Having beaten all the games I own,

[Booyakasha]

^Indeed. The 'less talk, more rock' theory of game design. Good games don't really need a story, and bad games can't be redeemed by one.

Not that I'd agree that 'Lost Planet' is a story-less bug shooter. It's got a story; they just don't knock you over the head with it. A real story-less bug shooter would be something like 'Earth Defense Force 2017', which is also good.

[Wyborn]

Too bad the 360 isn't backwards compatible with the PS2, or you could get God Hand. And kick people into space.

Actually, IW12, have you used your 360's backwards compatibility at all? If not you should buy Ninja Gaiden Black, and put some hair on your chest.

[Lurch1982]

Originally Posted by CAROCK the DREAD SORCERER

It's not the Wii's fault you have no coordination, man. </cynic's approach>

Just because you want to hate the system doesn't make it reality. Open-mindedness is key. Wii controls aren't perfect for hairpin turns, but they're much more precise. You might have gotten good with analogue controls, but FPS honestly doesn't translate too well to analogue. Maybe a double-joystick approach would be more appropriate, ala Descent. Still, the Wii's point-to-aim approach is pretty efficient and fun to use.

Yeah, I'd love to see more rail-shooters. Umbrella Chronicles is a step in the right direction.

360-wise, I'm most interested in Lost Planet. I haven't actually seen it, and I remember the concept looked pretty rad. Capcom tends to make games that are either amazingly good or frighteningly awful. I also want to know more about Alan Wake. Despite it's general unoriginality as far as other media goes, I'm not used to seeing that kind of indepth and solid concept in videogames. Things people consider to be realistic/reality based are always war games or GTA styled crap. Resident Evil is cool, but it's more along the lines of a B-rated movie than something particularily classy.

I've played one "real" game (like, traditional games not minigames or Wiisports) where the Wii controls felt right: Mario Galaxies. Metroid didn't feel right to me, and they felt like they got in the way of Zelda (actually, that's how I feel about most games utilization of the controller). If it were up to me, I'd just stick with a keyboard/mouse for FPSers and strategy titles. Maybe I did get used to analog sticks, but they certainly work better than the Wiimote does. Who knows. Just my opinion as a FPS coin-a-sewer.

If I'm on rails and not moving at all (ala House of the Dead), the Wiimote is great. If I have to do anything concerning movement in a FPS setting, I don't see how it works better than an dual-sticked controller.

Lost Planet was that rare Capcom game that's dead in the middle of things. It had cool concepts, but the execution is somewhat marred.

[DELICIOUS POISON]

I'm sorry to hear you can't appreciate the controls. I know it's frustrating to relearn something just for the sake of using something new. One of the things that has been missing from basically every FPS on the Wii is a quick 180 turn around feature - that could really help. Other than that, I didn't have any problems at all with the controls. I found myself wishing I could play basically every FPS with that fluidity.

[Lurch1982]

Originally Posted by CAROCK the DREAD SORCERER

I'm sorry to hear you can't appreciate the controls. I know it's frustrating to relearn something just for the sake of using something new. One of the things that has been missing from basically every FPS on the Wii is a quick 180 turn around feature - that could really help. Other than that, I didn't have any problems at all with the controls. I found myself wishing I could play basically every FPS with that fluidity.

I appreciate the controls, just not for shooters that aren't on rails. Mario is really the only thing on the system where they felt fluid and natural IMO (again, discounting various party/mini games). I think the problem they're having is that 3rd parties are half-assing the implementation.

Though it should be distressing that adapting that stripped down Civilization game for the Wii was scrapped because they had issues adapting the controls to the Wiimote (granted, who wants to play stripped down Civ when you can play Civ IV on the PC, but even I said WTF on this). I could see some serious potential if they can get a RTS title out (though it would ultimately feel like playing one with a presentation mouse).

It isn't that I'm not able to adapt to control schemes. I've been playing shooters since the genre was invented, so I have very quirky opinions dealing with the genre (for example: don't like the Quake Series). Let's put it this way: I was playing them before someone got the bright idea to map the arrow keys to WASD. Even moving to consoles, I haven't liked pretty much anything but the dual stick. The problem I had with the N64 controller at the time was that in order to use the stick you sacrifice anything with the Dpad and the left trigger, not to mention too much was jammed on your right hand. Playing shooters on the SNES was a joke in both controls (the SNES pad was great for pretty much everything but shooters) and content (love that NoA censorship garbage). The dual joysticks work because it allows you to emulate the axis available with a mouse-keyboard combo.

Maybe I don't see the fluidity with FPS on the Wiimote because I tweak my mouse/keyboard settings when I'm dealing with a PC shooter or tweak the stick sensitivity when dealing with a console shooter.

Look, I'm not tossing this out there to say "IM RIGHT UR WRONG WII SI 4 N00BZ AEND KHILDRAN." I'm trying to show you where I'm coming from. I don't doubt there are games that utilize the controls just as well as Mario. I just haven't played them. Actually, I haven't played most of the Wii-library out of lack of interest or time. For example, I don't expect SSBB to have control issues as a grounds-up title. I just don't see them dropping a FPS on the system and having it "feel" right.

