Wii Fanboy Review: Ultimate Shooting Collection

Filed under: Reviews

A compilation of shooters on the Wii may seem a bit unnecessary or even redundant. The Wii already has what could be dubbed the “Ultimate Shooting Collection” — though not on a single disc. The Virtual Console is loaded with a surfeit of shooters, including many of the best games in the genre’s history. The Ultimate Shooting Collection, in comparison, is composed of just three games, some or all of which you may never even heard of. But just like there usually is an argument for a new game over an old one you’ve played, there is content of interest here that doesn’t exist in the downloadable space.

The games in Ultimate Shooting Collection are a great showcase for the evolution of the shooter genre, which may seem stagnant or even dead, in the modern age. Even with the piles upon piles of existing shooters, there aren’t any like these on the Virtual Console.

Continue reading Wii Fanboy Review: Ultimate Shooting Collection

Wii Fanboy Review: Ultimate Shooting Collection originally appeared on Joystiq [Nintendo] on Fri, 23 Jan 2009 09:58:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Wii Fanboy Review: Ultimate Shooting Collection

Filed under: Reviews

A compilation of shooters on the Wii may seem a bit unnecessary or even redundant. The Wii already has what could be dubbed the “Ultimate Shooting Collection” — though not on a single disc. The Virtual Console is loaded with a surfeit of shooters, including many of the best games in the genre’s history. The Ultimate Shooting Collection, in comparison, is composed of just three games, some or all of which you may never even heard of. But just like there usually is an argument for a new game over an old one you’ve played, there is content of interest here that doesn’t exist in the downloadable space.

The games in Ultimate Shooting Collection are a great showcase for the evolution of the shooter genre, which may seem stagnant or even dead, in the modern age. Even with the piles upon piles of existing shooters, there aren’t any like these on the Virtual Console.

Okay, so these games aren’t precisely new. They are, in fact, all varying degrees of old. The three games on this disc, all developed by Milestone, are Chaos Field, Radirgy, and Karous, which were originally released on the NAOMI arcade system in 2004, 2005, and 2006 respectively. Each was a potential “last game ever” for the Sega Dreamcast, coming out in Japan in 2004, 2006, and 2007. But, with the exception of Chaos Field, this is the first North American appearance for these games. In any case, they’re a lot more recent than the Virtual Console’s shooters, and they all represent a variety of shmup that emerged post-SNES: bullet hell. While most shooters rely on patterns of spawning enemies who each fire a few bullets, bullet-hell shooters subject the player to cascading, screen-filling curtains of glowing projectiles.

All three games share certain design elements beyond bullet-hell. In each, the player has both a projectile weapon and a sword; all feature special attacks that must be charged; and there is a heavy emphasis on combo-building through risky behavior in all of them. In addition, all of them are rendered in 3D, though in wildly different styles.

Chaos Field is the only game in the set that uses the full screen; the rest have large bars on the sides due to their tall “Tate mode” orientation. Chaos Field is a very nice-looking (in my opinion) shooter whose gimmick is the ability to change “fields” between Chaos and Order. In the Chaos field, your bullets are larger, but the enemies’ are as well, and more numerous; this is both dangerous and useful for chaining special attacks. Chaos Field is a “boss rush” game, meaning that you are shunted from one ridiculous, overblown boss encounter to the next.

Radirgy or Radio Allergy (the title says one, the logo another!) has a profoundly unique visual style: candy-colored, cel-shaded graphics with a cell phone user interface. You even receive email in-game with tips on upcoming areas. As it turns out, the cel-shading both looks really cool and, because of the black outlines, makes it really easy to identify bullets on the screen. The major gimmick in Radirgy is the ABSNET system, a shield that absorbs enemies within its confines, building a combo meter. It’s possible to chain together enemies to keep the ABSNET shield going. Using the sword also helps build the combo meter faster, though you have to get all up in enemies’ personal space to use it.

Karous is perhaps the friendliest of the three games, with more traditional shooter segments between the increasingly bullet-spamming boss encounters. The cel shading from Radirgy returns for this game, but in a muted, greyish color scheme that totally changes the feel of the game while still leaving the bullets highly visible. All of these games use Dreamcast-level graphics, of course, but they all manage to impress in different ways, with the unique look of this one being the most memorable. Unfortunately, if the text was teensy in Radirgy, it’s totally illegible in Karous, due to the small screen area used for the game. Maybe you could read it if you’re somehow playing on a monitor in vertical mode, but who really cares about text in a shmup anyway? Karous also features a sort of experience point system through which players can pick up items to upgrade their shots, speed and shields.

