Topic: Best of the Wii: Our Top 10 First-Party Wii Games

[Glad0s]

Oh, how I love making lists. Here goes:




10) Wii Sports (the importance vote)
9) Mario Kart Wii
8: Donkey Kong Country Returns
7) Punch Out!
6) Super Smash Bros. Brawl
5) Twilight Princess
4) Super Mario Galaxy
3) Metroid Prime 3
2) Skyward Sword
1) Super Mario Galaxy 2

[PogueSquadron]

I think DKCR might be my number one. I feel like it was one of the few console platformers (going back to Yoshi's Island) that truly took advantage of the hardware it was on. It was a retro platformer, but transformed using modern sensibilities and techniques.  Things falling in from the background. Platforms building from materials in the environment. Diddy and DK can get blasted to different planes of the background (making the world feel even more alive). And THEN you had world map events that changed how levels worked, not unlike in Wario Land or even Super Mario World (I would've loved more of that by the way).


My only problems with the game were
- the waggle (obviously)
- the brutal difficulty (it was TOO hard)
- the amount of auto-scrolling levels
- the lack of HD - this isn't Retro's fault, obviously, but sometimes the camera zoomed out to the point where I wished there was more clarity. I feel like Smash Bros. suffers from this as well.


Other than that, there are few things I'd change about this gem. I would've loved to see a small group at Retro devoted to doing another one.

[Ian Sane]

DKC Returns is probably, for better or worse, the best representation of the Wii experience.  It's a great game trapped behind terrible waggle controls with no alternative control options.  That perfectly encapsulates what it was like to own a Wii.  It's everything right and wrong about Wii-era Nintendo is one game.

[Mop it up]

It's tough for me to narrow down ten games since I've enjoyed many, and if you asked me again tomorrow then I'd likely give a slightly different answer. But for now, here's what I'm thinking for my top ten:

10. Endless Ocean Blue World
9. Battalion Wars II
8. Metroid Prime Trilogy
7. Mario Super Sluggers
6. The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword
5. Mario Party 8
4. Super Mario Galaxy
3. New Super Mario Brothers Wii
2. Animal Crossing City Folk
1. Mario Kart Wii

I definitely don't expect to see some of these on NWR's list...

[Kairon]

I can't wait until this feature concludes because I want to share my own personal list at that point and review all the ways it differs from the official website's results!

[Luigi Dude]

Might as well post mine if everyone else is.

1.  Super Smash Bros Brawl
2.  Super Mario Galaxy 2
3.  Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword
4.  Xenoblade
5.  Wario Land Shake
6.  Super Mario Galaxy
7.  Metroid Prime 3
8.  Sin and Punishment 2
9.  New Super Mario Bros Wii
10.  Donkey Kong Country Returns

I should note that I bought Twilight Princess for the Gamecube so it's not a Wii game to me.  If we were to do a Gamecube top 10 list it'd be my second favorite Gamecube game, but since I never bought the Wii version, it doesn't make my Wii list.

[Pixelated Pixies]

Mine would be something akin to this.
 
1 - Metroid Prime Trilogy
2 - Super Mario Galaxy 2
3 - Super Mario Galaxy
4 - Xenoblade Chronicles
5 - The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess
6 - DKCR
7 - Punch Out!!
8 - Hydroventure
9 - Wii Sports Resort
10 - Beat the Beat: Rhythm Paradise
 
My top list pretty much changes on a daily basis. Trilogy, however, has remained by favourite Wii game.
 
 

[Crimm]

Without going into my list: I would have put Xenoblade Chronicles higher, but alas, I am in the minority.

THAT IS THE TITLE SCREEN FOR GOD'S SAKE!

[Pixelated Pixies]

I just thought I'd point out a little mistake. You guys seem to have accidentally included Metroid Prime Trilogy at number 5 instead of number 1. No biggie. It's an easy mistake to make, but you might want to rectify that soon. You know, just in case people start thinking that you guys have poor judgement.  :

[NWR_Neal]

I just thought I'd point out a little mistake. You guys seem to have accidentally included Metroid Prime Trilogy at number 5 instead of number 1. No biggie. It's an easy mistake to make, but you might want to rectify that soon. You know, just in case people start thinking that you guys have poor judgement.  :

Haha!

