Posts Tagged ‘wii motionplus’
Red Steel 2 gets delayed until 2010
The concept of the original Red Steel made gamers everywhere anticipate the game. However, once it actually hit the market it was often criticized for its clunky controls and various glitches in the gameplay.
Along comes Red Steel 2, a game looking to remedy all of the gripes found in the original Red Steel, and more. Unfortunately, Ubisoft has announced that the game is getting pushed back until early 2010.
This delay will come as a huge dissapointment to gamers looking to get their Wii MotionPlus sword weilding on.
Wii Sports Resort review — fun, but with friends
You can’t argue that the big reason Nintendo is selling so many Wii consoles is because of the bundled Wii Sports — which not only offers great multiplayer fun, but also showcases what the console can do in terms of motion controls. In essence, Wii Sports trains the player in the new controls for future Wii titles, and it does so brilliantly.
Nintendo has now released a sequel for Wii Sports, called Wii Sports Resort, and rather than just building on top of Wii Sports, the game is mean to train Wii players for another thing: Wii Motion Plus, which is included with the game. The Wii Motion Plus accessory is attached to the Wiimote at the bottom, and offers a lot better motion sensing; true 1:1, meaning what you do with the Wiimote is copied exactly in the game. Some would argue that this should have been build into the Wiimote at launch, but we’ll leave that discussion for another time. As for Wii Sports Resort, the accessory offers great controls and showcases the possibilities.
As for the game, it takes place on a tropical island, with several available mini games, which include: Sword Play, where players duel out with swords, Power Cruising, a kind of WaveRace game, DiscDog, where players have to accurately throw discs to a dog who’ll catch it. Those are just some of the 12 new mini games players can play, including the Wii Sports classics, bowling and golf. One of the best games is Sword Play, which really showcases the new Motion Plus attachment’s capabilities, as you duel it out with an opponent. Equally fun is basketball, where players have to time the shots perfectly with the Wiimote. The updated Golf game is better than in Wii Sports, mainly because of better controls (with Motion Plus, of course) and 9 more holes than in the previous version.
If you’ve played Wii Sports, you can rest assure that Wii Sports Resort features the same simplistic design, making it very easy to get into any one of the mini game, and the learning curve is is just right. Graphically, the game looks pretty much the same as Wii Sports, the cartoonish style is carried over and works well for the target audience (being the casual gamer).
In addition to ranking your Mii on a 1000 point scale for each of the mini games, Wii Sports Resort now offers “Stamps” as well, a kind of achievement system where player can unlock “Stamps” by completing certain parts of the game and meeting the criteria (and they’re not easy). It’s a great new addition, however, it only works offline, meaning you can’t show off for your friends online, which brings us to…
One thing that is missing from Wii Sports Resort is the complete lack is online capabilities. Because, unless you have a friend, or rather, three friends, it’s not really a lot of fun in the long run if you’re playing alone. Instead Nintendo should’ve offered online play for this game, it’s rather astonishing how they’re still lacking behind on online capabilities. 
At least their first party titles, especially those designed for only multiplayer gaming (like Wii Sports Resort), could benefit greatly from online modes. It’s quite a shame, because Wii Sports Resort would definitely have been an online hit.
The Good:
Great collection of mini games
Fun multiplayer action
Cute visuals, constant 60fps frame rate
Includes Wii Motion Plus
The Bad:
No online features
Quickly gets boring in singleplayer
Final score: 8/10
Conduit Developer “Messing Around” With MotionPlus
They might have decided that the peripheral wasn’t worth integrating into their recent FPS title The Conduit but High Voltage admit that they’ve been messing around with the Wii MotionPlus and see a lot of untapped potential in it: “Whenever you see new equipment and tools to play with, that just opens up the door for all kinds of creative new ideas. I’m sure we’ll see in the next year some really cool stuff coming out on the Wii that could only work with Wii MotionPlus.”
This all comes from the mouth of producer Cameron Rains, with Rains adding that since in these early stages of the peripheral most companies are focusing on sports related titles we have yet to see the full potential of the device. That’s a pretty no-brainer statement of course, since it’s rare that any gaming system or new peripheral/control scheme is executed perfectly in its first few offerings.
In an industry where boasts and gigantic egos are fairly common it’s refreshing to see that Rains doesn’t follow it up with a claim that they’ll be the ones to deliver on it.
More Semi-Useful Wii Accessories
The Wii is unique in that the control schemes for different titles goes far beyond which button does what- the game you’re playing determines which way you hold the controller. You can point like a lightgun, swing it like a tennis racket or tilt it side to side to steer around sharp turns. At the console’s launch some peripheral manufacturers put out some attachments for the Wiimote designed to look like tennis rackets, baseball bats and golf clubs, intended to make the Wii Sports experience feel more authentic.
I had plenty of good chuckles to myself every time I spied one of these sets in a store, but it seems not everyone was laughing- some were actually buying them. They must have been, because Nitho has announced they’re releasing a line of similar add-ons designed to fit with the Wii MotionPlus add-on. I can definitely understand the overall need for a lightgun, since it makes aiming for shooting games easier, but did we really need more fake sports equipment bits? They do offer a charging dock as well, but is it that difficult to pop the Wii MotionPlus off before you charge your battery packs?