All three of these games are, of course, really hard. But Karous is almost, sort of, manageably difficult for the shmup novice, and the other two games are pretty and enjoyable enough for the few seconds you get to play them before failure. In addition, between the combos, shields, and swordplay, all three games provide ways to make survival easier, along with more complexity in gameplay than the usual shooter. It’s worth the time it takes to learn each gameplay system in order to eventually feel success!

Final verdict: 7.5/10

Wii Fanboy Review: Ultimate Shooting Collection originally appeared on Nintendo Wii Fanboy on Fri, 23 Jan 2009 09:58:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Wii Fanboy Review: High Voltage Hot Rod Show

Filed under: Reviews, WiiWare

High Voltage Software’s High Voltage Hot Rod Show is an arcade racer fetching 1,000 Wii Points on WiiWare. Is it worth that price? How fun is it? These questions, and more, are answered in our review past the break.

High Voltage Hot Rod Show is a simple arcade racer with one goal: keep up the speed and do your best to win the race. You can keep your speed going through a variety of items placed around the track. There are paths you can hit on the ground that give you speed boost, or you can perform stunts when in the air, boosting when you hit the ground. There are also a variety of ramps littered around the course which let you fly through loops that sit in the air, providing a good bit of boost should you navigate your racer through them.

And how does one race? Well, in the controls department, the game handles very much like Mario Kart Wii. You hold the Wiimote sideways, tilting it to steer your racer, while you hold the 2 button in for your throttle. When in the air, you shake the Wiimote to perform stunts, just like in Mario Kart Wii. In fact, we even played the game with the Wii Wheel some. It felt very natural! But, if that’s not your sort of thing, you could always use a GameCube controller.

Controlling your racer can be tough at times, as the CPU doesn’t like to lay down and quit too easily. They’ll ram you into walls, push you out of the track boundaries when you’re grabbing some air, and make it a very difficult time to get back in the lead if you’ve fallen behind the pack. The CPU isn’t cheap, mind you, but does have a bit of a competitive spirit.

Aside from the regular Championship mode, which takes you through a few of the 6 available tracks and gives you a trophy at the end, depending on your performance, there’s also Time Trial mode, where you seek to get good lap times. You can even upload your best lap times online, comparing times with your friends to see who’s the best hot rod racer. There’s also a local multiplayer mode, if splitscreen racing is your cup of tea.

For 1,000 Wii Points, High Voltage Hot Rod Show is a pretty content-filled package. The racing itself is fun and you really get a good sense of speed when gathering boost, making it that much harder to control your racer. But, that’s the fun of an arcade game such as this. If you enjoy arcade racers or classics such as Rock N’ Roll Racing or RC Pro Am, then you’ll get a kick out of this.

Final score: 8/10

Wii Fanboy Review: High Voltage Hot Rod Show originally appeared on Nintendo Wii Fanboy on Wed, 21 Jan 2009 13:43:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Wii Fanboy Review: Family Glide Hockey

Filed under: Reviews

Family Glide Hockey had serious potential. A series of cheap, simple downloadable sports games in the Wii Sports tradition is a fantastic idea — one that, if done right, would easily be one (or more) of the WiiWare service’s killer apps. Glide Hockey’s predecessor Family Table Tennis actually delivered on the promise of the cheapo family sports game, giving me hope for the series.

Plus, air hockey, the arcade attraction on which the WiiWare game is based, is generally awesome and underrepresented in games. The combination of good family sports game series and air hockey seemed like a natural winner.

“Natural” and “winner” are two appelations that fail to describe Family Glide Hockey in any way.

If you played Wii Play’s Laser Hockey (and I know you did) you might think you know what to expect out of Family Glide Hockey: one-on-one air hockey, using the pointer controls of the Wii Remote to control the movements of each player’s mallet. If you’re going to put an air hockey game on the Wii, that’s pretty much the only way to do it, right? I mean, unless you were going to do something ridiculous like control the mallet with the D-pad or Nunchuk analog stick. Which is precisely what Family Glide Hockey does. There are motion controls too — flicking the Wiimote jabs the mallet forward to hit the puck. A and B unleash special shots that can only be activated when the puck has bounced off of enough walls (indicated by a glow effect).

If that method of play sounds uninspiring, there’s always “auto” mode, in which the game moves the mallet for you and you just control the jabbing and special shots. As an experiment, I set the game to auto mode and put the controller down for a match. I kind of wish I could have won for dramatic purposes, but unfortunately I didn’t.

I only scored three points.

