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.
by David Marseilles
on 16 Sep 2008 18:44 Tags: action force-unleashed scifi star-wars tmi
Is there really such a thing as Too Much Information (TMI)? Well every so often, especially during review cycles, WiiHD tries to cram too many quotes into a single post, so we use our TMI format to make things a little easier. Below the review scores are collapsible links (+ View So-and-so's Quotes). When you click them, they pop open with that outfit's most important quotes on the game.
Today is the day many have been waiting for, the release of Star Wars: The Force Unleashed. So what sort of impressions did it unleash on the critics?
Force Unleashed was a product that was refreshing to see excel over what we expected it to be. Krome could have easily phoned this one in, sloppily adding some waggle here, a quick IR aspect there, and calling it a day, but when ripping through the game's six hour single player campaign it was obvious that the team wanted this to be a truly entertaining Star Wars game, and if it wasn't for a few random bugs and flaws within the execution, we would have rated it even higher, as Force Unleashed delivers a level of satisfaction that we don't find often on Wii.
Where Force Unleashed for Wii really drops the ball though, is in the overall lack of polish found throughout the game. The camera is extremely touchy, the lock-on mode often creates more problems than it's worth, the AI can be extremely buggy, running in place or getting hung up on collision, and some of the boss battles are downright broken, being so unbalanced that you're dying and respawning over and over to complete them, rather than finding a weakness and exploiting it in typical boss fashion. Most of the Jedi battles end up being the highest points of the game, as they can be extremely cinematic and immersive. At the same time, you'll often be battling camera problems and the seldom lock-on issue as you try to use parts of the world to your advantage, or dodge and block incoming force attacks from your enemies.
Controlling the Apprentice is performed done with the Wii remote and Nunchuk. For instance, Force Push is done by pushing forward with the Nunchuk. To execute lightsaber swings, you move the remote in multiple directions. There's also a more effective lock-on system, which you activate by pressing down on the d-pad. For the most part, these controls work reasonably well, although your wrists may ache after an hour or two of play. We're just wondering why developer Krome Studios included a first-person view option. It's mostly useless, because you're able to take damage without getting a good look around.
For the boss battles, you twist around the Wii remote and then push it upward. It's all right at first but becomes tiring after the third or fourth time, as some motions don't read correctly. As a result, the boss removes a chunk of your energy. It should also be noted that the conclusion of boss fights are diluted, made up of button presses and quick jerks of the Nunchuk and Wii remote..
At least there are some "guilty pleasure" moments. You're able to play as Darth Vader in the beginning of the game, ripping through Wookies like they were nothing. There's also something immensely satisfying in taking out a field of Stormtroopers with one big Repulse attack, followed by a little Lightning deep fry. Using the Force powers does use up your energy. Fortunately, each kill replenishes your health.
Seeing as how the vast majority of "Star Wars" games have us playing as some goody-goody hero character, it's not too often that we get to bust some heads with the cool Force powers. That's a problem that The Force Unleashed sets out to fix.
This time around, the story takes place in the timeframe between Episodes III and IV (i.e. the new movies and the old ones). The main character is Galen Marek, a young man who goes by the name Starkiller. The son of two Jedi, Starkiller was kidnapped/adopted by Darth Vader after the dark lord cut down the boy's father during the Jedi purge. Vader intends to train his secret apprentice in the ways of the Sith in the hopes of destroying Emperor Palpatine and taking over control of the galaxy. This setup allows Starkiller to treat both the "good guys" and the "bad guys" as enemies, allowing you to dish out unfiltered destruction.
Despite the solid controls, there's one annoying feature to the combat system. There's no denying that TFU feels inspired by Sony's God of War series. That's all fine and good, but it unfortunately picked up one of GoW's more annoying aspects: quick timer events. You know, those obnoxious "interactive cinemas" where the game developers came up with a very cool sequence but couldn't figure how to implement it into the gameplay proper. Their clever solution is to simply play the canned sequence while forcing you to press random buttons on the controller (or perform specific waggles here). This sort of thing was just super in Dragon's Lair and Space Ace, but it isn't 1984 anymore.
Not the greatest Star Wars game ever, if you believe the reviews. But still a potentially fun romp where you get Jedi powers without all the Jedi moralizing, and a sweet multiplayer mode exclusive to Wii. As always, there's a gallery after the break.
The long-awaited (by WiiHD) DS Fanboy review of Civilization Revolution is here. If you are a current Civilization fan wondering if the DS version still has something for you, this may be the best review to help you answer that question, given the reviewer history with the game. Alisha Karabinus cares about Civ, and the DS. So 5 days before Civilization Revolution DS launches in the U.S., get the full skinny. She's good about responding to questions too, so feel free to put them in the comments. As such, the DS Fanboy review is our featured review in Today's Civ Rev TMI.
this score would have been a hair lower for the pervasive interface issues. However, the problems, which are easily skippable (just annoying) aren't enough to outweigh the amount of gameplay packed into even a reduced Civilization.
