WiiHD is a huge fan of online gaming, but not just any online gaming. Core gaming in genres like racing, fighting, and shooters. So now we want to do our part to help the core Clan community on Wii make themselves known and increase their membership. We will begin listing notable clans that actively engage in clan wars in games like Medal of Honor: Heroes 2. We will however keep the gates, so not just any clan listing will be accepted. A clan needs to demonstrate viability to be listed
WiiHD is now unveiling a gallery of user created videos from Medal of Honor: Heroes 2 (MoHH2), currently the best FPS on Wii, and the only one with online multiplayer. We'll be doing this for a number of similar games as they come out. If you want your video included, just hit the link above and use the submission form.
WiiHD is your one-stop shop for hardcore gaming on the Wii.
Hardcore gamers frequently belittle the Wii for its low-power CPU, small storage space and gimicky casual games. Nintendo didn't keep their promise to focus on both hardcore AND casual games, but they did design a control system that is truly next-gen. Rumors of similar controls for PS3 and the 360 tell that tale. Sure, you can accurately control a 3D game with dual analog. You can also communicate in binary, but why would you want to? The Wii Remote rivals the PC keyboard and mouse as a control mechanism for 3D worlds, and it leaves dual-analog as a relic of the past. It can change the way games are played. Hardcore gaming isn't just about distracting ADD patients with shiny gfx, it's about delivering a whole new way of playing.
The Wii's FPS controls have finally been perfected with the release of Metroid Prime 3: Corruption. In November of 2007, Medal of Honor: Heroes 2 brought the first taste of online FPS to the system, and the most customizable controls we've seen so far. Nintendo's focus may be elsewhere, but if you buy, the games will come. The most exciting game on the menu now is The Conduit, a new original IP from High Voltage that promises the whole package for the first time. The Wii has overtaken the xbox 360's 1 year lead and has the largest install base of any console. Talk of most of them being casual gamers is a misnomer—the new casual gamers mostly live in the same household as a hardcore gamers. If developers will finally stop phoning in Wii development and give us complete games, they'll see incredible returns.
This site will follow, document, review, compare and contrast the Wii's hardcore games with your help. There's good news on the horizon. Be a part of it at WiiHD. And leave your casual games at the door.
There are some things that previews and even pre-launch reviews are worthless for. Multiplayer is one of them. This is because you can't know what the network performance will be like until tens of thousands of gamers raid the servers and bring things to a crawl. I'll be putting down some initial pros and cons in this post over the next couple of days.
Pros:
Finally, Scifi. Enough with WWII shooters already. We get it, they had guns then. Explore something, ANYTHING else. The environments and weapons of SciFi make for an excellent alternative.
You can find a Friend online and join whatever game they are in. Neither WaWii nor MoHH2 had this functionality.
Great control customizations
Full custom button remapping is a first for Wii (WaWii had different presets, but no custom). If there were any justice, there would never be another Wii shooter without it. You can even take vital functions away from motions and put them on a button. I did.
You can change the sensitivity of motions, which is VITAL. In MoHH2 I'd always accidentally trigger a reload when I was fighting someone on a staircase and aiming up, then down. I'd just as soon have no motions, but this is nice too.
The standard dead zone alterations, turn speed, cursor sensitivity are all present and accounted for.
Cons:
Friend Codes
We'll stop complaining the day they finally fraking die. No sooner. If you don't understand why they suck, I envy your bliss.
We don't blame High Voltage for this, as so far, they've been the most sympathetic to gamers of any company on the topic, but it still screws up the game so it's still a con.
Lag — could just be launch day excitement. Hopefully it improves over time.
Framerate drops
it is unclear if network performance is the cause of this. Will it get better after the launch is over? Who knows.
There's an intermediate connection screen between when you select a game type and before you go into a game lobby that can hang and there's no way to back out (B gets you out of most menu stuff) if it has trouble authenticating some of the players, short of actually turning off your Wii. It's a rare problem, but still a con.
Analog lag.
I don't know if this is a function of the networking or control design, but the control response to the analog stick is terrible. It feels like you're trying to drive a tank instead of moving a nimble secret agent whose job it is to save the world. Strafing speed is okay, but the time it takes you to get to full strafe speed from rest or to switch from strafe right to strage left is appallingly slow. The same for changing from forward motion to backward motion.
Neutral:
You can't take a party of friends into a public game. This is nice because it sucks ending up with 2 n00bs against a skilled, skype-using party of 4 friends. It sucks because with the ever-disgusting friend code system, putting together a full-fledged private match is tough to do, with the party system, you only needed half a private match to get a full game going. WiiHD considers
Let's start with the high praise: "It's pretty much what you'd expect from a modern console FPS, but not necessarily what we've come to expect from Nintendo WFC titles." So says Joystiq. So pray we all.
The highlights are that HVS apparently improved performance in the online mode by reducing graphical fidelity (smart move if you ask me). You probably already know that the Conduit reduced the total number of players to 12 from a planned 16. There are seven maps, 3 categories (Team Objective (which includes a CTF sub-type), TDM, FFA), and there seem to game sub-types for each category (Joystiq played a Free For All variant called "Bounty Hunter" where everyone races to be the first one to kill the player designated as the hunted, also spotting a Last Man standing mode and a "King of the Hill"-like mode).
They reported that movement speed felt slow and there was no Sprint option. WiiSpeak lets you talk either to your team or the five nearest players—it's unclear from the preview whether that's automatically chosen based on the mode you're playing, or if you can manually switch it and say, talk to someone on the opposite team in TDM. Everything is as customizable as you've come to expect from HVS, from modes, rules, HUD arrangement and of course, control config.
Read the whole thing and keep marking the time until it releases. Then buy a copy for you and another for a friend. The success of this game reflects not just on the Wii, but probably on its successor too.
