Project Natal - First Impressions?

Just to clarify, by "undeserved" I meant that the sucess of the Wii is not necessarily due to quality but is due to a gimmick, which in my opinion isn't much more than a novelty that doesn't really work very well.

Why is gaming becoming popular bad for gaming? Because the companies producing games will cater to the masses of idiots with extremely bad games that they know they will buy anyway. How long will it be before we are just buried in shovelware? I think it's like that with any hobby. The more popular it becomes the lower the quality of product. Movies and music are popular. Has that been good for the movie and music industries from a fans point of view? Absolutely not. The vast majority of movies and music produced is utter crap.

For the record, I'm not a Nintendo hater. Like I said, I've had a Wii since day one and have many games for it. I have every Nintendo system ever made, including all of the iterations of the Gameboy and DS. Hell, I even have a working Virtual Boy and some games for it. But like I said, I think the success of the Wii is largely in part to a gimmick that is not as original as a lot of people like to think and that doesn't actually even work that well.

Without 'casual gamers' there wouldn't be much of an industry to speak of. Every game system (the few that had somehow survived) would be like the Neo*Geo, a bunch of OCD nerds demanding that each game go further up its own asshole than the last. Here's an editorial from before the Wii was released that talks about it. We can argue that the Wiimote and accessories haven't lived up to the collective expectations of the hardcore gamer market, but it's foolish to say that the motion control is a 'novelty that doesn't really work very well'. Devs who know what they're doing have made some amazing games that work with the Wiimote.
 
It works in low light levels because it's really infrared that it's keying off of.. your body heat is what it's tracking in reality.

Yeah, I remember them talking about that in the article. The cool part is some of the stuff you were talking about, how it builds a 'skeleton' on the fly to match your body so that it can predict your motion. Time will tell if I'll buy it, but that's cool as hell :D
 
Here's some more Wii fodder. THIS is the kind of crap Nick (and myself) is talking about creep in...

http://www.sync-blog.com/sync/2009/06/nintendo-confirms-secret-help-feature.html

Why not just offer the game in movie form FFS?

For the life of me I don't get why this is a complaint at all.. what does it matter that you can get online in game help? how's that different than watching levels on youtube or buying one of the hundreds of help books out there for any given title on any given platform? If you want to use it you will, if it's online, videos or books.. don't get why it's a negative in this case.. is it just because it's the wii and you don't want to like it?
 
For the life of me I don't get why this is a complaint at all.. what does it matter that you can get online in game help? how's that different than watching levels on youtube or buying one of the hundreds of help books out there for any given title on any given platform? If you want to use it you will, if it's online, videos or books.. don't get why it's a negative in this case.. is it just because it's the wii and you don't want to like it?

Online in game help? Did you read the article at all? It's a feature where you don't even have to play, you WATCH the computer play for you, because it's "too hard".

Please tell me you're not naive enough to think more and more "casual" features like this aren't contributing factors to average game quality taking a nosedive.
4/5 games SUCK ASS today, compared to back when I played NES/SNES games, where in that 5 you'd find 1 game that sucked enough to not be worth your money. This isn't just on the Wii either, devs are lazy and so are the average "eye candy" gamer who wouldn't know good gameplay if it bit them in the ass.
 
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The voice recognition and tracking IS that good now. I'm not a real fan of microsoft, but the subsystems for Surface (which is the underpinnings of this) are quite solid and tested. Now, the speed and fluidity of the API, that's a big question :)

If what you're saying is correct, than that's cool. It's just that every voice recognition system I've experienced has pretty much sucked- OnStar, Free 411, ect.

Ditto on the Wii factor, sales don't lie. It's easy to become like the movie critic that only enjoys art films while degrading every mainstream film that comes down the pike.

There is a place for both, thank God there is a choice.
 
Online in game help? Did you read the article at all? It's a feature where you don't even have to play, you WATCH the computer play for you, because it's "too hard".

Please tell me you're not naive enough to think more and more "casual" features like this aren't contributing factors to average game quality taking a nosedive.
4/5 games SUCK ASS today, compared to back when I played NES/SNES games, where in that 5 you'd find 1 game that sucked enough to not be worth your money. This isn't just on the Wii either, devs are lazy and so are the average "eye candy" gamer who wouldn't know good gameplay if it bit them in the ass.