Not everyone loses their **** over Metroid Prime games. I've always enjoyed them, but I don't hold them in nearly the same high esteem that everyone else does. From our staff, we have a pretty fair split of lovers, haters, and people like me.

[Ian Sane]

For me Metroid Prime 3 is the black sheep of the trilogy.  I'm probably in the minority but I liked the original control scheme.  Metroid isn't an FPS so it doesn't need to control like one.  Classic Metroid is essentially side-scrolling Space Zelda.  Metroid Prime is essentially first person Ocarina of Space.  The lock-on targetting makes sense for the adventure game Metroid is, just like how it made sense for Zelda when it went 3D.  I also feel that by switching to those controls Nintendo was effectively "giving in" to people that wrote off Metroid Prime without giving it a fair shake because they instinctively felt that any game with a first person view must be a Doom clone.  I'm of the attitude that if something has enough of an audience to be profitable, it should cater to that audience and everyone else can **** off.  It it was it is; like it or ignore it.  If you ignored the Cube games because they didn't control like Halo, then Nintendo owes you nothing and shouldn't bend over backwards to accomodate you.  Unfortunately "compromising for people that aren't your customer" is the Wii mantra.  MP3 is still a great game, though, just my least favourite in the trilogy.

As for Xenoblade, that game is everything I love about Nintendo and it even bucks some of Nintendo's less favourable trends in that it actually has an okay story and isn't all cutesy to appear family-friendly.  Nintendo goes on about accessibility.  There are those that claim that Nintendo's "casual" approach is nothing new for they have always strived to be accessible.  Those people are right in that Nintendo has always been accessible and Xenoblade is accessible in all the right ways.  It is incredibly user friendly for letting you save at any time.  The battles are not random and most enemies can be easily avoided.  But that doesn't even matter because your health is largely restricted only to the current fight so you don't have to worry about getting killed by some mook enemy because you were near death and couldn't quite make it to the save point.  And dying hardly matters anyway because you are not punished that severly for it.  You can also teleport at will to areas you have already visited.  You can look through your tutorial at any time.

What Nintendo typically gets right that a lot of companies get wrong is that a crappy dev will assign every function to it's own button while Nintendo will realize that all of them can be assigned to one button without handcuffing the player.  Nintendo typically doesn't let you get into unwinnable situations.  They typically don't make things convoluted or needlessly complicated.  The idea is that you have a game like Xenoblade where it is quite complex and huge and ambitious and complicated with a million things to do and yet you can just load that up without any context and figure out how to play it.  The accessibility is in learning to play the game and then it can be the most hardcore game ever.  With something like the Wii Series "accessibility" seems come at the cost of complexity.  Those games are just plain dumbed down.  Nintendo didn't used to make dumbed down games.  They used to make great ambitious games that were intuitive and accessible enough that anyone could learn how to play them.  Easy to learn, hard to master.  That is the true essence of Nintendo.

Nintendo's pre-Wii games were only inaccessible for close minded boobs that were not willing to give them a fair shake.  My parents didn't play Nintendo games prior to the Wii entirely because they were never ever willing to even try.  I highly doubt they would have been incapable of getting anywhere if they put more than five minutes of effort into it.

[Pixelated Pixies]

For me Metroid Prime 3 is the black sheep of the trilogy.  I'm probably in the minority but I liked the original control scheme.  Metroid isn't an FPS so it doesn't need to control like one.  Classic Metroid is essentially side-scrolling Space Zelda.  Metroid Prime is essentially first person Ocarina of Space.  The lock-on targetting makes sense for the adventure game Metroid is, just like how it made sense for Zelda when it went 3D.

I liked the original control scheme too. You could tell that the game was really designed with the Gamecube controller in mind. You can imagine my surprise then when I played Metroid Prime Trilogy only to find that pointer controls actually made the original two games better.
 
