No, I’m not tired of Wii puns yet.
Two interesting video game announcements for Wii owners this week:
Eidos has announced that they are doing a “Tomb Raider Anniversary Edition” for Wii that will take advantage of the Wii’s control system. TRAE is a remake of the very first Tomb Raider game, but in an IGN interview with Eidos’s CEO Bill Gardner, he emphasizes that the Wii’s controls will make it a new experience:
“The Wii Remote and nunchuck controllers allow Wii gamers to control Lara in brand new, unique ways, and there are plenty of new features, to be revealed soon, which will ensure Anniversary really hits the spot — literally.”
Kinda vague., other than using the Wiimote to hit spots. The only concrete detail I gathered from the interview was this line:
You know how Lara jumps around? Some of that is going to be really interesting to do with the Wii controllers. Much more interesting than it is to press a button. Going that route, then you start thinking about some of the things Lara can do if you were to expand in that direction.
The first thought for me was flicking the Wiimote upwards to make her jump while moving around with the nunchuk. We’ll see, I’m just hoping there’s not a lot of pointing at the screen. Developers seem to think that the “light gun” style is the only way to use the Wii, not realizing that there’s some serious tracking issues with it, and waving it around in crazy ways is the most fun anyway.
The other interesting Wii announcement was the Soul Calibur Legends game for Wii. According to the article,
Namco Bandai is promising that the Wii’s motion-sensing controller has “revolutionized” the series
Maybe we’ll finally get some fun, sword slinging action for the Wii. My hope is that it will be “Legend of Zelda” style with some more intricacies in waving it around to perform different moves in sequence, as opposed to a 1:1 lightsaber style where you physically need to parry. Don’t get me wrong, I do want a lightsaber game like that, but I don’t think that’ll be the best fit for the Soul Calibur game, especially since it will be an action game instead of a one on one fighter. As long as they keep the classic Soul Calibur cast in there (Voldo + Wii = crazy) it’ll have a shot at being a good addition to the franchise.
Can any of these third party titles show that not just Nintendo can use the Wii effectively? We should find out by this Christmas season…
What I imagine with Soul Caliber is that they’d use the controller in a classic sense, but that tilting from side to side would become essential in the use of it to manuever your character in the now 3d arenas of fighting games lately. Typically it is a more difficult move/dodge to sidestep, but in the more recent Mortal Kombats they quickened it and the pace of the fights by allowing easier travel from side to side, I can see this being a big improvement on the genre as a whole.
At least I hope it’s not like Wii Sports – Boxing, while I enjoy it there are too many interface/control problems for it to translate to a fighting game.