I agree there, but I think the point really should be gaming in general not just the Wii. It's been going on for years now where the vast majority of 'games' out there are absolutely horrid for all the systems. Good thing is most gamers know what the good ones are and buy them. You get to know what companies put out crap and you avoid them. I doubt it's really gonna change anytime soon, just be a smart consumer and you'll be able to weed the good from the bad. All the way back with the 2600 the 1 in 5 games being any good theory was true! For every Asteroids there was a Depthcharge even in the earliest days of consoles. People will always take advantage of the hot thing to make a fast buck by putting out a haphazard product.

Honestly with stuff like 'automatic play', I truly dont' care one way or another. you don't have to use it if you don't want to but for some people it will be good. To call something like that the reason for bad games?? not sure.. I'd blame that much more on corporate greed and cost cutting than any feature of any console. Good games come from good developers, not good console makers.
 
I blame things like that being bad for gaming, on the fact that development cycles are already crammed.
The good games, always tend to be games that fans get mad about waiting for because they keep getting pushed back (Duke Nukem Forever excluded hehe) because the dev actually wants the game polished, rather than "Get it out for Xmas rush!".

When dev houses are adding crap like the above, it's definitely taking development time and dollars out of making a better gameplay experience, leading to a lesser product (At the same price!).

It's getting more difficult to decide if a game is worth it these days too. Compare ads you saw in the 80s and early 90s, where you saw actual gameplay, with many of the lies you see today in pre-rendered footage and 5 seconds of THE best parts of the game.

I find it's moving towards the movie industry, where you anxiously await this title, that turns out to be utter garbage because the best parts they showed you on TV ARE the only good parts, the rest is poorly put together filler.
 
Devs who know what they're doing have made some amazing games that work with the Wiimote.
Yeah, I've seen games that use the motion controls in amazingly intuitive and useful ways, and others that try to do the same thing and just can't do it for shit. I don't think this is a problem with the hardware (since I've seen it work), it's a problem with the developers not knowing what the hell to do or just not caring enough to do it right.

So maybe that's ultimately a problem with Nintendo. This was a big problem closer to when the Wii first came out since I had read that Nintendo didn't release the dev tools until pretty late in the game, so the devs didn't have much to go on and then really didn't have a lot of time to get things right before launch.

But now days, they really have no excuse as far as I am concerned.

The good games, always tend to be games that fans get mad about waiting for because they keep getting pushed back (Duke Nukem Forever excluded hehe) because the dev actually wants the game polished, rather than "Get it out for Xmas rush!".
This has always been a problem for as long as I can remember. Gotta rush it out to make money. You'd think they'd have learned by now, but it must be worth it as long as it makes the cash they want.

When dev houses are adding crap like the above, it's definitely taking development time and dollars out of making a better gameplay experience, leading to a lesser product (At the same price!).
I suppose that's a good argument, but I get the feeling this could be a first party "feature" anyway (I didn't read the whole article, so I don't know for sure) so if Ninty wants to do that in their titles, then let them.

<WARNING: Opinions being thought out while writing this ahead! Contradictions are possible! Fact checking has not been performed!>
And back to one point made...there were A LOT of bad NES games (let's not even talk about the 2600 in that regard). I really don't think that when all is said and done that only "1 out of 5" games were bad for that system. People say that games now are just rehashes of the same shit from over the years, but the same is true back in the NES days. Seriously, one sidescrolling game is NOT that much different than another in most cases. Same idea, same premise, same basic ways of failing. They may have 'all' been good in their own ways, but the basics of the games were all the damn same.

But I'll admit that at that point you could try a game and probably enjoy it to some regard regardless of what it was (mostly because most of the games were so similar at their core to begin with). But then again, now days you have 1000s of resources to consult before making any kind of purchase decision, so if you buy a shitty game, it's your fault. If only everyone would do that much to prevent decent returns on crappy games - perhaps that would limit the number of them that companies release (more on this below).

