We thumbed through the IGN message boards after our recent review of Metroid Prime 3: Corruption -- a game that we awarded a high 9.5 rating -- and readers had a variety of questions for us.
One that stood out was, did we think that a third party could make a game that would rival Corruption's innovative utilization of the Wii remote? We said sure, yes, absolutely, it was bound to happen eventually, but we honestly figured such a feat would be several months off, if not years. So imagine our surprise when we got our hands on Medal of Honor Heroes 2 for Wii this week and discovered very quickly that EA Canada seems to have nailed the control scheme. Indeed, if our brief, but revealing play test with a few key portions of the war-time shooter was any indication, Heroes 2 may prove to be more powerful proof that Wii is the ideal console for fast and furious first-person experiences. What the demo also proves beyond any doubt is that the Wii rendition is absolutely not a quick and dirty PSP port and we hope all of our readers will take notice now because, frankly, this surprisingly adept undertaking is set to blow a hole through both Call of Duty and Vanguard before it.
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As lead producer Matt Tomporowski demoes the Wii version of the shooter for us, he speaks to this, explaining that team members have periodically checked the message boards through the title's development cycle and are always disheartened when posters assert that Heroes 2 will be dumbed down mechanically or graphically on Wii. Sure, he adds, the two versions are bound to share some commonalities, like enemy artificial intelligence, for instance (which he notes is very smart), but
Heroes 2 on Wii is brought to life via a new game engine, vastly improved graphics, completely overhauled controls and even a few exclusive play modes. Tomporowski further elaborates that EA Canada took a look at its competitors, from Call of Duty 3 to Vanguard, learned from them, and then set out to create a first-person shooter that would fully capitalize on Wii's strengths.
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In Campaign Mode, you have full freedom of your character and can run in any direction, look in any direction, and shoot at anything or anyone you can see. Think Call of Duty 3 except with significantly improved graphics and controls and you'll have some idea of what to expect.
To start, EA Canada enables you the ability to fully customize your control setup. Sure, you can set your maximum up and down look, but you can also feather your horizontal and vertical sensitivity, your aiming sensitivity and, best of all, your dead zone (commonly referred to in these parts as the elusive bounding box). Because the controls can be so tightly tweaked and because Heroes 2 runs at a locked 60 frames per second, you can continually fiddle with the dead zone and the look / aim sensitivities until you stumble upon the perfect match for the way you play. The standard configuration is already highly responsive - better than Call of Duty 3 or Vanguard and not far behind Metroid Prime 3. However, after maxing everything out and dropping the dead zone down to its smallest size, we walked away with a look / aim speed several times that of Prime 3 and the ability to a 180-degree flip with the Wii remote in a half second, as opposed to the two and half seconds it takes in Corruption. We're not sure we'd want to play the game like that - you'll make dramatic on-screen movements if you so much as sneeze - but if you've got the finesse to maintain control with that much speed at your fingertips, you have that option, which is a first on Wii.
