My Wii Mini Review : First Impressions

I refer you to the vast swath of ugly rhetoric in Nintendo's E3 press conference and the legions of Nintendo apologists who have been running with it ever since.

 

I'm not sure where they got 2+ hours from since I just the game and the controls clicked immediately and this is the first FPS I've got for the Wii. There is no learning practically besides picking up the controls and trying a button once or twice to figure out what they do (and besides the game for the early part pops up with a helpful comment telling you what to press to do what when its necessary like all early game tutorials do).

If you can point and click on the Wii menu with the Wiimote you can play MP3 easily enough (the game literally feels like you are just point and clicking on your targets from my limited play).

 

Don't talk about 'the masses' in your forum discussions. Sweeping generalizations aren't a good basis for smart debate and backing up one's opinions. Your comment here is dependent on everyone else following this thread having both experienced and interpreted the information as you - you are basing an argument on ideas that have not been introduced to this forum. If you want to refer to comments made by Nintendo execs, link to them and explain their relationship with your opinions.

 

Man, this thread shocked me. My world was teetering. DemoCoder with a Wii?! Say it ain't so. What would happen next? The French give up brie? Never! Luckily, the first three para returned the stars to their proper paths! Whew, that was close!

 

Now just how does one do this? My cursor bumps about and I have to point the wiimote slightly up relative to where the cursor is (I assume because my LED bar is above the screen). Where does one turn the strength up?

 

Fair enough. My intent was not to make claims about particular people, just to point out an objection to a particular idea, regardless of source. My previous, rather dismissive comment was a result of not being interested in entering a link war about a point that was orthogonal to what I was mentioning in the first place.

To try to go back on track a bit: The OP made the assertion that the Wii controls are frequently not intuitive, and thus still represent a significant learning curve that does not make it superior to a traditional game pad *for that market*. I raised the idea that FPS is a genre where the Wii remote does not alleviate the learning issue. Things kind of snowballed from there.

As far as I saw it, the discussion on this thread has been from the beginning that there is no shortage of myths out there about what the Wii remote is capable of in terms of precision, accuracy, ease-of-use, or ease-of-learning. Some of them are likely true, and others are false. There are many sources for those myths, and it's not really valuable to point fingers. They're out there because many people believe or disbelieve them. I feel that it's worth taking a look at which of them are true, and which are not, if for a matter of discussion.

I think it's good and healthy to have discussion on the strengths and weaknesses of different control schemes to different games or types of games. If nothing else but than to have the chance to expose what works, what doesn't work, and how things can be made better next time around.

That said, I'm not sure that all of the major posters in this thread are trying to discuss the same thing. Perhaps that's where the problem is coming from.

 

Somewhere in the options/config menu you can up the strenght over the sensorthingy. I had exactly the same as you untill I bumped it up.

 

Also, you should have a clear space between the Wiimote and the sensor bar.
It's infrared, so even a flower vase or something on the table between tv and sofa will interfere.
I actually had to buy a lower coffee table between my sofa and projection screen because the old one was too high for comfortable playing on the sofa.
If I held the Wiimote with my arms resting on my lap, the table would cut the infrared signal and the cursor would stop.
So, the Wii cost me almost as much as PS3, with the coffee table add-on
It's a nice coffee table though, and I had planned to buy a new one anyway soon.

 

Worthy of some commendation I think; he's giving the Wii a very fair chance instead of giving his criticisms followed by simply returning it.

That said, I personally don't have control problems with the Wii so it's been a very enjoyable experience.

A bit on Trauma Center: the game is rather unlike other Wii games. While an intuitive control system is retained (and presented in the first few levels) the game has a greater learning curve to it and the difficulty greatly increases as you progress. It's the kind of game that really requires some patience. Once you get better at it, the natural step forward is to do it faster while maintaining accuracy. If the control system were so flaky, I imagine it'd be quite a bit harder.

(The game probably requires the biggest vocabulary of any Wii game too )

 

Hey Demo,

if your Wii pointer is unstable, its most likely you are too close from the IR source. It was the same for me the first time, but move back several feet and it becomes very easy to use the pointer, just like using laser pointer.

 

I found one for sensitivity but it doesn't do much.
Nothing in the pathway between either.

 

I was exaggerating a little. You admit it's not perfect by a long shot and that's all I'm saying. Due to the imprecise nature of the controls and imprecise nature of the mechanical action of hand and arm movement, it makes nuanced play difficult, if not impossible. The game is still silly fun to a point, as all party games are.

I'm curious to see how Metroid plays, since it's getting good reviews. I might revise my opinion after that--but the system won't get any use until then.

 

They've definitely done some smoothing on the pointer in Metroid. I find it moves very smoothly. Similar to having the weapon stocks in RE4. The cursor is not as jittery as on the Wii menus. There's some push pull stuff in Metroid that's touchy. You'll have a lever to pull out, rotate and then push back in. You have to watch this arrow that tells you which way to move it. If you do things too fast, and start the next move before the arrow shows, it won't pick up your movement and you'll have to stop for a sec to let it get "ready". I also find if you're pushing, and you move your cursor off the screen, it stops picking it up. So you really have to keep the remote pointed straight at the screen while you're doing it. That could have been a little bit better, but it doesn't really ruin the mechanics of it. It's still neat moving your hand around to push buttons and manipulate things. I guess they could have done it with press A or press B automatic actions, but something about it adds a little to the atmosphere of the game. It's definitely worth trying. I've adjusted to the controls very quickly, but I think some people find them overly sensitive and get disoriented easily.

 

You can actually tell the Wii where your sensor bar is in relation to your TV, just FYI incase you didn't realise, it might at least solve that problem for you.

 

I dont get the idea there is any logic behind the sensorbar position option btw. My sensorbar is above the tv, but in the options menu I told the wii it was below my tv and that actually works better than if I say its above the tv.

 

LOL! yep, did that when I first turned it on. Maybe I'm too close (8 feet or so) or maybe it's just not like my laser pointer after all.

 

Now maybe I'll try this! My is above and shaky and you basically have to tilt the wiimotes upward slightly. Randomness for fixing things is whatever.

 

I think it's more about the position of the sensor bar relative to your own position, and that depends on how tall you are, your couch, playing position, etcetera. The above tv or below tv setting probably just makes rough estimates based on the average positions of people sitting in front of tvs.

 

I find the thing jittery for text entry standing about 8 feet away from a 37" LCD that is on a table about 36" high with the bar on top and nothing in between. No coffee table, nada. When I do the bar settings I see only two dots (for the bar LEDs) and nothing interfering.

Go figure.

Maybe it just doesn't like sitting next to a PS3.

 

Arnt you supposed to see alot more dots in the bar options? I dont quite remember but I believe I had a whole bunch of them.

You also sure you dont have any reflection things shining in the sensor bar? Last winter my cursor also flickerd time from time when the sun was low and shining into the room but for the last few months its been 100% stable.