As far as I'm concerned, every system has ALWAYS had a significant number of horrible games verses good games. I think that can be proven by the fact that when most people talk about their favorite 10-20 games for a given system, there's a good chance that most of those titles will be the same regardless of who you ask (assuming that we stick to a limitation of titles that were available to all people being questioned - for example, excluding imports, etc). Granted, this is based on personal experience talking with other gamers over the years - nothing official, obviously.

HOWEVER - when you look at the total number of games developed for the NES in its lifetime vs the number of, say, the PS1 games (not sure what this is, but I'd assume it's probably more than double that of the NES), you could argue that there is a higher number of bad games out there now. So perhaps the ratio is higher than it used to be, but go back and play some of those games you loved when you were younger but might not have played in YEARS. See if they really seem all that great to you now. There's a good chance you won't understand why you thought it was wonderful then.

And we can get into that debate if you all feel it's needed, but that should probably be a separate thread as this thread has already begun to get fairly off topic.

In closing on this point, the real problem is probably that games (overall) are cheaper to make now, the companies who make them are larger than they once were, and they can push out more games than they once could. So in theory, the more games you have out, the more money you make. If you have enough people to work on multiple games at once, then it's more profitable to split those devs up on separate projects to get as many out as quickly as possible. So now the company is able to push out, say, 10 games at once instead of only 3. They could have devoted more time/money to just those three "big" titles that they already KNOW will sell no matter what. But then they wouldn't get the sales from these other 7 games that they expect will be mediocre at best. So maybe the big 3 are not as 'good' as they could/should have been, but who cares as long as it all makes money?</WARNING>

I really didn't mean to go into all that. Scout's honor. And I really don't know if a damn bit of it made sense.

So what? Gamers who aren't as hardcore get a chance to get to the end of the game they paid 50-60$ for. Those who don't need it won't use it. How does this lessen your experience?

His argument is that money is being wasted on a "feature" like this rather than being devoted to the core gaming experience. Maybe what they need is a team of devs who do nothing but add this feature to games, so as to not take away devs working on the actual game itself. I think a form of his concern is that by having the devs work on such a feature he won't use, the game may not come out as polished as it could.
 
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A lot of the complaints about the Wii are founded, but a lot are not. Yes, the graphics are not as high resolution as the XBox or the PS3. The controller is different and there are a lot of games that lack replayability. That being said, let's focus on what they did right. Interaction.

I use the Wii controller to simulate the movement of my character on the screen. Not mash arcane sequences of buttons that bear no resemblence to the actions I want my avatar in the game to perform.

There is a place for the hardcore gamer who will devote every waking moment of his life for a month to figure out every nuance of the button sychronicity required to make Solid Snake dance. But there are a lot more, especially of the female persuation, that will not. For those people an intuitive controller coupled with limited objectives is a perfect match.

I can pick up Wii sports on an occasional basis and be playing effectively again in a matter of minutes. The same with Lego Star Wars. I still can't get past the second mission on the PS3 war game I bought when I bought the PS3. I just don't have the time to devote to learing the nuances of this game. Not if I would like to clear the backlog of arcade machine restores and go to work and have a life. So call me a casual gamer. I would rather fire up my Robotron and play a couple of 5 minute games (my personal March to Mediocrity, as opposed to Scott's March to a Million) than be forced to sit down and play for 30 to 60 minutes to get to a save point on some incomprehensibly complex (but beautiful) war game.

But then, I'm old fashioned. I would rather knock down some real beers with a real friend playing on a real machine in my real house.

Really!

ken
 
I use the Wii controller to simulate the movement of my character on the screen. Not mash arcane sequences of buttons that bear no resemblence to the actions I want my avatar in the game to perform.

Most Wii games do not simulate on-screen the movements you make with the Wii remote. Take Red Steel as an example. When you get in a sword fight, does your charactter swing his sword exactly the way you are swinging the Wii remote? No. Not even close. You wag the remote in a few different ways to get your on-screen character to move his sword in completely unrelated ways. All they have done is replace what you call an arcane sequence of button mashes with an arcane sequence of wags.
 
