So Nintendo is going to shy away from VC, WTF!!!!!!!

For crappy WiiWare, damn them. And the VC finally dies the really horrible slow death its been going through for a year now.

Dvader said:

For crappy WiiWare

 How many Wiiware games have you actually brought/played?

I don't mind an emphasis on WiiWare.  Lord knows I've had a great time with Lost Winds, World of Goo, Dr. Mario and plenty of others.  But I just don't like the idea of the VC just going quietly into the night.  There's no reason why they can't release at least one game a week for it.

***************************

Oh wait a second, why is that news bit even posted?  That is clearly bogus.  Even if there's some truth behind it there's no way in hell that's actually from NOA.

phantom_leo said:

I probably just missed it, but:

Everyone who is talking about and waiting for Pilotwings for the Wii has seen and is playing Wii Sports Resort now... Right?







^ I mean, if these images don't scream to you: "IT'S COMING! JUST GIVE US TIME TO PERFECT MOTION PLUS AND IT WILL BE WORTH YOUR WAIT!"

...then I don't know what else to tell ya'!
__________________________________________

v ...as is Wave Race Motion Plus!

 Stop it! You're making me want to get wii sports resort.

Iga_Bobovic said:

GG where are thou?

When you have a broken laptop screen suddenly the internet isnt that appealing.

So I've been playing (posted on Sunday)

Screens don't do the game justice. I started playing on an HDTV which normally rapes most wii games, but even on the huge panel the game looked great and if experience is anything to go by it will look 20% better on the old SDTV.

The castle area is very well polished, the game has a lovely art style, great lighting and texture detail. It reminds me of Oddworld Strangers wrath only better looking. In terms of charm and character, the game is almost on par with Little Kings Story, the voice acting helps alot which is often hilarious.

Unfortunately once you hit the first open area things take a turn for the worse, the frame rate chugs quite badly, its not a game breaker but its noticible and the polished game you thought you had turns into a not so polished game. Some shadows are like pixel shadows, you can see the squares, its pretty bad and there is some noticible pop up.

Thankfully outside of the first couple of open areas it has seemed to go back down to steady and things are looking lovely again.

Nicely though there is tons of descrutability in the environment and everything you smash is animated like a crash in a Warner Bros cartoon with nice attention to detail. It's just fun to smash things with your axe.

Minion AI seems clever, they rarely get stuck on scenary but its easily remedied.

One problem you have is that you cannot save where you want to and when the game does save it does it pretty innocuously so you dont know what is saved and what isn't. Hitting the off button is often a leap of faith. The main complaint is that the game is too easy, this hasn't bothered me so far, I don't like ball busting difficulty in games so this is fine for me.

But the gameplay is pretty simple so far. The pointer reigns supreme and its easy to order your troops about. Nicely you can really take advantage of it. I pointed at a spawn gate miles away and popped a minion fresh out of his hole. It's slowly adding features though so the gameplay could open up and get more complex. I'm only through about 15% of the world map.

IGN says:

"Collect enough of that somewhat-elusive loot though and you'll experience the game's real depth. Cash can be traded in for weapon upgrades, new armor (which changes on the actual character model), and level-ups for your minion groups. While adventuring through the world minions will also grab random objects and wear them as hats or use for weapons, and that's pretty awesome to see."

At the moment its very simple, you trudge through some nice and some not so nice looking areas, generally wafting your minions towards things with a wave of the remote and watching as they deal with things.

It's not brilliant or anything, but pleasent. One thing you can be sure of as its the same team, Silent Hill Shattered Memories is going to look pretty special visually. The darkness will mean the game will avoid the pop up and the interiors and added experience from this game means the game shouldn't chug.

Otherwise apart from the framerate all IGNs issues with camera and minion AI haven't happened to me at all.

If you're in europe and can take advantage of the super great zavvi.co.uk deal I would snap it up for £12

I played a few hours more. There are 16 sections of the map, all interconnected into one large overworld you can walk through one end to the other. I've only noticed frame rate problems that would bother you in the area directly outside the castle which is unfortunate. All the rest is okay bar an occasional hiccup. I love the visuals in this game. Ignoring the tech, the art is just beautiful to look at, the contrasting colours are perfect, the lighting as well. You play in golden light and lush greenary and then hit a section with a blue moon contrasting against blood red. The character designs too are beautiful and quirky, the building designs reminiscent of Fable and FF. It's just a pleasure to walk around and look at things.

The videos and screens online dont come close to showing how nice this game can look on an SDTV (when the frame rate is holding up). If it had a rock solid frame rate and got rid of the occasional ugly pop up, it would be up there with Metroid Prime 3 for best looking visuals on the system.

The gameplay is fine too, but it's just missing that elusive something. Its like a meal which is solid, there is nothing wrong with the meal but it lacks that spark to make it a great dish. It's just solid and pleasent.

It would be great if this game was a more traditional action platformer, I feel like Climax with some TLC and input could be another Rare. You can tell that they set out to make a proper 3rd party game and put a lot into it. They just need to solidify their engine and get some gameplay masters to help them out a bit.

