No mention of the Nintendo Channel? That's probably my favourite Wii Channel!
Anyways, the year 2008 was a crazy one for myself and had many ups and downs, though overall it was definitely a great year.
In January of this year was when I finally bought a Wii. It didn’t come easy however, because apparently there was a shortage or something during that month. When I saw Circuit City advertising the Wii in the Sunday paper early Sunday morning, I dropped my tea and ran instantly to my car without even freshening up. I waited three hours in the cold before the store opened, but it was all worth it in the end. Both Wii Sports and Wii Play received a considerable amount of playtime from my friends and family for several months, though it has actually been quite some time since last the games have been played. It’s funny, people joke about the Wii being for grandmothers, and my own grandmother kicked my booty at Wii Bowling.
The first game I got for Wii was Endless Ocean. All I can say is... well, wow. Just wow. This game is something special. It’s not so much a game as it is an interesting experience. I was so drawn into it I was eager to explore every little nook and cranny of the ocean; the last time I was this compelled to go exploring in a game was Super Mario 64. However, this isn't the type of game I could play for long periods at a time, but maybe that's a good thing as it lasted me until the release of SSBBrawl. Strangely, I still haven’t gone back to the game since then and left it unfinished.
With all of the information on Super Smash Brothers Brawl which was available in the weeks before its release, my worriment that the game was turning into something I wouldn’t like was increasing, though I still needed to buy the game to be sure. The first sign was the third-party characters, but I could always avoid them. The art style really bothered me, but if the gameplay were good I could overlook it. The roster contained almost none of the new characters who I wanted to see; Wario was the only one, though his moveset wasn’t what I expected. The increased focus on the single-player is when I really should have known not to buy the game, but still I wanted to believe the multiplayer wouldn’t suffer.
I could not have been more wrong. Despite Smash Brothers always being a simple game, the gameplay has been simplified even further, turning it into what is essentially a spamfest of excessive randomness. Almost all of the new stages are way too contrived, with many hazards and movement, making some matches more of a battle with the stage itself rather than the other contenders. The single-player adventure is generic, uninspired, and dull, and is (possibly ironically) only somewhat enjoyable in 2-player co-op. The online mode, even for Wii standards, is limited and barely functional.
There’s an abundance of useless filler content which, with the vast resources of the Internet, is completely unnecessary. The trophies have very brief and sometimes poorly-written information compared to websites like the Mario Wiki. The stickers are nothing but the promotional artwork which has been used over the years, and can also easily be found on the Internet. Masterpieces are a worthless waste of disc space; if Nintendo wanted to offer people demos of VC games, they could have found a better way to do it.
The first two Smash Brothers games felt like a tribute to Nintendo, but SSBBrawl seems like an advertisement for Nintendo.
Trying not to let SSBBrawl discourage me, I was looking for something more original to rid myself of the negative feelings towards Wii. An interesting little game caught my attention, one which involved throwing stuff at block towers to knock them over and was created by none other than legendary moviemaker Steven Spielberg. I purchased Boom Blox the very day it was released. While it contained some interesting concepts, some of them were executed very poorly, and the puzzle designs also lacked variety. The presentation wasn’t so good either; there was some slowdown whenever there were a lot of moving blocks onscreen, and it had the most exasperating characters this side of Pokémon. While not too bad for a first try, it was ultimately mediocre and I soon sold it off.
At this point I considered selling the Wii itself. Yes I know, it was a hasty decision; I realized this and that’s why I didn’t do it. But where to go from here? One month earlier was the release of Mario Kart Wii, and Mario Kart is a series which has been nothing more than “meh” for me. However, certain reviewers and fans were hating on the game, complaining about all of the changes and how different it was. This gave me a rather strange thought… I was a fan of Smash Brothers and hated the new one, but could the opposite also be true? Since I’m not a fan of Mario Kart, could the changes of the latest version turn me into one?
There is such a thing as opposite day.
Mario Kart Wii single-handed changed my opinion of Wii, though it is a game which is far better than the sum of its parts. I first tried the game with the Wii Wheel, because I figured if I'm being forced to pay for it I might as well use it. However, I couldn't get used to the button layout of it, and having no feedback made it feel like a really loose control scheme. After switching to the GameCube controller however, I began fairing better, and absolutely love the improved physics of the game.
The new power slide (or “drift” as it is called now) mechanic works better than ever and also practically eliminates snaking. The drift (fine I’ll call it drift too) still rewards dangerous driving, as the sharper you turn, the faster you reach the mini-turbo. The stunts make things more interesting as well, and had me looking for any little ramp or mogul that I could trick off of. These two features mean that there's always something to do even if way out ahead, and also makes it interesting to turn the items off and see who the real drift king is.
