In the box

I've been thinking about consoles vs PC and mobile gaming, and add-on peripherals.

I recently bought a PS3/PC racing wheel for a steal ($10.00 clearance from The Source)

I borrowed Test Drive Unlimited 2 from the library... It's an Ok game, but not optimized for racing wheels. There are parts of the game which switch to on-foot first person view (!)  that can only be controlled using a Dualshock 3... Or at least it is VERY DIFFICULT to control using the wheel.

Anyway, the point is I am wondering how many console  racing games are TRULY made for racing wheels?  The answer is probably few to none. Why? Because what game company wants to make a game that needs a controller that is not included "in the box"? That the consumer needs to not only buy the game but also another controller to properly play it?

If a game does that it is automatically limiting its own market. Not every PS3 gamer will buy a PS3 game, but then if the game requires a certain kind of add-on, like Move, not only will not every PS3 gamer buy that game, but not every Move owner may buy it. It makes a smaller pool of customers.

That is definitely why stuff like the Wii Balance Board failed. But what about the Wii itself? Motion controls are" in the box" for every Wii.

But because ONLY the Wii had those controls, companies wouldn't develop for it. That's why I am a bit worried about Xbox One's kinnect "in the box". Yes, that is a smart move so every Xbox One has Kinnect, but I think because both or all consoles don't have a "Kinnect"  type of controller included, that third parties will still shy away from developing for it. Most companies want to be able to quickly port their game to both Xbox and Playstation.

"In the box" is really important, but what is more important is "in every box". Unfortunately, only the dual analogue stick controller is central to every console now, so that is the control that will be used for most games. Makes it almost impossible for anyone to innovate.

There is a notable exception to this idea: the Guitar Hero/Rockband series of games. Clearly the initial popularity of those games flies in the face of this idea, people bought the controllers in droves and for awhile these were some of the best selling games. But that fad has passed, and it is now back to normal, where companies don't want to take any chances.

It is such a shame, because we are at the point now where there are tons of gaming choices, Android/Apple phones/tablets, consoles, handhelds with both physical and touch interfaces, and of course the ever versatile PC. We can use bluetooth to wirelessly attach a controller to a phone or tablet... but there will be almost NO great games that take advantage of these options because bluetooth controllers are not "in every box" of phones/tablets.


later
don

Nintendo and the second screen

 

When the Wii U gamepad features were first laid out by Nintendo, I was very excited. Being able to use touch, having a second screen ala a tablet while gaming, and being able to transfer some entire games to the gamepad screen. Basically, this is a handheld-ification of a home console. I have to admit handhelds have become my favourite consoles, so this got me so hyped and intrigued.

Nowadays I almost always have my Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 7.0 tablet with me when I watch TV. I'm surfing the net during commercial breaks, or looking up stuff.... so I thought that the second screen philosophy Nintendo is going for would fit in with my lifestyle very comfortably.

Now that we've had some time to try out the features, I have mixed feelings about the gamepad.

It was such a bold and frankly, weird direction Nintendo chose to go with this generation of console. On paper it sounds great. But in real life gameplay..... I find it unwieldy.

Playing games like Lego City Undercover, which relies on the Gamepad for the map... I know it sounds lazy but it's kind of a drag to have to look down to see the map, then look back at the tv again. It's not as easy as it sounds, especially if you're involved in a fast chase or being pursued and have to look down at the map to plan your destination route while you're driving. And even in slower paced situations, having to regularly trade focus between the screen that is 12 feet away (TV) and the one that is 1.5 feet away (Gamepad) just kinda messes with your eye focus. It would almost be easier to just have the traditional onscreen map in the corner. Playing Infamous on my PS3, having to use the SELECT button to bring up the map screen, as clunky as that is, is still easier than using the gamepad for the map because all my focus stays on the TV screen.


When I first unboxed my Wii U, I was carefully going through all the peripherals and cables... and was rather shocked to find *ONLY* an HDMI cable for TV hookup. My thought was something like, "What the F--???"  At the time, I only had a 27" CRT TV, so I cannibalized my Wii AV cables to hook up the Wii U to my TV. It works ok, but I felt like the Wii U was never meant to be used on a CRT TV, just like PS3/Xbox 360 weren't... which is why I never bought those systems.