The fundamentals are there  but it needs to be fleshed out. I would even drop the minons and have it play more like a hack and slash action platform game.

Red Steel 2 delayed until the first 3 months of 2010?

Comic-Con

- Not much game news
- Was a lot of Avatar
- Not much was Wii-related
- Capcom brought Spyborgs and Resident Evil
- Thought the LucasArts game might have been the MotionPlus Star Wars game but it wasn’t…Maybe next year - Bozon thinks it’s coming eventually

Red Steel 2 delayed

- Not coming out this year
- Early 2010
- Makes picking Game of the Year a little easier
- Matt was really looking forward to it
- Not a whole lot of Wii choices if you’re a hardcore gamer looking for a traditional game for the rest of the year
- Maybe they’ll go back and refine MotionPlus support

Wii Sports Resort

- Craig doesn’t think people will buy the Wii for the game
- It still will sell a lot of games
- If Bozon was a new system owner, he wouldn’t care at all what Wii Sports Resort was since he already was going to buy the system to get Wii Sports…It’s the game people have been talking about for three years
- Wii owners won’t buy Wii Sports Resort on day one, will just buy it whenever
- Probably won’t sell like Wii Play
- Nintendo hides the fact that MotionPlus is in the Sports Resort box, just says in the bottom left “Wii MotionPlus inside”
- Matt wonders if it would sell more if there were an extra remote with the Wii Sports Resort package
- It’ll sell regardless but it won’t sell consoles
- Don’t be surprised by the initial numbers because this is the slow time for video games - Best time to sell is during Christmas

Scribblenauts

- Craig digs it
- He has it
- It is the real deal
- Puzzles are really cool
- Controls clunky - Control the character by tapping on the screen, but also need to tap to control objects
- AI of lead character sometimes won’t follow taps
- Controls alright, for the most part it works pretty well
- Overall some the puzzles are fantastic, idea is solid
- Official release date is September 15

Lack of VC games

- No VC games the past two weeks
- They’ve been favoring WiiWare recently
- Rumor going around that Nintendo is doing this because the VC sales aren’t performing as well as WiiWare sales
- Matt doesn’t believe the rumor since he doesn’t think NOA would say anything like that but he’ll eat a broom if it’s true
- Still don’t really have a good way of telling people what’s new, what’s out, etc.
- Games have huge dropoff after awhile since they are taken away from the Wii Shop Channel main page
- Situation even worse on the DSi, need to shop by how much the game costs
- Not a lot of efforts going into DSiWare either…Hudson released a 200 point Sudoku version of the 500 point version

Nyx Quest

- It’s a terrible name
- Very good WiiWare game, worth your consideration
- Stylized graphics
- A lot of platforming
- Use Wiimote to pick up/slide/manipulate objects
- Puzzles can get really tough
- Bozon doesn’t dig the overall style and feel as much as LostWinds, still having a blast with it
- Can triple jump, glide
- One of the better WiiWare games

Night Game

- Matt played it a lot recently
- Coming along nicely
- Looks good, music is awesome
- Controls and physics system have come together
- Adding motion support to it in the future

- Cave Story coming out very soon, just about wrapped - Going into the submission process soon
- Moves at 60 FPS
- It’s like WiiWare’s Super Metroid
- Controls work well
- Nicalis has a good lineup - Also picked up La-Mulana, working on other projects

Wii sales slowing

- $250 price point still nice sweet spot for Nintendo
- Now can actually go into a store and buy it
- Need to entice the package a little more - Don’t pull out Wii Sports, maybe include Wii Sports Resort
- Craig thinks numbers might start taking off again when September/October come
- Matt thinks it’s time for at least new system colors

Metroid Prime Trilogy (in reference to the Japanese Prime versions)

- Matt has played 3-4 hours
- Very much like Corruption
- Nice to be able to go back and play with the Wii controls
- Still holds up well
- Going to make a real difference when they get the retail copy with all of the goodies
- Embargo lifts the first week of August
- Not sure if Trilogy can use Corruption file but Craig doesn’t think it will

Reader questions

- There’s not much to the Wii update 4.1 - Fixes a bug in Wii Sports Resort involving the intro video
- MotionPlus probably drains the battery for the Wiimotes
- Professor Layton twitter account was fake
- Don’t have to worry about calibration for most games, many are already disguising the process
- No online multiplayer in Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 for Wii
- When sales truly dip then Nintendo will scramble on the next console - Would probably allow for backward compatibility - it’s impossible to predict what Nintendo will do - There will probably be an advancement to the controller for Wii 2/Wii HD
- Article about The Conduit on examiner wasn’t written by Matt - Can’t say the game sold poorly yet but not selling like it should
- Matt would suggest upgrading to DSi if you have the original DS - If you have a DS Lite and the color is important, you should wait

- Matt going to Retro Studios in the next week or two
- Leaving August 15th for Germany - Should get a lot of good WiiWare stuff from WiiWare devs
- No keynote, old E3 demos from Nintendo at Germany - Will get regurgitated previews
- Doing something Guitar Hero related soon
- Might and Magic got terrible traffic on IGN even though it’s an amazing game