I would never have been able to express it at the time, but looking back, it seems clear to me that a lock on system for a first person game just isn't all that intuitive. It works great for third person games, particularly those in which you have a wider field of vision and which involves close-up encounters with enemies. By contrast, from a first person perspective there's something very natural about moving a reticule with a pointer and having your point of view turn with that motion, rather than the more jerky lock on system, which could be a little jarring.
 
I guess it's a matter of preference, but I vastly prefer the pointer controls. For me they feel more precise and engaging than the old system. That, coupled with the graphical flourishes and general polish given to the overall package makes Trilogy the definitive versions of those games for me.

[Kairon]

Nintendo's pre-Wii games were only inaccessible for close minded boobs that were not willing to give them a fair shake.  My parents didn't play Nintendo games prior to the Wii entirely because they were never ever willing to even try.  I highly doubt they would have been incapable of getting anywhere if they put more than five minutes of effort into it.

I absolutely do not subscribe to this. My Dad played Tecmo Bowl on the NES and my Mom taught me how to play Zelda 1. Neither of them played the N64 or the GameCube. Mario Kart Wii was the first time in years that I was able to play a videogame with my father, and thanks to Brain Age my Mom stole my DS Phat.

[HeyItsMe]

Metroid Prime 3 was only game of the Prime games I have finished. Luckily, I bought the Trilogy at Toys R Us in a buy 2 get one free. I hope to get to both of the Prime games once I finish a lot of game on my Wii that I haven't beat yet.

[Cyrian]

God I hate the friend tokens.  I hope whoever came up with that idea ended up flipping burgers for a living.  I've cobbled together some from people I know and from a couple of forums over the past few years, but I'll never be able to get enough to unlock everything.
Thanks Retro!

[Pixelated Pixies]

God I hate the friend tokens.  I hope whoever came up with that idea ended up flipping burgers for a living.  I've cobbled together some from people I know and from a couple of forums over the past few years, but I'll never be able to get enough to unlock everything.
Thanks Retro!

lol, Yeah that really did suck, huh? It was such weird requirement for a game which is ostensibly a single player experience.

[ejamer]

God I hate the friend tokens.  I hope whoever came up with that idea ended up flipping burgers for a living.  I've cobbled together some from people I know and from a couple of forums over the past few years, but I'll never be able to get enough to unlock everything.
Thanks Retro!

Made worse by the fact that it was a limited edition in North America.


(Kind of like when Zelda Four Swords Anniversary edition was pulled off the eShop, because you don't want more people to be able to buy and play a multiplayer-focused game based on one of Nintendo's most famous franchises. Whose idea was that? Nice that I get a bonus for owning my 3DS early, but it'd be nicer if I could find someone to play the game with...)

[Ian Sane]

Nintendo's pre-Wii games were only inaccessible for close minded boobs that were not willing to give them a fair shake.  My parents didn't play Nintendo games prior to the Wii entirely because they were never ever willing to even try.  I highly doubt they would have been incapable of getting anywhere if they put more than five minutes of effort into it.

I absolutely do not subscribe to this. My Dad played Tecmo Bowl on the NES and my Mom taught me how to play Zelda 1. Neither of them played the N64 or the GameCube. Mario Kart Wii was the first time in years that I was able to play a videogame with my father, and thanks to Brain Age my Mom stole my DS Phat.

Zelda 1 practically gives the player no indication of what to do and is a much less accessible game than the 3D Zeldas which have all sorts of tutorials and "HEY! LISTEN!" to help you figure things out.  Did your mom even TRY OoT or just wrote it off because it looked hard like my parents always do?

[Kairon]

Nintendo's pre-Wii games were only inaccessible for close minded boobs that were not willing to give them a fair shake.  My parents didn't play Nintendo games prior to the Wii entirely because they were never ever willing to even try.  I highly doubt they would have been incapable of getting anywhere if they put more than five minutes of effort into it.

I absolutely do not subscribe to this. My Dad played Tecmo Bowl on the NES and my Mom taught me how to play Zelda 1. Neither of them played the N64 or the GameCube. Mario Kart Wii was the first time in years that I was able to play a videogame with my father, and thanks to Brain Age my Mom stole my DS Phat.