But this past Xmas, I got a nice 55" LG smart 3D TV. So nice... sigh..... *ahem*, yeah, and I was *so* psyched to hook up my Wii U to it. Of course it looks great and it's awesome to play games on the big screen. But that great TV screen also makes it harder to go back down to the smaller, crappier resolution/screen quality of the gamepad screen. I have tried playing Darksiders II (Wii U) on the gamepad, and it looks good. But unless I *have to* play it on the screen, as in the TV is being used by others, it's not preferable to play games fully on the gamepad. If only it was *MORE* handheld-ified and games could be fully loaded onto the gamepad for truly portable play anywhere... that would be awesome.

So I have some trepidation as to Nintendo's second screen direction for this generation. I am going to stick with it, and maybe it will grow on me more. But unless the console gets a lot more quality titles and unique uses for the gamepad that set it apart from the other systems, my doubts may continue to grow about this second screen philosophy.... and I still have to really devote a lot more time to Darksiders II, hopefully it will click more with me...



later
don

Lego City Undercover

A couple weeks ago, I gathered up a big stack of mostly Wii games, a few DS and a PSP game, about 12 games in total... to trade in at EB Games. I ended up getting about $40.00 in credit which I put towards the purchase of one game: Lego City Undercover.

Lego City Undercover is basically Grand Theft Lego. Both this game and another game I'm playing right now, Infamous (PS3) are clearly heavily influenced by  the Grand Theft Auto games, but Lego City Undercover wears its influence on its sleeve. Instead of playing a car thief, you play a cop. But you do many of the same things as in GTA games: jack cars from their drivers at will, only you do it on "Police business!".... and many missions also ape the GTA ones, like having to evade police (even though you are one? Hanh?)

First off, the game gets off to a bad start: there's a loading screen just to get to the intro screen where you pick your profile (or create a new one) THEN after you pick your profile IT LOADS AGAIN.... so there are 2 loading screens in a row, each about 20-40 seconds. WHY did there need to be a loading screen just to get to the TITLE?? That was a colossal mistake by developer TT Games... they should have just made the title screen a static one if it saved having to do a  loading time. Most complaints about the game are the long, numerous loading screens. But most GTA open-world style games have long load times because the maps are so large. Still, they should be planned out so as to minimize them as much as possible.

The home base for the player in this game is the Police Station, this is where you buy/unlock characters and vehicles. It is a 3 floor building each floor accessible by elevator, and they ALL have loading screens when you go from one to the other. You HAVE to endure at least one loading screen because you always enter the building on the middle floor and all the unlock areas are in the basement. And of course there are loading screens every time you enter and exit the Police Station.

That said, the game is a lot of fun. The city map seems to be about 3 large sections, and there are so many cars you can drive. And boats, and helicopters... it's so fun to just travel around. I haven't really played a Lego game since Lego Star Wars & Lego Star Wars 2: The Original Saga (original Xbox) and Lego City Undercover is basically the same overall formula but showing refinements learned from each Lego game they've released. It skews on the easy side, make no mistake-- this game is (rightfully) aimed at kids but I am just having fun exploring such an open place and digging the corny yet endearing humour.

There are still some rough edges to the game, glitchy areas... like when they want you to go to a mission point, they give you a trail of green glowing Lego studs to follow, on one mission I was following it ad it took me right off a incomplete bridge. I fell from a high cliff into water, which didn't kill me, but I couldn't get back up because the cliffs around me were so high. The game eventually gave me an option to hold a button to return to land-- but when I do, it takes me to the point where my car is already in mid-air jumping off the bridge. I tried to jump out, anything to try to stay on land but it always just sends me back into the water. I had to just quit and resart the mission. And another mission I was on horseback following the studs to a castle, and inexplicably, instead of having the stud trail go *over* the bridge to the castle, it seemed to want me to somehow jump across  the gap *beside* it-- which I couldn't. I think as I get through the last third of the story mode, things get less polished like they didn't have the time to playtest everything.

The humour in Lego City Undercover is genteel and mostly plays to a younger audience, but there is an odd off-note in the Museum mission where there's an almost racist depiction of native indians.... it's a bit of a sour note, especially for a kid's game.

 I have mixed feelings about the Wii U gamepad integration. There are some times when I really enjoy it, like when using it to track footprints to find a hidden treasure. But using it to display the city map, it takes my eyes away from the screen where my attention wants to be.... and the touch interface is unwieldy, maybe because of the (crappy) resistive touch screen. If it was a capacitive touch screen I would likely enjoy it more. But I will talk about Nintendo's second screen philosophy in another post...