The stylus works more than passably well here as soon as you figure out the peculiar dragging controls used to manage units. The menus are a lot simpler; a few points, a few clicks, and your cities are under control.
But a lot of that control is taken away from you. No longer will you build roads tile-by-tile; drop some gold and it'll happen automatically, but beware: long roads will cost you.
Civ Rev is littered with repetitive dialogue, irritating pop-up-style information screens, and empty screens that serve only to make you tap the screen or hit the A button. Luckily, there's no long, drawn-out dialogue, but as it is, there's a whole lot of extra clicking going on.
Good Context. If you're choosing between a portable and console version, this is the review to compare against the DS version. IGN's DS review is still pending as of the time of this posting.
Civ Rev is not just a straight port of prior Civilization games. Rather, it is a ground-up rebuild of the basic Civ idea, crafted with consoles in mind. Attention has been carefully paid to pacing, ease of use, and fun, and developer Firaxis has shied away from some of the heavy lifting required of PC Civ players. The result is a stripped-down turn-based strategy game that serves as both a great introduction to the genre for the uninitiated and a satisfying console experience for practiced PC players who want a (relatively) quick console fix.
First, Civilization Revolution games are typically much shorter than PC Civ games…. Also, maps are preset and randomized, which means you have no control over how the land looks or how big the playfield is. And the entire experience has been stripped of much of the complexity that may turn off some gamers – your population won't die of starvation, city management is more hands-off and there are fewer conditions for victory.
The diplomacy screen, like most useful functions in Civ Rev, can be accessed with a single button press… Barring few initial hiccups getting connected during our tests, we found Civ Rev online to be lag-free and smooth.
We like that kotaku doesn't give a numerical score. Often arbitrary, scores sometimes distract from the review writing, and kotaku writes well. Take a good look at this one.
Successfully porting the Civilization experience from the PC to consoles was always going to be an exercise in compromise. … For the most part, they've made the right calls. Sure, the game can be too short, and too small, and in some cases a little rough, but what Firaxis needed to do if this game was to ultimately succeed was take that core Civilization experience – the discovery, the advancement, the combat, the diplomacy – and ensure that even a streamlined version of the game still had you up at 3 in the morning, telling yourself you'll just have "one more turn". Which it does.
Wisely, 2K decided against simply mapping keyboard commands to the control pad. Instead, the game's menu and command system have been completely overhauled, and while it'll take a few hours for Civ veterans to come to grips with it, it suits the simplified, pared-down tone of the game well.
Some minor, yet necessary elements of the game seem to have been overlooked during the overhaul, such as the ability to auto-assign building orders in a city (meaning an endless crawl through build screens at the beginning of each turn towards the end of a game).
To break it down, here's some of what we've learned. Unlike what IGN DS indicated earlier, we know stylus control is well-implemented for DS, if you desire to use it. We know the 360 online is mostly smooth from people's demo experiences, however there have also been reports on the 2k forums of the PS3 demo freezing during online play. Hopefully nothing that will affect the full version or the DS game. Worker management is very different—you now pay to build roads. City management is simplified and less important, as your citizens can't starve. Remember that the DS version has no Voicechat, and we're still waiting to hear about how Friend Codes have been implemented. Are they necessary? Can you play random people? Any text communication options? We'll let you know.
WiiHD has fond memories of Super Dodgeball growing up, despite its moderately racist presentation. When some footage several months ago showed Brawlers going at each other while the dodgeball lays off to the side ignored, we knew SDB would bring more fond memories. So catch some review mash-up below with our official Super Dodgeball Brawlers Too Much Information post. If you're as eager to play it as I am, brace yourselves. It hasn't been warmly received by the critics. WiiHD chooses quotes designed to illuminate how the game plays, so be sure to look past those scores and see the content of the reviews.
Super Dodgeball Brawlers is a mix between the classic franchise on NES, as well as a hybrid of combat and item usage from River City Ransom. In theory, Aksys Games is combining the best of both US-released worlds into one package, including all the customization you'd expect from the Dodgeball series, while still adding a small nod to River City by including hand-to-hand combat and item-based attacks to use on the court, or in the school yard. On paper the design sounds like the best of both worlds, perhaps even mashing together memories of Super Dodgeball on GBA and the River City Ransom remake (also on GBA) into one happy memory. In the end though, the product isn't up to par with those titles, mixing together some odd balance issues, removed functionality, and level of depth expected from regular DS games, but light for the Kunio series itself.
Both Vs. Mode and Brawl are one-time sessions, having gamers select their favorite team or player, take them into a single match, and then eventually back out of the game to the main title screen. In both instances, weapons and punch/kick buttons can be turned on or off, depending on if you want the traditional Super Dodgeball feel, or if you enjoy the River City hybrid design.
Super Dodgeball Brawlers is a good amount of fun for a short amount of time. It’s too complex for casual gamers, but too shallow for anyone looking to really dive into a dodgeball game. The core mechanics are tight, but sadly, there just isn’t that much to do with them. Not everyone will enjoy it, but fans of the original will find worthwhile experience that does justice to its forebear.
