Which console should you own if you can only own one? That the question isn’t it. The answer is it all depends on what you want to do with it. All 3 entries in this generations console wars are worthy of your purchase for different reasons. This week lets start with the current king of the hill. The nintendo wii.
My friends know my personal opinion of the wii. I think it’s a casual gamers machine. I think that if you absolutely love shallow mini-games then this is the best console for you. Also if you think you’re too cool for a regular console nintendo has done a pretty good job of manufacturing demand by under-delivering wii’s ever since it launched.
Now for the real gamers out there nintendo does have their slew of first party titles. Lets be frank, if you’re a late 20s early 30s hardcore gamer you were raised by nintendo. You cut your teeth on mario, zelda, metroid, whatever. Their first party intellectual property is absolutely 2nd to none. That’s a blessing and a curse though. The vast majority of games that sell on the wii are first party games. If a game company already knows their game isn’t going to sell well on your console why even bother making the game? That’s assuming the people who own the console will even buy a damn game as most people seem to be happy with wii sports. So you got a whole bunch of consoles out there but not every console owner even feels the need for another game. The ones that do, tend to buy nintendo (first party) games. Doesn’t seem like a good recipe to me. What nintendo needs to do is start slapping that nintendo seal of quality back on their games. Because holy shit a lot of developers are just throwing shovelware out there hoping something sells. Also…. online? Yeah… it sucks on the wii. I don’t think i even need to delve further into it. Half my friends that own a wii didn’t even know it could go online. I mentioned back in my Bioshock review that i was disturbed by the lack of difficulty in games nowadays. Nintendo is a big part of the problem. Several of their games absolutely reward you for being the worst at the game. Mario Kart and Mario Party come to mind. Being punished because you’re better at a game does not seem like good design to me.
I might come off as being unnecessarily harsh to the poor wii. The thing is, i just expect better from Nintendo. I expect better quality control, and great games with amazing gameplay. Yes nintendo is revolutionizing gaming with motion control. However, it’s just not precise enough, or nobody’s really taken advantage of it enough. All those new ways of playing games don’t really seem to be coming to fruition. A lot of people just seem to default to using the nunchuk analog stick, or worse, the gamecube controller. Ultimately i think the wii 2… maybe it’ll be called the wiiwii… will be a great machine. However, i don’t think they’re there yet. A few more GREAT games will absolutely change my mind though. The one thing though? At least a few of them have to come from a company other than nintendo, AND be commercially successful. Pass, for now.
Posted on May 20th, 2008 by phaedrus
Filed under: electronics, videogames
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