Lego City Undercover is the first and only Wii U game that I'm really sinking my teeth into, making me think the Wii U might have been a worthwhile purchase. Unfortunately, I see little else on the horizon for the system, and considering I've had the console for about 6 (long) months without any real games to hook me on it... I honestly don't know if I should have bought the Wii U. If I knew it wouldn't sell out like the Wii frenzy of 2006-2007, I wouldn't have bought it at launch. At this point I'm waiting for Batman: Arkham City Armored Edition to price drop in Canada. Other than that game, not much else I can think of to pick up for Wii U.

Annoyingly, the 3DS also is looking tragically barren of games over the long run. But I am getting  psyched for Lego City Undercover: The Chase Begins, the prequel to the Wii U game. It's coming out April 21, 2013.... very soon. Even though the early reviews are a bit tepid, I am aware of the limitations of the handheld and I still think I will buy it day 1.


later
don

Wii 2 is Wii U

So... the "Wii HD" or "Wii 2" has finally been revealed & named... Wii U.

Wii U? Like Wii University?? At this point, I don't even ask anymore. "Playstation Vita"? "Wii U"? Ok whatever, know what I'm saying? I guess they're just names.

I'm still trying to get up to speed on the details, but Engadget has a nice hands-on with the Wii U Controller, and Gamespot has a word-heavy but concise quick overview of the Wii U console. Not a lot of real info about the console at this time, looks like they will save that for the Tokyo Game Show.

The controller is very strange & interesting. It looks huge! Like a tablet but with traditional dual-stick controls. Isn't that what all of us who've had to make do with touchscreen d-pads always complained about-- lack of physical controls? But this is not the perfect solution to that problem as it may look.

The Wii U controller doesn't operate independently of the console. It doesn't have its own GPU and doesn't look like it has any onboard storage. Rather, it streams content from the console, and the touchscreen can display gaming while your main TV is occupied with showing Chuck or whatever. That's actually a nice feature for me; I like to play games during commercial breaks while watching TV so I'll switch back & forth. So something like this appeals to my ADD/short attention span & constant need to be fed interactive media...

But I'm not completely sold on it. It looks odd to have this huge tablet controller with basically a dualshock/Xbox controller crammed into it-- WITHOUT the curved, hand-fitting ergonomics of the Xbox controller S-- also, the analogue sticks are "slide pads" or analogue nubs, much like the 3DS/PSP. That's ok for a handheld gaming console but we kinda expect full analogue sticks on our home consoles, don't we? Even the NGP/PSVita looks to have full analogue sticks on it. And the touchscreen is a resistive one, complete with a DS-styled stylus that tucks into the back. I am not a fan of resistive touch screens, and I'm a bit disappointed with the touchscreen on the 3DS.

So the 2 analogue "sticks" and traditional control layout looks like it's meant to lure the "hardcore gamer" back to Nintendo... but will the awkwardness of holding a huge rectangle with analogue nubs really appeal to gamers used to using molded controllers like the Xbox controller? And it's so big that it looks rather child "unfriendly", unlike the Wii remote and nunchuck. But those controls are backwards-compatible... though I can't see most Wii U games being tailored for them. So who is this new Wii U controller really going to satisfy? Maybe my doubts are a failure of my imagination; when the Wii remote/nunchuck was first revealed I was like, "Huh??" but then I saw a lot of potential in them. Right now I'm not sure how the Wii U controller will really improve gameplay in a significant way.

But there's also that the expectations this time 'round are different. Like I said, I saw a huge potential in the motion controls of the Wii remote/nunchuck... but a lot of that potential *still* hasn't been realized. Since 2006 I've seen the balance board come & go, WiiSpeak fail miserably, the Wii Zapper & Wii Wheel make a small splash on the scene & sink like a blip on a lake.... no wonder I am a bit wary of yet ANOTHER Nintendo experiment tossed out into the world.

Timing is everything, and with the 3DS just out (yes, another Nintendo experiment whose long-term outlook is not looking good right now), Playstation Vita & Wii U coming, at this point I'd rather put my $$$ towards the new Playstation handheld. But Wii U might not come out until late 2012 so a lot of things could change by then.



later
don