“Dude, nobody’s body should bend like that!”
Last night, I was released from the shackles of father-husbanddom and popped over to visit Scooter, a local member of the SAG Forums and someone who has become a good buddy in a short time (and there was little money or alcohol involved). As in olden days gone by, I took a gift to appease the natives and their strange gods, and also took along Splinter Cell: Double Agent for the Wii – one of the games I picked up as part of Wii-vent 07. I figured that someone should play it before Crimble.
We popped it into the Wii and Scooter had at it. As it was loading I sat and waited to see how the Wii remote controls would operate. Scooter, who is left handed, stood in front of his TV and started the game. Good Ole Sammy rappelled down a wall of ice with a buddy and then attempted to rescue some crates. We were a little confused as to what do to at this point, because we’re men and instruction manuals are the spawn of the devil. Following the on-screen prompts, Scooter took Sam into an ice cave, following it around until he found a guard on patrol, standing with his back to us. Standing to his back with us, I say, and with a sheet of clear ice between him and us. Who designs theses games? Guards are meant to guard, which means looking in as many directions as possible, not having your back to an entranceway!
Anyway, Scooter stepped up, ran his fist through the ice, shattered it, and proceeded to go all Bruce Lee on the guard. After subduing him, we worked out how to incorporate the teamwork inherent in the gamer’s design and Sam got a boost up into an ice cave. Too late! There’s choppers coming and we need to run back and take out anybody left behind. Sam runs back to the opening of the ice cave to be presented with two guards, once again with their backs to him. Scooter activates the hidden one-man Zerg Rush and tries to take out these guys, gunshots are fired (none his), and Sam clocks one guy just after he shoots the other. A reprimanding voice comes over the com system and we realize the current mission objectives just got shot (literally) to hell. Time to restart.
So, my turn to try. This is the first time I’ve use a Wii controller at all. I find the controls none to complicated, but a little awkward and the camera in this game is very annoying. There’s a lot that can be done, so I decided to just wing control. Knowing roughly what we have to do, I run into the ice cave up to the guard there, smash the ice, and get shot several times in the body while trying to grab him.
This happens a second time. A third time. A fourth time. A fifth time.
Dammit, I’m getting annoyed – I just can’t get close enough to grab this guy! Sam runs in this time, and I sneak around the ice and proceed to sock the guard out with a single punch. Feeling the need to vent a little, but in a friend’s house and having nothing really of mine I can bust, I decide to have some fun. I pick up the guard and move him around a little, then I drop him.
See that picture above? Go on, look. I’ll be right here while you do.
Back? Okay, that picture was an actual camera shoot Scooter took of the guard in an impossible position. Check out the rag doll physics on that guy!. Dude, I totally Action Man/GI Joed that guy! It’s like I took a Flip N Fold and put him into an impossible position. At this point, we were laughing hard, and I decided that it was time to up the ante and test the rag doll physics.
So, I shot the guy in the head and crotch a few times. He bounced around as each shot plunged into until he was lying in a more normal pose. I found some more ammo, and tried to get him into a position like this again, but he wouldn’t do it. That was when I turned to my team member. The actual next scene was censored, so we don’t have any pics. Suffice to say, that my in-game buddy went down on his knees next to me, and I shot him right in the head. An admonishing voice came over the com line telling me that shooting team members is looked down upon. Duhr!
The most annoying part of this game was most definitely the camera. To use it well needed small controlled movements, otherwise the camera would go all askance. Also, when you’re in a hot spot are for training videos, you can’t do much more than watch video. There’s a disconnect between the controls and the game training modes that stops you affecting any object in the general area. This got annoying well before the twentieth time we ran into this.
At this point it was time to mess around with some other Wii games. Although I only sampled a couple of games, here are my thoughts on them.
- Wii Bowling: A lot of fun, but too easy to get too good at it over and just have every game be well played. No real weight behind throwing the ball, so it threw me off. The mini games are challenging and require you to know how to kick and spin the ball.
- Wii Baseball: LOADS of fun. We played about 3 rounds of this and I was started to get the hang of pitching. I kept swinging too early though. More on that in a bit. Scooter managed to get a home run. Grrr.
- Wii Golf: We played 9 holes and I sucked royally at it. You’d expect the Scot to be better at this game. To be honest this was getting towards the end of the night and we both started crashing from being tired and sucking royally at the game.
I can see easily how these games have grabbed Joe and Jane America and have just about everyone playing them. They’re easy to get into, and fun to play, even if they require proprioceptive awareness that takes time to develop.
My major gripe is that the controller isn’t terribly sensitive, and this was throwing me off. I’d swing too early or late in Baseball and the controller wouldn’t update as quickly as it should have; there’s a half second to a second delay on actions. Doesn’t sound like much, but I’ve played a lot of racquet games in my day, and it seriously throws off your game. I think I need to remodel some synaptic connections to do this.
Golf had some major issues with the controller, but I may have been imagining some of it. The controller response issue was there, but what was worse is that when you performed the same move at the same speed at the same distance when holding down the A button instead of juspracticingng the swing, it would usually end up overpowered and slice or hook. Not good. This happened to me a lot, and I know I wasn’t doing anything differently each swing. I’ve been doing Taiqi for years and used to be a dancer and do martial arts. I do massage therapy. I know exactly where all my body parts are at one time, and I can replicate movement perfectly when doing repetitive movements.
Will this stop us getting a Wii and playing it? Hell no. This is a great and fun system, and I can’t wait to make a Bagder Mii and have it running around on all my friend’s consoles (even if I can’t really play multiplayer with them – Nintendo, can you please fix this).
The hardest part of buying the Wii for Wii-Vent ‘07? Buying it and then putting it away until December 25th. We’ll have to test it when we get it, which should be in late September, but 3 months of not playing the console that everyone wants? That’ll be tough.
PS: Scooter runs his own blog too. Check him out. The Hypnotoad commands you.
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Tags: Play by Teh Bagder
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