in new forms (new forms means you shake your wrist a lot, probably in the same manner the third party developers did when they created things like My Fitness Coach: Cardio Workout, or the Fun For All series by Activision, due to be exploited monthly), like Super Mario Galaxy, Super Mario Kart, Super Mario Buttscratching, New Super Mario Bros. Wii, and one can also find Nintendo's new amazing games with imaginative names like Wii Fit, Wii Fit Plus, Wii Sports Resort (I cannot wait for New Wii Sports Resort Plus 2) and that guru of gaming, Shigeru Miyamoto's Wii Music (currently rated 63.7% on Gamerankings. That is pretty low, in case you were wondering.)
Of course, not all is Mario games or collections of minigames (starring your Mii). There is also the category of games that would have been better on a console with decent/working controls and maybe graphics. In this category one can find things like Muramasa: The Demon Blade, a gorgeous game that could have been even more gorgeous in HD, and The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess (which is not all that great, but is available in a Gamecube version with less flailing about and cursing of Link's controlscheme) and some other games that probably sold about 5 copies combined. So there is some reason people are buying the Wii in droves, is what I am saying. Also, my pants seem to have suddenly caught fire. I think I shall use my Wii Fire Extinguisher Peripheral (it came with a great collection of minigames that had nothing to do with the extinguisher) to put said liar fire out.
(This review brought to you by not having played Modern Warfare 2 yet, the movie season being worthless, and finally, the complete inability of Watch X Online to be watchable, due to spamarific ads. Also, this review brought to you by that trip to GAME because a friend picked up Assassin's Creed II and I looked at the Wii shelf to assess the situation. The horror, the unspeakable horror.)
Images are copyright of Nintendo.