Why Shooters Are Better on Wii

[Uphoreka]

April 12, 2010 - I hate using the word "better" to describe a game. For a while now, I've wanted to move it onto the trash heap alongside "good," "bad," and "important," words that sound audacious but don't actually describe anything. That's the trap I've laid for myself, so let it be said here, if nowhere else: Wii shooters are better than the rest. Full stop. Hopefully you haven't snapped your mouse in rage while reading that. If you have, I promise to try and tell you just how and why so that loss won't have been in vain. If by the end of the next page I haven't convinced you that Red Steel is better than Halo, then I will promise never to use that opaque and self-affirming word ever again.

Back before Nintendo had turned its swaggering Revolution into a neutered Wii, Red Steel was the macho dreamboat that seemed ready to transform the shooter genre. A new level of aiming precision, gestural control, and a noir-ish Yakuza tale made it seem like videogame combat was about to evolve again. Then Nintendo sold their soul to Martha Stewart's version of SkyNet, and something called a "bounding box" entered game vernacular, while those awesome-seeming sword fights turned out to be imprecise and ruled by cheating half-motions. On those grounds, Red Steel was largely written off as a failure, a buggy mess that proved all the general promise of the Wii remote was underwhelming in specific execution.

If a shooter is to be taken in the Halo and Quake mold of fast-paced, high kill-count showdowns with a side of circle strafing, then Wii controls do indeed get in the way of player proficiency. You can't move and kill as easily in Red Steel. I've yet encounter any person able to explain why that is a bad thing. Rod Humble, president of The Sims studio, once said the difference between a game and a piece of software is efficiency. "A utility advances by reducing user interaction time and increasing productivity, a game does the opposite," Humble said. "It's the nonproductive bit that's enjoyable."

The most obvious and most enduring issue with Wii shooters is the difficulty of using a floating pointer to control both aiming and looking. The options are either to live with a constantly shaking frame of view, or use the accursed bounding box that requires the aiming reticule be directed towards the screen edge for turning. Using this system makes movement more cumbersome, but I find it also makes it more alluring. Navigating spatial relations with this set-up encourages more careful consideration of the environment in advance. In the same way that Wii Sports took a handful of actions that would have traditionally been enacted by a button press and turned them into full body gestures, the simple act of moving in a Wii shooter has a slow gravitas suggestive of being in control of an actual human body and not a camera tripod on greased wheels.

Read more at: http://wii.ign.com/articles/108/1083154p1.html

 

[Kino]

I disagree. I don't like Wii shooters. But I'll agree that Red Steel was a hell of a game.

 

[Zawazuki]

I disagree 100%. Shooters are way better on PC or 360.

 

[agentmanningctu]

Cod5 for wii is epic.

 

[fantanoice]

Why shooters are bad for Wii:
- Pointing at the screen makes your arm hurt after a while.

Why shooters are good on PC:
- Pointing at the screen does not make your arm hurt after a while.


Pretty simple concept.

 

[Uphoreka]

I think it would be fun playing it on the Wii because you can have motion control of the character.

 

[Kino]

But how accurate is that control half of the time?

 

[Uphoreka]

If you get the Wii Remote Plus (or something like that) it's way more accurate.

 

[Faceman]

I think it depends on how you are feeling when you play, sometime I am lazy and want to sit and shoot things with out much effort, so I play PS3. Other times I have energy and and what to enjoy the satifaction of shooting people on the Wii.
Like I said it depends on my energy level and mood

 

[el canadiano]

The Conduit on the Wii had very good controls and support (that's without the MotionPlus). It was just a lack of features and short storyline which made it a problem. The fact that FPSs don't work on the Wii is because Call of Duty is Activision, the Wii's hardware is not used to its full potential by third-party developers (Nintendo is to blame in this one), and developers aren't actually taking the time to make a good game on the Wii.

 

[Justin]

I played my friends WII before. There was always some sort of lag for me 😛

 

[Rise Against]

I thought most shooters for the wii were cool but cod5 was terrible cod4 is way better and red steel was alright right haven't really tried the 2nd one

 

[Shahrier]

Xbox still has to lift a controller up like wii. I don't see a difference except that wii let's you control with the motion sensor.

 

[Loopy Legend]

The only system I will play a shooter on is PC, cant stand console shooters, 1 set of buttons to look up and down 1 set for left and right, I prefer 1 mouse that does both.

 

[death180]

Amen.