Zelda 1 practically gives the player no indication of what to do and is a much less accessible game than the 3D Zeldas which have all sorts of tutorials and "HEY! LISTEN!" to help you figure things out.  Did your mom even TRY OoT or just wrote it off because it looked hard like my parents always do?

She tried Zelda: OoT for about an hour. After that experiment, I am not at all surprised that 2D Mario sells better than 3D Mario.

I think you're underestimating the number of verbs/actions/choices that players face in a modern 3D game. The first Zelda may not have pointed you in any direction ever, but on any single screen you had an extremely limited number of easily recognized goals and a very clearly defined gamespace within which you acted to achieve those goals.

[Fiendlord_Timmay]

When I was looking over my Wii collection, I realized I've barely played enough first party Wii games to even make this list. And a few of those I actually really dislike, so that narrows it down even further. Despite all that, I can STILL find 10 games I'd put higher than Wii Sports. Screw the "importance vote," it's not a very fun game. Anyway, here's my best attempt at a top 10:

1. Metroid Prime Trilogy
2. Super Mario Galaxy
3. Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn
4. Super Mario Galaxy 2
5. Super Smash Bros. Brawl
6. Mario Kart Wii
7. Super Paper Mario
8. New Super Mario Bros. Wii
9. Metroid: Other M
10. Punch Out!!


Honorable Mention: Kirby's Return to Dreamland

If only Metroid Prime 3 counted, rather than all 3 Metroid Prime games, it would fall all the way behind Super Paper Mario. The first two games (Particularly MP1) with Wii controls vault it all the way up to #1.

Played Twilight Princess on Gamecube, so I don't really count that. Wario Land Shake It, Kirby's Epic Yarn and Fluidity are all overrated as hell. Did not like any of them. Animal Crossing: City Folk was too much like the DS game, which I had already played to death. Pokemon Battle Revolution was the biggest waste of money I made this gen.


My wishlist/list of shame: Xenoblade, Skyward Sword, Last Story, Sin & Punishment 2, Donkey Kong Country Returns, Rhythm Heaven Fever, Excitebots, Excite Truck

[ejamer]

...
Wario Land Shake It, Kirby's Epic Yarn and Fluidity are all overrated as hell. Did not like any of them.
...

Overated? No, definitely not. Not to your liking? Entirely possible.

[Pixelated Pixies]

Wario Land Shake It, Kirby's Epic Yarn and Fluidity are all overrated as hell.

I disagree with everything you stand for, but I'll fight to the death to ensure you're right to self-determination  (p.s. you're crazy).  :

[Luigi Dude]

Wario Land Shake It, Kirby's Epic Yarn and Fluidity are all overrated as hell. Did not like any of them.

[Sarail]

Oh, you're in quite a bit of trouble now, Timmay. What would you like written on your tombstone?

[Fiendlord_Timmay]

I REGRET NOTHING!

Lol but seriously, I should issue the caveat that Wario Land: Shake It and Fluidity were too overlooked to be overrated by the majority of the industry, and I was thinking more along the lines of the general opinon on NWR (which is the only site where I trust people to know anything about Nintendo anyway).

As for Kirby's Epic Yarn, that game got PLENTY of love from damn near everyone. I found the game to be irredeemably boring. It was way too slow, had next to no challenge, and lacked everything that makes me love the Kirby series.

Overated? No, definitely not. Not to your liking? Entirely possible.

Yeah, but the term overrated is inherently subjective. It's the disparity between my opinion (subjective) and my perception of the popular opinion (subjective). To ME, those games are overrated. To you, they may not be. I just find it a waste of time saying "In my opinion" because if I say something then obviously it is my opinion, unless I explicitly state otherwise.

I disagree with everything you stand for

Whoa, hey there! I'm a big Nintendo fan too, but that doesn't mean I'm obligated to enjoy everything they make. At least I PLAY the games I hate on, unlike most gamer trolls these days. >_>

I also disagree with the popular opinion in the other direction too. I loved Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn despite all the hate for it, and I even enjoyed Metroid: Other M! *gasp*