As much as I love air hockey, I admit that most of my attempts to play the real game result in random goals on either side — the puck just sort of bounces around wildly until it clatters into someone’s goal. Family Glide Hockey exacerbates this problem with a design idea that seems fun at first: unusual, gimmicky tables. There’s an ice-themed table with sliding iceberg-things, a woodland table with a curved shape and moving goals, and a table with jagged sides. All of which have the effect of making the damn puck fly around erratically. Don’t bother trying to place your shots! They’re just going to go wherever.

Beyond the single-player and obligatory multiplayer modes, Family Glide Hockey features three minigames. Glide Hockey Tracer, about changing the colors of groups of blocks by running the puck over them, is actually kind of fun, while Glide Hockey Drill, about trying to answer math problems by aiming the puck at the correct solution, is just frustrating. Right between the two (but falling loser to the “fun” side) is Glide Hockey Brawl, a game that scores you based on the collisions between your puck and bowling-pin-style arrangements of pucks.

Between the boring controls and the seeming lack of player determination of success — along with smaller complaints like the way that sound effects make the music cut out — there’s basically nothing to recommend here. The fact that the minigames are reasonably okay (Tracer is a little bit addictive!) makes Family Glide Hockey far from the worst WiiWare offering, but it’s still bland at best.

Final score: 3.5/10

Wii Fanboy Review: Family Glide Hockey originally appeared on Nintendo Wii Fanboy on Wed, 21 Jan 2009 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Born for Wii: Blade Runner

Filed under: Born for Wii

It’s always dark in the city. Always raining. The light from a thousand neon signs is refracted and scattered by the smog that hangs in the air, ominous and ever-present. Spinners pass by quietly overhead while those too poor to own a car travel by foot, hurrying with umbrellas clutched tightly and collars upturned against the cold and rain. A handful aren’t even real — fake, synthetic, the creations of man in his own image, now considered a threat and forbidden to walk the streets of L.A. For them, the chase is a fight for survival. They have no right to life. For you, it’s just another day on the job. Retiring replicants is your business. You’re a blade runner.

More than 25 years after its release, Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner still stands as one of the best science fiction movies of all time. It’s a haunting dystopian noir, a gripping mystery, and a special effects marvel. In a fitting tribute to the film, Westwood Studios revisited L.A. circa 2019 in their 1997 adventure game, simply titled Blade Runner. The events of the game play out in parallel to the story of Rick Deckard, as rookie blade Ray McCoy hunts down his own set of dangerous replicants. Westwood’s point-and-click adventure was an ambitious project for 1997, but it succeeds on all fronts: it’s consistently atmospheric, delivers a solid and well-acted script, and alters the traditional gameplay enough to be a fresh take on the genre.

Born for Wii: Blade Runner originally appeared on Nintendo Wii Fanboy on Tue, 20 Jan 2009 11:48:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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VC Monday Madness: MUSHA

Filed under: VC Monday Madness

MUSHA is a great shmup. It’s fast, fun, and very challenging. There’s plenty of crazy weapons and the difficulty level makes things engaging throughout. It’s a very solid shmup and a great way to drop 800 Points.

VC Monday Madness: MUSHA originally appeared on Nintendo Wii Fanboy on Mon, 19 Jan 2009 18:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Top 5: Jury’s Still Out

Filed under: Top Five

Top 5: Jury’s Still Out originally appeared on Nintendo Wii Fanboy on Mon, 19 Jan 2009 11:44:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Revolutionary: 3rd Party Control

Filed under: Peripherals, Tech stuff, Controller, Revolutionary

Last week at CES, Nyko surprise announced their first entry into the 3rd party Wiimote market, the Wand. Though it has been beaten to market by a few other Wiimote clones, this may be the first Wii Remote you’ll find encroaching on Nintendo’s shelf space in your local game shop. We won’t begin to speculate why no one else’s products can be readily found in brick ‘n’ mortars, but we’ll be grateful to finally have some choice.

So far, this has been an unusual generation for controller-makers on all platforms. Microsoft doesn’t license out its wireless technology, so 3rd party gamepads have to connect via USB. Sony’s gyrating, vibrating, rechargeable DUALSHOCK 3 controllers may just be too complex for 3rd parties to replicate in full functionality when the userbase is too small to make a profit from. And the 3rd parties have seemed to be satisfied raking in the dough with non-essential add-ons and shells for Nintendo’s own brand of controller. It does indeed come as a surprise that Nyko is now bringing out a Wiimote, and an enhanced one at that. Before we’ve had a chance to review the Wand, let’s examine why its introduction has been long overdue.