I just don't have the time to devote to learing the nuances of this game. So call me a casual gamer.
I'm sort of the same way. I honestly don't have the time to devote to games like I used to, so I consider myself somewhere in between casual and hardcore. There are still a few of the "hardcore" games I really enjoy and HAVE to have, but most of the time, I need something that I can pick up and put down with ease and not spend hours on end on anymore.

Then again, there's a good chance I would have never gotten a 360 if I hadn't gotten the Wii. The Wii really got me back into console gaming after having pretty much stopped sometime during the PS2 years (mainly due to college classes).

The Wii (and the DS, in reality) really helped me find that love for console gaming again and I ultimately decided to step up to a 360 since Assassin's Creed (I was a big Prince of Persia fan) was on it. I did nothing but play AC for quite a while trying to find every nook and cranny in that game (I still need to go back and play through again to finish the last three achievements).

But again, if I had not bought the Wii, there's a really good chance I would never have considered a 360 or PS3. So for some people, you could even consider the Wii a "gateway-console" :D

Most Wii games do not simulate on-screen the movements you make with the Wii remote. Take Red Steel as an example. When you get in a sword fight, does your charactter swing his sword exactly the way you are swinging the Wii remote? No. Not even close.
I believe that's the purpose of the Motion-Plus. But I guess that really has yet to be seen for most people. I know it's been getting some negative press, but I really hope it plays out well.
 
also with red steel you need to realize it was a close to launch title. I have never seen a system create a launch title that maxed the capabilities of a system. The longer you wait the better it gets. I remember launch of xbox 360, I had need for speed most wanted and quake 4. Look at those now compared to graphic games like Gears of War and Fallout. Not even close. Also with the Wii the gun games sucked. Red steel and Call of Duty 3 were horrible, however the newest Medal of Honor I think is the best shooter on the wii as far as controls, perfect controls and graphics decent.

Lets see what happends when Natal finally comes out, Like I said price is the deciding factor, and I am sure there will be 1000 reviews before it even hits shelves.
 
Take Red Steel as an example. When you get in a sword fight, does your charactter swing his sword exactly the way you are swinging the Wii remote? No. Not even close. You wag the remote in a few different ways to get your on-screen character to move his sword in completely unrelated ways. All they have done is replace what you call an arcane sequence of button mashes with an arcane sequence of wags.

That is why I never bought it. Also, probably why it ended up in the bargain bin so quickly.

As I said before, I am a casual gamer now. I want to have a quick hit gaming fix while I wait for the microwave to fix my popcorn or during commercial breaks if I am watching TV. That is why something like Stargate or Robotron is perfect. I want to be able to pick up a game and play for a while without needing to spend a rediculously long time training my hand - eye reflexes.

I understand that my reflexes are not the same as they were when I was a 20-something. That is why the twitch games are of less interest now than strategy and thinking puzzle games. Experience and dirty tricks will more than level the playing field in certain genres of gaming.

Game manufacturers are also learning that lesson. The shops that depend on the hardcore gamers are going out of business because these type of titles are becoming increasingly more and more expensive to produce. The expectations of the hardcores for the next blockbuster are causing them the collapse under their own weight. In 1982 a game development team consisted of a designer, an artist or two (one for game and one for cabinet/flyer art) and a couple of developers. Just look at the credits on any of the games produced lately. The list rivals or exceeds any Hollywood blockbuster. And if they don't produce blockbuster level sales, they don't make money. The effort to produce the perfect hit in Duke Nukem Forever cost 3D Realms the race.

To survive, you need to produce a wide range of games that span the markets. Cheap quick puzzle games, Internet Flash games, card games, shooters, RPGs, hard core battle realms. If you focus only on the hard core gamers, you risk spending everything on one genre of player that is notoriously fickle, as many companies have found out to their detriment in the last few years.

Yes there are a lot of games for the Wii that hardcore gamers would consider crap. But these are the same games that have brought a lot of interest and new players that were being left out. Personally, I feel that the designers of the PS3 and to a lesser extent the XBox missed the boat. They designed and built machines with cutting edge graphics and then gave them the kind of controls that everybody here laughs at when you see them on a MAME machine, multiple joysticks and a gazillion buttons. The hardware should be there to help the immersive experience, not jar you out of it while you look for the button with the red square on it or was that the blue circle.

ken
 
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