There was a past multiplayer demo Sega ran that fell through a little while ago, and I expect this demo will be reported by some other sites soon as well, so keep your eyes open for more impressions.
The rumor mill has the highly respected Free Radical Studios (of Timesplitters fame and with talent stretching all the way back to Goldeneye) closing its doors one last time… and locking out its employees.
What does this mean for our hopes and dreams? The Timesplitters IP can still be sold, and employees as talented as Free Radicals' are bound to be back in the game lending their talents to other games. Until they land on their feet, WiiHD's thoughts are with them.
Some people might blame the worldwide economic recession. Others might suspect Free Radical over-invested in the poorly performing Haze. WiiHD blames Vitamin E. It knows why.
I noticed some extra traffic today, and traced it back to Joystiq's announcement of The Homebrew Channel's 1.0 release. In honor of this sort of momentous occasion (sort of since the numbering is more a result of beta fatigue by the hacking team than any dramatic new features), WiiHD will soon present you with a new Starter Kit 1.0, Wii Menu 3.4 Safe. If you're still using Wii Menu 3.3 or lower, you can use the old Starter Kit.
Watch this post in the next day or so. I'd upload it now, but I want to test the new programs first.
For now watch the old, very mockable video guide after the break if you don't know what this homebrew business is all about (pssst, it's about Quake). Also, see the full WiiHD Homebrew Guide if you need links to goodies or more help.
WiiHD's hands are all over Call of Duty: World at War for the Wii. There's a lot to like, but sadly there are some things to HATE passionately as well.
The Really, Really Bad
Friend Codes
Inability to choose a map or other settings in "Find a Match" games (likely the most common kind you'll play given how fraking long it takes to collect, enter, and get someone else to reciprocate with FCs)
Update: Invites from your Friends pop up a display that interferes with your gameplay even if you're in a game. It's almost as annoying as MoHH2's battery warning — the solution to both should have been the same — display a HUD icon to notify, but not interrupt your game. Once you're in a place to do so, you can pause and address the notice. As it is, you can pretty much count on Invites only coming JUST when you're in the middle of a serious and deadly dogfight.
Workaround: create a second profile for when you don't want to interrupted. Of course, your two profiles will have to unlock everything separately and rank up separately
The Bad
Voting to skip a map you don't like requires 50% + 1 (with a minimum of 3). Less would be better
No Comm
Some framerate drops
World War II. Again. If it were all European theatre, it'd be in the Really, really bad column.
Update: Only DM and TDM? Call of Duty should be better than that. Where's CTF and SaD?
Limited Control customization.
Presets for turning speed instead of a sensitivity slider
No bounding box (dead zone) resizing are with 4 presets
Honestly, this would have been acceptable in VERY early 2007. Now it's fraking criminal. Shame on you Treyarch, even beenox did better with QoS, to say nothing of what the PSP port MoHH2 did.
Update: Only a Host can invite to a Private match. If you're invited to one, you can't in turn invite someone else in to help fill it out. That makes Clan wars all that much harder, since the game host doesn't just need one enemy clan FC (and then just let that one player invite the rest), but ALL of them. And what happens with last minute substitutions? Massive game delay failures.
For clan wars, you can still have each clan form a party prior to the beginning of the game. One clan gets all their members into the party, then the game host invites that party host. Still, it's inconvenient.
For regular matches with Friends, it seems pretty inconvenient that invited users can't use their friend lists to supplement the hosts friend list and make there's always a full game going.
The Good
Nice look
The super-confusing single player campaign really captures that jungle warfare "where the frak is the enemy…. OH FRAK, THERE THEY ARE" feel
players blend in easily in multiplayer as well—forcing you to keep you're eyes very very peeled
Fresh FPS. Sadly, its networking lacks a lot of MoHH2's flexibility, but the maps, the weapons, the campaign… WaWii is the whole package, not one of the PSP/PS2 ports we're used to
Weapon selection is good, and their respective strengths are clear from the selection screen
Custom Classes rock and seem well balanced.
Streak bonuses rock. Yeah, they get used against you as much as for you, but they add a nice element to the game. I recommend relying heavily on melee to get the dogs. You can shoot them at a distance, but once they're in your face, pull that knife baby. Surveillance plane: 3 kills, Artillery strike (which can kill friendlies too): 5 kills, Dogs: 7 kills.
You can jump. I spent a good 5 minutes looking for the jump button when I first bought MoHH2 before finally (*gasp*) opening the manual, only to discover that in EA's book, apparently man had not learned to jump yet in the World War 2 era. Activision and my grandpa disagree.
Update: Spawning in TDMs starts you with your team and tends to put you close to your team on respawn. A welcome system.
Update: I never have to use the accelerometer. I do toss poison gas grenades, but I suspect Treyarch used the IR light orientation for the twist feedback rather than the accelerometer, like MoHH2 did with scope zooming. Bad motion controls can really screw an experience, but Treyarch wisely limited them.
The Neutral
You can change button layouts between several preset layouts. This would be in the good column if there were one custom layout option.
No ammo pickups online. You can pick up the weapons of the dead, but even if it's the same weapon you already have, you don't get to combine ammo.
Expect a few updates tomorrow, and feel free to flame my list in the comments.
You know Free Radical WANTS to put TS4 on Wii. They want it bad. They've put up a second Wii-related poll now, and WiiHD recommends you go vote on it. They're asking if Wii owners want more crappy Wii games, or more standard high-quality games ("More regular games like on other consoles"). Did you miss Call of Duty 4? Do you Wish for Mirror's Edge? Do you fear Medal of Honor Operation Anaconda might skip Wii like so many before it? Do you wish there were more Metroids and less Wii Musics? Then tell Free Radical you want some regular games.