We can call the Wand revolutionary, because it’s revolting in every sense of the word. The style and shape are aesthetically offensive and frightening. With a D-pad only a masochist could love, and a color scheme that would just as well fit on Playskool toys, one might question how that design ever made it out of the waste basket and onto the production lines. Why not just stick with something closer to Nintendo’s Wiimote? Well, Nyko’s Kama wireless Nunchuk was similar enough in shape and style to Nintendo’s wired Nunchuks to get the lawyers’ attention. The case was settled peacefully, but the Wand’s design was probably chosen as the least likely to rile up Nintendo’s lawyers.

From time to time, Nintendo has been known to strong-arm 3rd parties, whether it’s in the hardware biz or software. There’s potentially a lot of money to be made in selling peripherals, or licensing designs and technology to 3rd parties, so it’s no wonder Nintendo is very protective of its business. Back in the NES era, Nintendo designed the trademark cross-shaped D-pad, and has been protecting that intellectual property ever since. The cross shape often works better than Sony’s button-style D-pad, and the Xbox 360’s round D-pad is a cruel joke by comparison, but the simple, yet reliable cross pad is off limits, unless, of course, manufacturers are willing to pay for it.

The altered shape of the Wand can be a plus or a minus, depending on how the Wii Remote fits your hand, but will anyone really welcome the extra pointy bits on the D-pad? The button sizes and shapes shouldn’t negatively impact our gaming, though GlovePIE scripters will have to work around the re-arranged LEDs. We’re hopeful that Nyko sprung for a higher quality speaker than Nintendo’s own, which hits our eardrums with a resonance similar to nails on a chalk board. Vibration is in, and a stronger motor would be welcome, but hasn’t been promised.

With Nyko having made no announcement to create games for the Wand, the analog buttons being presented seem useless. Wii games aren’t designed to expect analog input from the buttons, but, as GlovePIE scripters know, there are ways to fit analog behavior into a digital signal. Pulse density modulation simulates tapping a button at variable speeds relative to your input. Pulling harder on the B trigger could tell the Wand’s onboard processer to ramp up the rate at which it sends an on/off signal for that button to the Wii. If the Wand’s “analog” buttons indeed work this way, it would mean all existing Wii games are already compatible, even if it may yield unfavorable results in most of them. Analog buttons could be reason enough for GlovePIE scripters to trade Wii Remotes for Wands, provided that the Wand plays nice with GlovePIE.

The Trans-Port technology seems a little more obvious in its functioning. Mechanical doohickies for relaying a button press from a shell to the Wiimote are replaced by electrical extensions. It seems simple enough, but it still has some interesting potential applications. Combine the analog buttons with the Trans-Port technology, and you can have a Wand wheel shell with a set of analog throttle and brake pedals tethered on. Mario Kart Wii, Excite Truck, or whichever racing games you’re into could get a whole lot deeper.

There are still some questions in the air. Will 3rd party Wiimotes fit the shells and attachments already on the market and in our homes? Will they be electronically compatible with Nintendo’s Nunchuks, Classic Controllers, guitars, and MotionPlus? And, ugly as it may be, it’s still got its charms. The Wand may hit the shelves at a lower price than Nintendo’s Remotes, but we’re mainly interested in seeing how the analog buttons work and what I can do with it in GlovePIE. If the Wand proves successful, Nintendo and competitors may find themselves cribbing features from it for their next generation controllers.

Revolutionary: 3rd Party Control originally appeared on Nintendo Wii Fanboy on Fri, 16 Jan 2009 09:54:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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YouTube caters to Wii users with YouTube for Television

Filed under: News, Walkthroughs, Video, Features

YouTube has unleashed its beta for YouTube for Television, a more Wii-friendly version of the popular video site. Being the curious folk that we are, we’ve dived into the service and produced a handy little walkthrough on how to get started checking out videos. There’s a neat little search function that remembers your content, as well. So, hit the button below to start the tour, then boot up that Wii and watch some videos yourself!

[Via Gemaga]

YouTube caters to Wii users with YouTube for Television originally appeared on Nintendo Wii Fanboy on Thu, 15 Jan 2009 16:23:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Fanswag: Castlevania Judgment

Filed under: Contests / Giveaways

Another fanswag giveaway is upon us and this time we’re unloading one copy of Castlevania Judgment ($50). Want it? Simply leave a comment on this post telling us what your favorite Castlevania game of all time is. You should have plenty to choose from!

Of course, we’ve got a couple of rules. For one, you have to be at least 18 years of age and a current and legal resident of the United States or Canada (excluding Quebec). Also, you may only enter once per day. Entries must be in before Wednesday, January 21 at 11:59PM ET. Before entering, make sure you read the official rules right here, too!

Best of luck to you all and thanks for reading!

Fanswag: Castlevania Judgment originally appeared on Nintendo Wii Fanboy on Thu, 15 Jan 2009 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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