The graphics in the game needed more polish. For the most part, the courses look alright and have some nice little details about them, but the character models are terrible. They have really low polygon counts, and none of them have fingers. They all look like they're made of plastic, even Donkey Kong, who should be furry. Not since the days of the N64 have I seen characters this blocky, with shiny effects applied to try and cover up the jagged edges. The special effects are also bland and need more variety.
Bikes just aren't balanced with karts, for one main reason: they can do wheelies on straight-aways for a speed boost. I don't know whose idea that was, but they must've been out of their mind to think that karts could do without something similar. If it weren't for this oversight, karts and bikes would be almost perfectly balanced; the better handling of bikes is a fair trade-off for a lesser drift boost. Furthermore, bikes with inward drift are even more superior due to being able to cut around corners so quickly. However, the thing which really sucks about the bikes is that you have to stare at your character's butt the whole time. The character abilities aren't very balanced either, though that doesn't matter nearly as much as the vehicle imbalance.
About the only lame part of the game is the retro tracks. However, since I never played Double Dash (at the time) or MKDS, half of the classic tracks were new to me. The SNES and GBA courses are incredibly boring and shouldn't have been included, and the N64 tracks lost a little something since they were largely increased in size. With the different physics, none of the retro tracks play as well as they did in the original versions.
Despite its problems though, I just can’t help but love it because the gameplay is so good. There are so many different characters and vehicles to try out, which really adds to the variety of the game. The online mode is incredible, there are always people to race from all over the world, and the effects of lag are rarely noticeable. With 12 racers and a hoard of items, it’s entirely unpredictable, you just never know what’s going to happen and need to be ready for anything. Each race is like a snowflake, no two are ever the same.
Mario Super Sluggers is yet another enjoyable Mario game. The biggest complaint I heard about it was that it was too similar to the first game, though that didn’t bother me because at the time I bought it I had never played the first game.
The characters in the game seem pretty balanced. There don't seem to be any useless characters, and even some of the seemingly weak ones can be useful when paired with certain characters. Some things seem a little off though… Since weak characters have larger contact zones, it actually might be easier for them to hit home runs over power hitters since they don't need to hit the ball with the exact center of the sweet spot like power characters do; I hit more homers with Toad than I do with Birdo, Luigi, Petey... pretty much any character I use with a higher batting stat. Not that Toad isn’t awesome enough to smack homers, but still, that's just plain wrong.
On the one hand, I like the way the Challenge mode handles scout missions; the little individual tasks are almost like little minigames themselves, and the mode has some variety to it. However, the scout missions just never get challenging (a contrast to the name of the mode), and there just aren't enough actual baseball games played throughout. But I don't really like Superstar Baseball's setup either... Having scout missions randomly appear in games mean you'll likely have to play the same team several times to earn all their players, especially on harder difficulty settings where you need more flags.
Of course, the multiplayer is the real draw of the game. Baseball games can be played with four players, and you can even put all 4 players on the same team. Let me tell you, if you haven't done this, you haven't experienced Mario Super Sluggers, as the result is lots of confusion and madness (the fun kind). The minigames to be found are even better than the likes of Mario Party since they are less random and luck-based. Also Toy Field + four players + alcohol = truly epic gaming.
Mario Super Sluggers has great gameplay and controls, but it's missing some finer details and any real depth. It still feels like Sluggers is the first game in the series. It's a real shame, as with Superstar Baseball as the starting point, Sluggers had the potential to be something truly great. As it stands now, it's a game with excellent gameplay that's limited by a lack of play modes. Hopefully the success of this title means there’s another sequel in the works…
Bomberman Blast has the distinction of being the only download game I have ever purchased. How could I resist an online Bomberman game? I mean honestly, how have all of you abstained from buying this?
I bought Animal Crossing City Folk about two weeks ago, because my friend has it and wants me to play the game with her. This is one of those games where it is kind of difficult to explain what makes it enjoyable, as it actually sounds kind of boring on paper.
Late October was when I finally got to experience Super Mario Galaxy. I don’t know why I didn’t buy this game sooner, as it really would have helped me in those first few dark months of Wii ownership. The other Wii games I bought I already discussed in their respective release years.
It is perhaps ironic that the game which I bought the Wii for turned out to be the one game on the system I truly can’t stand, while the game I thought I wouldn’t like ended up being not only my favourite game on Wii, but also in a good long while. I couldn’t be more glad I didn’t sell the Wii, because it has been a great ride ever since.
Topic: A Decade of PGC/NWR: 2008 (Read 7750 times)