A statement from the VP of sales and marketing in the US said that the company “focus{es} on innovation from the very beginning of the development cycle,” and that they “try to anticipate emerging market trends”. I’m not sure how well you’re doing claiming innovation at the same time you’re offering a ‘new’ product that’s essentially already been on the market for some time. The emerging trend they’re talking about? The fact that unsavvy parents and grandparents will buy some of these silly items for their children/grandchildren.
Buy certain games at Target, recieve a gift card
Joystiq has recently gotten their hands on a flyer released by Target that clearly shows you will recieve Target Gift Cards when you purchase some of their products.
First of all, if you purchase both Tiger Woods PGA Tour 10, which comes bundled with MotionPlus, along with Grand Slam Tennis you will be greeted with a $20 gift card. Alternatively, if you purchase Guitar Hero Smash Hits for any console you will be given a $5 gift card.
Sure, it’s not much considering you have to spend upwards of $110 to get $20 back or $50 to get $5 but it is a discount of sorts.
Red Steel 2 To Be Bundled With Wii Motion Plus
Red Steel was one of the earliest hardcore games for the Wii and though it emphasized the sword-fighting that part of the gameplay was disappointing due to its gesture-based controls while the gun controls were much more realistic. With the sequel the developers are hoping to deliver on the original promise by utilizing Wii MotionPlus controls.
It’s been demoed at E3 and sounds like it’s a far superior version to the original, with creative director Jason Vandenberge squaring off against a hammer-wielding opponent. Ubisoft has confirmed that the game will be bundled with the controller peripheral since it’s now mandatory for the game. Chance are many will already have the Wii MotionPlus before then since it’ll be bundled along with several sports games and
Red Steel 2 won’t have multiplayer
Now you may consider the fact that Ubisoft has decided to leave multiplayer out of Red Steel 2 a deal breaker, but fret not — Recently announced in the June issue of Nintendo power was just that, Red Steel 2 will not feature any form of multiplayer when it ships later this year.
Ubisoft gave the following reasoning:
“…our focus is on creating a strong single player experience and taking full advantage of Wii Motion Plus. Adding multiplayer would detract from that focus. That’s another example of something we learned from the first Red Steel.“
After being questioned about a multiplayer mode being released as a DLC pack at some point in the future, Ubisoft repsonded with:
“That would be cool. The world has changed, and we can do that sort of thing. I certainly think that would be cool. I’d buy it. But we need to be careful bringing out something that people think should be in the main game.”
So, Wii FPS fans, don’t give up hope yet!
Read (NintendoDpad)
Wii MotionPlus Debuting With EA Games
It seems like just the other day I was scratching my head in confusion with the announcement that the Wii MotionPlus would be released a full month ahead of Wii Sports Resort, one of the only titles I’d heard of so far that was boasting MotionPlus support. Letting an exciting peripheral sit on the shelves with nothing to play it with seemed like a ridiculously bad decision.
Now it makes sense however as EA must have cut an amazing deal with Nintendo for instead of putting forth a first-party option on the market with the initial launch of the Wii MotionPlus, they’re going to let EA bundle some games along with the peripheral. If you were looking for this announcement to take you in a new and exciting direction you’re not going to be too happy. There are two different bundles being planned, one for North America and one for Europe. Once again the USA’s love of video games is shooting us in the foot as the North American bundle only comes with Tiger Woods PGA Tour 10 while the European bundle also includes Grand Slam Tennis. The bundles will only be available for a limited time but the games will be available on their own afterwards as well as three others games EA is working on for the Wii MotionPlus.
Wii MotionPlus Not Backwards Compatible
In discussing Nintendo’s new Wiimote accessory with a friend, they asked the question of whether or not it’ll work with old games and frankly I wasn’t sure of the answer. Today however I can bring up the topic again with a definitive ‘no‘. Nintendo has announced that they have no plans to make the Wii MotionPlus compatible with any existing titles that do not already feature support for the peripheral.
This isn’t a huge surprise as this would likely be a massive undertaking and that Nintendo likely realizes that few of their first party games could truly benefit from adding in more sensitive control schemes. The sorts of titles that could have benefited from true 1:1 control schemes generally performed poorly enough for other reasons that better controls likely wouldn’t have brought in enough sales to make the effort worthwhile.
Wii Motion Plus Out In June, Wii Sports Resort In July
Starting June 8th you’ll be able to waggle your Wiimote as never before. That’s the date when Nintendo is releasing Wii Motion Plus, an add-on which significantly ups the sensitivity of the motion controls. Thus far there aren’t many games that are offering support for this peripheral.
You might expect that Nintendo would be rushing Wii Sports Resort out the same day as it releases in order to drum up sales for the $20 peripheral. It turns out that’s not the case though. The beach-themed game will be released on July 26th, with a Motion Plus peripheral included with every copy of the game.
You’ll be able to throw a frisbee, race on jetskiis and even duel with swords. What resort involves sword dueling is beyond me, but since the mini-games are all designed to showcase the new potential for control schemes it’s unsurprising they fit that in there somehow.
Wii MotionPlus Out Before June 18
A Nintendo Power preview has popped up online, indicating that the Wii MotionPlus will hit stores sometime before June 18. This comes from their preview of EA’s Grand Slam Tennis which mentions that the MotionPlus is “due out prior to Grand Slam’s release.”
The game’s release date was tracked down to June 18, leading to the assumption that the accessory will be released before that date.
Originally announced back at E3 2008, the remote add-on offers gamers precise hand movements. It will be supported in Red Steel 2, Wii Sports Resort and Tiger Woods PGA Tour 10, as well as future titles.