I like games that let you play at doing things you've always thought about but would simply never be able to do in real life. This is one of those games. I'll never be a World War II fighter pilot (or so I assume), and getting a chance to sample that experience without all the icky noise and blood and danger and death -- you know, without all the reality -- was terrific. For me personally, this game was worth the purchase price for the "Battle of Britain" scenario alone: chasing a Messerschmitt squadron through the Tower Bridge? Awesome!
But I wouldn't expect most people to feel that way. For most people, this game would be a rental at best. It was repetitive and uninspired, and the Ice Canyon segment in particular was needlessly frustrating. If it hadn't spoken to my particular daydreams, I'd have quit well before finishing.
Showing posts with label wii. Show all posts
Showing posts with label wii. Show all posts
Friday, April 13, 2007
Wii: Rayman Raving Rabbids
Great fun. Didn't take me that long to complete it, but worth the money all the same.
I realized while playing it that I dislike, indeed I downright hate, games with sloppy control schemes. They drive me insane. Most of RRR's mini-games have a perfectly crisp, tight feel to the controls, but some deliberately don't. Specifically, there are a couple of warthog-racing games, and a flying game or two, where your mount has a sort of inertia and doesn't respond immediately to your input. That's on purpose; a galloping warthog doesn't turn on a dime. But I found it frustrating, all the same. Later on I relaxed and started consciously compensating for it, which helped.
Still, that was an aberration. Mostly, the thing was just plain goofy fun. My favorites were the first-person-shooter scenarios where you run around with a plunger gun and a chain, snaring and shooting rabbids as they jump you. Unlike most FPSs, your character follows a predetermined course through these mini-games -- you don't control your position or point of view, you just react as the scenario proceeds. It was great, but without putting it down in any way, I'll add that I'd pay real money for a true FPS with the same concept -- Quake Rabbid, if you will.
The rhythm games on each level, in which you shake the Wiimote and nunchuck in time with a series of songs (increasingly complex, of course), were also a lot of fun but were almost too easy to enjoy. Almost, but not quite. As it was, I enjoyed them tremendously.
Great fun.
I realized while playing it that I dislike, indeed I downright hate, games with sloppy control schemes. They drive me insane. Most of RRR's mini-games have a perfectly crisp, tight feel to the controls, but some deliberately don't. Specifically, there are a couple of warthog-racing games, and a flying game or two, where your mount has a sort of inertia and doesn't respond immediately to your input. That's on purpose; a galloping warthog doesn't turn on a dime. But I found it frustrating, all the same. Later on I relaxed and started consciously compensating for it, which helped.
Still, that was an aberration. Mostly, the thing was just plain goofy fun. My favorites were the first-person-shooter scenarios where you run around with a plunger gun and a chain, snaring and shooting rabbids as they jump you. Unlike most FPSs, your character follows a predetermined course through these mini-games -- you don't control your position or point of view, you just react as the scenario proceeds. It was great, but without putting it down in any way, I'll add that I'd pay real money for a true FPS with the same concept -- Quake Rabbid, if you will.
The rhythm games on each level, in which you shake the Wiimote and nunchuck in time with a series of songs (increasingly complex, of course), were also a lot of fun but were almost too easy to enjoy. Almost, but not quite. As it was, I enjoyed them tremendously.
Great fun.
Wii: The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess
While I admire this game's breadth, I'd have traded a lot of that breadth for a little more depth. To me, it seemed less a great epic, more a rambling assortment of individually shallow puzzles.
There's nothing inherently wrong with that; Rayman Raving Rabbids is a large collection of mini-games, and it's one I had a lot of fun playing. But unlike Rayman, the puzzles in Zelda aren't particularly fun. They just seem to go on, and on, and on, endlessly. (Fishing, for example, was just about as much fun as the real thing.) I got about a half or a third of the way through, found myself in yet another dungeon or temple or whatever it was, and just put it aside. And I haven't felt like picking it back up.
Shallow fun is OK (in all honesty, that's exactly what I bought a Wii for), but this is shallow non-fun. It's just tedious. There are lots of people who passionately love this game -- I think what they get out of it is the sense that they're inhabiting a huge world, following exciting (for them) quests through it. I understand that, but it still didn't float my boat. I didn't hate it -- I sort of wish it well; I had some fun playing it. But I don't really want to play it any more.
There's nothing inherently wrong with that; Rayman Raving Rabbids is a large collection of mini-games, and it's one I had a lot of fun playing. But unlike Rayman, the puzzles in Zelda aren't particularly fun. They just seem to go on, and on, and on, endlessly. (Fishing, for example, was just about as much fun as the real thing.) I got about a half or a third of the way through, found myself in yet another dungeon or temple or whatever it was, and just put it aside. And I haven't felt like picking it back up.
Shallow fun is OK (in all honesty, that's exactly what I bought a Wii for), but this is shallow non-fun. It's just tedious. There are lots of people who passionately love this game -- I think what they get out of it is the sense that they're inhabiting a huge world, following exciting (for them) quests through it. I understand that, but it still didn't float my boat. I didn't hate it -- I sort of wish it well; I had some fun playing it. But I don't really want to play it any more.
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