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WiiHD doesn't bring you all the news, just the best Core Gaming news for Wii and DS.


by David MarseillesDavid Marseilles
on 25 Jun 2009 00:53
Tags: conduit fps preview scifi

The Conduit Multiplayer: Pros and Cons

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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.

by David MarseillesDavid Marseilles
on 06 May 2009 18:19
Tags: conduit fps preview scifi wii

The Conduit Multiplayer Previewed

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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.


by David MarseillesDavid Marseilles
on 31 Jan 2009 00:46
Tags: bayonetta conduit madworld preview wii

Happy Groundh...errr, Hedgehog Day

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What's Sega been up to lately? A lot. In a special Sega-day celebration, Kotaku gets their mitts all over a load of great fare:

Madworld

The Conduit

Bayonetta

Well look at that. Sega does what Nintendon't.

Via Kotaku


by David MarseillesDavid Marseilles
on 12 Nov 2008 07:04
Tags: cod5 fps preview wawii wii wwii

WiiHD's WaWii Hands On

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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
  • Unlockables. Weapons, perks, upgrades, challenges…
  • 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.

Permalink


by David MarseillesDavid Marseilles
on 10 Sep 2008 18:23
Tags: action adventure ds mushroom-men preview screens video

DS Fanboy Gets Their Stylus-on Mushroom Men: Rise Of The Fungi

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We told you about Mushroom Men: The Spore Wars for Wii. Now it's time for DS to get some exposure with Mushroom Men: Rise of the Fungi. Featuring an entirely different story line in the Mushroom Men universe, Rise of the Fungi tells you about the early stages of sentience for the races of Mushrooms and spiders and beetles and hornets (oh my!). They are just beginning to seperate into the 4 Mushroom Nations that will be battling it out in The Spore Wars. You're a member of the Bolete Tribe, first facing the challenge of how to survive in a hostile enviornment, and then facing foreign Mushroom Men that aren't as peaceful as you'd hoped.

DS Fanboy got their hands on Rise of the Fungi, so we're going to give you some quotes:

The first level's weapon: the Last Line of Defense, which is a fishhook, a tiny metal rod, and a crankshaft stuck together. That enabled me to fight the Mosquito General somewhat successfully, and then it mysteriously disappeared. Following my defeat of the General, I was sent back through the level to pick up Bits of Food for my mushroom tribe, then onto the next level. To reach the entrance, I had to float down on a leaf parachute. To build this, I had to solve a puzzle (identified by a puzzle icon in the level) in which I arranged a picture of the item out of fragments.

all [enemies] have weaknesses and resistances to certain types of weapons and attacks. When you accost one of these enemies, the non-gameplay screen changes to information about your enemy's HP and attributes. Not listed in the mosquitoes' info: they're huge jerks and it can be hard to hit them with a stick.

Also true in real life JC. The two screens are the main action screen, and the other which is enemy info when you're fighting and inventory when you're not. When you need to swap inventory items, you can quickly hit an icon on the action screen and pull up your inventory for swapping items.

Read the whole thing at DS Fanboy, and catch the full gallery with two vids after the break.

Via DS Fanboy | Permalink


by David MarseillesDavid Marseilles
on 04 Aug 2008 23:15
Tags: cod5 fps preview wii

Call of Duty: World at War (WaWii)

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WiiHD wants to be wrong about WaWii, but we still have our doubts. Will it run smoothly? Will Treyarch learn the control lessons of MoHH2? Will the online modes provide balanced play and aggressive competition? Will it be as fully featured as the PS360? We all hope that at this point, incomplete games (like Call of Duty 3 Wii) are a thing of the past. Everybody is promising to deliver great Wii games now, but as we remember from Ubisoft's promise to deliver "1st party quality" games, promises don't mean crap. WiiHD hopes readers take a Missouri-style (the "Show me" state) approach to Treyarch's promises.

We're going to cover PS360 material on WaWii, but all the time you're seeing PS3 previews (like today), ask yourself why we aren't seeing Wii previews…? PS360 World at War footage came out well before E3, but not WaWii. There's been lots of game media coverage of the PS360 game, but very limited coverage of WaWii. Why isn't Treyarch getting WaWii out there? Wii fans aren't going to get quality by continuing to buy crap. So don't fork over your money until Trayarch actually shows us the goods.