The game comes with 20 pre-loaded teams, but most people will want to take advantage of the create-a-team function. Your team’s name, colors and formation are all customizable, as are the players. There are over a 150 different faces and hairstyles to choose from, along with several hair and skin colors. Each character is given 150 skill points to distribute amongst ten categories, ranging from throwing power to dodging ability to the mysterious “Spirit” rating, which doesn’t seem to make any difference at all. You can even change your players’ birthdates, which determines their special throws. It’s a surprisingly deep customization system for a dodgeball game, and it definitely adds significant value to the package as a whole.
I've come to appreciate the fact that the hardest part of remaking a fondly remembered classic isn't simply reproducing the play mechanics or properly emulating the visual style. Rather, the challenge lies toward the intangible, subjective end of the spectrum, in the vague-but-essential art of recapturing the original feel of the thing. Super Dodgeball Brawlers serves as a perfect demonstration — it's fun, but it never rises to the addictive one-more-match brilliance of its inspiration.
It doesn't help that Million (the tiny Japanese development house that inherited this and other Technos properties like River City Ransom and Double Dragon) can't create an interface to save its collective life. Million takes a no-nonsense approach to game design, which would be admirable if it didn't collide so painfully with the company's desire to enhance its remakes with extra options. Brawlers has tons of stats to tweak and ridiculous levels of potential team customization, but the interface for doing so falls somewhere just this side of completely useless. The meager in-game explanations for mechanics and abilities doesn't cut it in this day and age; blind experimentation and "Look up manual for details" was fine in the 8-bit days, but with a game so packed with options, a little more information isn't simply welcome — it's necessary.
For 700 WiiWare points, it's a great option despite it's faults. We'd just love to see High Voltage Software refine the design and hit us with a sequel; though if it's put on temporary hold in order to finish Animales de la Muerte, we more than understand.
Gyrostarr takes inspiration from a few types of shooters in gaming history, but rather than going with a specifically "top view" or "sidecroller" feel, it's a hybrid of games like Stun Runner, Gyrus, and Tempest. Players enter their three-letter name, select a colored – F-Zero inspired – ship and blast off down tunnel after tunnel of space tubing. The core experience is based around dodging and shooting (it wouldn't be shooter if it wasn't), but the game is deepened via the warp conduits that loom at the end of each of the 50 stages. As each level progresses, speed increases as you rocket towards the next warp gate, but you'll need to power the portals before crashing into them in a fiery and deadly finale. Via a grapple arm (shot out with the up or down button on your d-pad or stick), players can grab power orbs, weapon upgrades, or additional health. As long as you've got the gate powered by the time you hit the inevitable end of the road, you'll blast off to the next stage.
Gyrostarr never becomes exceptionally difficult. However, if you can endure the first ten levels or so, which are so simple as to be a bit tedious, you'll find a high-energy, fast-paced shooting/racing … thing that is worth playing. As the game picks up in speed and intensity, it entrances you with its hypnotic, pulsing music and swirly, colorful appearance.
The perspective and the fact that you can shoot are really all it has in common with Tempest. Oddly enough, the goal of Gyrostarr's levels isn't the shooting of enemies. Instead, your ship must pick up small white clouds around the level, which represent energy. Energy can be grabbed by running into it or by shooting the grappling hook at it. Each pickup increments a progress bar at the top of the screen, which also shows your movement through the level. Pick up sufficient energy before the end of the level, and you warp out in an awesome-looking effect, on to the next level. Fail, and you die!
Next up, is brand new video footage. MTV put up the first two minutes of play. Watch it after the break (along with other gyro media), it looks fun.
New Video Via GoNintendo | Permalink
by David Marseilles
on 18 Jun 2008 20:11 Tags: blastworks news shooter tmi
TMI is WiiHD's new mash-up format post for games with loads of info out. This will often be done around a game's review season. Rather than spamming the front page with tons of posts, games selected for TMI will get one, over-sized, behemoth post. Today's TMI is Blastworks, an impressive freeware PC game upconverted to Wii with tons of free DLC. metacritic: 86/100 (based on 5 reviews as of the time of this post)
For what it is, Blast Works is nearly perfect — it's an excellent sequel to a great shooter, and a brilliant, easy-to-use system for creating more shooters.
But overall, this is a great value that provides almost limitless replayability. If you consider yourself a shooter fan you should definitely check it out, but I also recommend it to gamers eager to unleash their creativity and design their own BlastWorks.
It's understandable that not every gamer wants to make games themselves, but even if you're just a shooter fan and not a creator, you should still give Blast Works a chance.
Where are you suppose to install the hombrew channel? what website I know the steps but I didnt...
(by Amauri Rodriguez (guest)13 May 2010 22:58,
posts: 2)
I've been a PC gamer for more than a decade. Last console I owned before Wii was an NES. It's a...
(by David Marseilles (guest)05 Apr 2010 21:34,
posts: 8)