[DELICIOUS POISON]

I understand that you've used a lot of configurations. Hell, I've been playing FPS since Catacombs: Abyss, in CGA color, man. I haven't had a problem with the Wii controls, though. Of course, they could really use tweaking beyond the way the games' default setups, but none of the games have given you that option. I think you could liken its early control scheme to how analogues have evolved since the N64's clumsy format - and see that it has potential to improve as a format. It's really the first of its kind, and videogame movements won't ever translate into reality well enough for realistic gestures to be an accurate form of control. It's how they take advantage of it to control the games that matters, not if they can make it FEEL LIKE SHOOTING A GUN. I feel like they've done a decent job of adapting it. I tend to think it doesn't control as well as they'd like, though. Instead, I have a different idea. You could, for instance, hold a button for the look function. When you let go, it could give you a free-crosshair mode where the screen stays more stational until you move to edge of the screen, rather than looking around to your every movement. Things like that are the reason why gamers should be in game design, IMO, but sadly we will have to wait for other people in the industry to bother thinking that sort of thing up. This could be further configurable with sliders determining how fast your character turns, or how fast the cursor moves on the free-crosshair mode. They could even make that sort of thing adjustable in-game, if they wanted.

The question is really how real you want your games versus how fun and intuitive. I'm sure tons of people want to play a true-to-life VR simulation of a gunman in a military situation, but I'm not exactly one of them. I mean, FPS games aren't realistic, in general. The enemy will never cage you into an unbeatable situation with excessive force, for instance. That's a good thing. I mean, we want our games to be playable.

I happen to like Quake 2 a bit, although I agree that the other Quakes aren't anything to get excited about. Shooters got pretty crappy when they went polygonal, and then started to dig their way back out of the hole somewhere around the debut of the first Tribes, IMO.

[Demonicus Prime]

I have trouble switching from dual-stick controls, Halo for example, to something like MP3 or Red Steel. I'm very open to the new controls. Hell, there's a possibility that I could be better at a Wii FPS than I am at Halo(a very slim one, at that). It's just the fact that there's no happy medium in the sensitivity. You can aim anywhere on the screen, but alas, something's behind you! And you die. I think that there's two options here. Either make a quick-180 button, let's say on the -button, or make the sensitivity an all-around deal. I think that that would be too damn fast, but oh well.


/2cents

[Lurch1982]

Originally Posted by CAROCK the DREAD SORCERER

I understand that you've used a lot of configurations. Hell, I've been playing FPS since Catacombs: Abyss, in CGA color, man. I haven't had a problem with the Wii controls, though. Of course, they could really use tweaking beyond the way the games' default setups, but none of the games have given you that option. I think you could liken its early control scheme to how analogues have evolved since the N64's clumsy format - and see that it has potential to improve as a format. It's really the first of its kind, and videogame movements won't ever translate into reality well enough for realistic gestures to be an accurate form of control. It's how they take advantage of it to control the games that matters, not if they can make it FEEL LIKE SHOOTING A GUN. I feel like they've done a decent job of adapting it. I tend to think it doesn't control as well as they'd like, though. Instead, I have a different idea. You could, for instance, hold a button for the look function. When you let go, it could give you a free-crosshair mode where the screen stays more stational until you move to edge of the screen, rather than looking around to your every movement. Things like that are the reason why gamers should be in game design, IMO, but sadly we will have to wait for other people in the industry to bother thinking that sort of thing up. This could be further configurable with sliders determining how fast your character turns, or how fast the cursor moves on the free-crosshair mode. They could even make that sort of thing adjustable in-game, if they wanted.

The question is really how real you want your games versus how fun and intuitive. I'm sure tons of people want to play a true-to-life VR simulation of a gunman in a military situation, but I'm not exactly one of them. I mean, FPS games aren't realistic, in general. The enemy will never cage you into an unbeatable situation with excessive force, for instance. That's a good thing. I mean, we want our games to be playable.

I happen to like Quake 2 a bit, although I agree that the other Quakes aren't anything to get excited about. Shooters got pretty crappy when they went polygonal, and then started to dig their way back out of the hole somewhere around the debut of the first Tribes, IMO.

I think one thing that could help out FPS Wii controls would be to replace the cross-pad with an analog stick or something similar to a mouse scroll wheel to control strafing or quick-turning. You're right though, they're definately at the N64 level of controlling with it. There are some great concepts, but I'm not seeing the execution yet (and it may take a controller revision to get it right for shooters). Hopefully some 3rd parties make better efforts instead of dropping some crappy waggle controls in the game as they shovel it out the door.

I'm with you on the polygonal. Tribes and Half-Life were really the two saviors of the genre (and they dropped at the same time IIRC).

[Demonicus Prime]

[Lurch1982]

^And that means?

[DELICIOUS POISON]

YF, the point isn't that the system has trouble strafing. The point is that it isn't very fast, as far as full rotation goes. If they could remedy that, it would easily be as effective as mouse-based controls. Lurch's comment about the analogue was more in reference to being able to control the freelook seperately from the aiming cursor.

As is, the wii's controls have an opposite issue to what you see with dual analogues. The analogues must manipulate the player's view to center the crosshair, which is always in the middle of the screen, on the enemy. This is to say that you cannot fire anywhere but the exact center of what you're looking at, and really only the most adept players are able to use it as an efficient interface. It works on the same principles as mouse-look controls, but the mouse is fast and precise - you control the speed and movement and stopping point of the look function with a wave of your hand. The Wii remote's issue is, as I said, mostly an opposite. The cursor is free, and your viewpoint does not move immediately until you gesture outside of the screen. Back in reality, you can shoot anywhere you damn well please, regardless if you're looking at it. So basically the only problem with the Wii's controls are lack of speed. They've got precision down nearly as well as a mouse has, but it doesn't have any extra features to remedy the lack rotational speed.

[Demonicus Prime]

Oh. I thought it was the other way around.