Today's preview comes from the venerable computerandvideogames.com, and covers the PS3 version. Gritty? Yeah, we've heard. Not "Really" CoD5? Like we care? What's new is coverage of the Japanese AI. Treyarch has attempted to get the units to replicate tactics of the Japanese military. It's encouraging that they're trying, at the very least. It'd be nice if the game really set itself apart from other WWII shooters with a unique experience. WiiHD likes gritty, a la the Batman and Bond movie relaunches. But cinematics alone don't make a great game, so it's nice that they're putting thought into AI tactics.

The most interesting tidbit is the vehicle-based online mode. Details are sketchy, but Treyarch is tailoring some maps for jeep, armored car and tank skirmishes. Will there be a limited number of vehicles available for a few soldiers, with the rest on foot like Blood Gulch? Or will these be vehicle-only skirmishes? Will vehicles only be for these tailor made maps, or can they allowed in others as well? We'll have to wait and see. Remember, this is coverage of the PS3 version. Will WaWii miss out on any extra features? Hurry up and show off the Wii version of the game Treyarch so we can stop asking.

Incredibly limited selection of game media for WaWii available after the break.

Via GoNintendo | Permalink


by David MarseillesDavid Marseilles
on 22 Jul 2008 21:50
Tags: madworld preview wii

Kotaku Goes Mad (MADWORLD Wii)

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Last week at E3, Kotaku got an eyeful of MADWORLD, one of the Wii's hardest core exclusives and were kind enough to share it with the world.

As part of the game's schtick of you being trapped in a TV show run by terrorists, there are in-game commentators talking about the level of brutality you use as you kill and judging you as you go, throwing in quips and humor that appear to keep the game from just being senseless violence and add to that over-the-top feel MADWORLD shoots for.

Kotaku likes the look at first blush, but wonders if it will have lasting appeal. They're also concerned about the repetitive nature of the gameplay. Will there be anything to keep it fresh, and fun to play? We'll have to wait and see.

Catch the video and screens after the break.

Via Kotaku | Permalink


by David MarseillesDavid Marseilles
on 16 Jul 2008 20:31
Tags: action force-unleashed preview screens star-wars video wii

Joystiq Gets their hands on Force Unleashed (Wii)

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WiiHD's gallery of fresh Wii-specific screens and video for Star Wars: The Force Unleashed is ready for your waiting eyes. But we didn't want to just give you eye candy, so we dug up Joystiq's hands-on for the Wii too.

Assuming you haven't been hiding under rock for the past few months, you know the Wii gets an exclusive Duel Mode where you can go head to head with your friends. It also gets a few extra stages over the PS360, and some special Wii-specific moves. Joystiq didn't miss the advanced physics of the PS360, proclaiming that the Wii physics felt "realistic enough" under the conditions they were able to test. The visuals were jaggie-filled, but Joystiq liked most of the motion controls. Although the light saber didn't always respond in kind, they were down with the force controls.

The Duel Mode has no AI option—it requires 2 players. There are 27 characters and 9 locations to choose from. In addition to lightsaber action, you still get to use your force powers on objects in the locations. Best we can tell, there isn't much differentiation between the characters' moves. Everyone gets one single blade lightsaber, and the same basic move set. You can tell the characters have different strengths from the duel mode screenshot though. But overall the moves feature a richness in combination that makes this mode a rich fighter, almost worthy of separate packaging according to Joystiq.

Hit the break for Wii-specific media.

Via Joystiq Hands On and Joystiq Duel Mode Hands On | Permalink


by David MarseillesDavid Marseilles
on 11 Jul 2008 23:41
Tags: civrev ds preview tips-n-tricks

WiiHD's Civilization Revolution (DS) Preview

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WiiHD is proud to present our own Civilization Revolution Preview for the Nintendo DS. There has been more limited coverage of the DS version, and some of it hasn't been very thoughtful. We decided to fill a gap and provide newcomers to the series a good look at just how the game plays.

WiiHD will release our full review shortly, and in it, we'll be sure to note changes in the franchise for Civ veterans. Keep an eye out for it.

Now hit the break for the full preview, perfect for beginners.
Permalink


by David MarseillesDavid Marseilles
on 03 Jul 2008 19:50
Tags: ds moon preview

IGN Gets Their Hands on the Moon

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Apparently it's all DS day here at WiiHD. IGN has a nice preview of a cut-scene heavy, single-player focused action event known as Moon. It features unlockable rewards for playing in the higher difficulty setting and it comes out this fall.

This post is mainly just an excuse to post some video. It's looks sweet, so hit the break to see it.

Via IGN | Permalink


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