Intro:
Now I know it has been out for a year and almost 2 months now. Though most of us weren't even able to get our hands on one until later anyway.
So I will start off by saying that it has been a fantastic year for the system as it now is entering the 20 million units sold area; it has outsold the Gamecube in all countries it has been released in outside of North America.
Wii Sports and Casual Games love:
Though, anyway, while major websites are all hailing Mario Galaxy as the game of 2007, I would say that it came a little too late for me to call it that. Then again, I didn't really get much of a chance to start playing it until this year. My game of 2007 could be no other than Wii Sports. While not being the first Casual game, it was the first console game to be famous as a casual game; though the trend it is following comes from the success Nintendo saw with the genre on DS.
What is a casual game? It is a game that is simple to play, and is designed to be easily picked up and put back down. The first successful casual games were MS Solitare, Mine Sweeper, and Reversi. Casual games had remained fairly popular on PC, and started to gain some popularity on Cell Phones and handheld systems in recent years. Despite the term "casual game" it does not necessarilly mean they are designed strictly for "casual gamers" as many fans of these games can be considered "hardcore gamers" or gamers who will sit down and play games for hours, whereas casual gamers more or less play them for short periods of times rather than long term sessions. Needless to say, a lot of hardcore gamers really took a liking to casual games; including myself.
Wii Sports is a great game for parties, I like it better than say, Guitar Hero or DDR, because those games utilize their own music, which is rather distracting during a party (which most of the time has its own music). It's also a game that non-gamer girls love to play, which is very important; it's the type of game that leaves no one out. A great complimentary game is Wario Ware, whose multiplayer mode was my most played casual game section of the last year; and overall I would say 50-60% of the console gaming I did last year was multiplayer between Wario Ware and Wii Sports. So that combo really won me over last year; this year it will likely be Brawl and Mario Kart which are not casual games, but can be described as "party games" which are games that designed more specifically for offline multiplayer (though these ones have online multiplayer too), but are not designed as casual games. It will be interesting to see which games win out between people.
Zelda Twilight Princess and disapointment:
Anyway, at the release of the Wii one of the Launch Titles was Zelda; Twilight Princess which achieved large critical success. Though I admittedly did not have nearly as much fun with this title as I hoped I would have. I found that it had a lot of chore-like fetch quests, and 80% of the time I was playing it was hoping to see if the next part would be good. Since Twilight Princess I have played some of Majora's Mask and Ocarina of Time, and those games are indeed considerably stronger than Twilight Princess. Graphically, Twilight Princess has some beautiful scenes, but most of my favourite portions of the game were in the first few hours of play, within Ordone Village and the surrounding forest which I felt were fantastic locations. I also enjoyed playing around in Lake Hylia the first time I got lost in there; but other than that, the game seemed relatively in sub-par in comparison to other Zelda titles. My two favourite dungeons were the Desert Temple and the Ice Temple. The boss fights are all really well done, but unfortunately I can't say that the dungeons leading up to them were very interesting; an incredible difference from the other three 3D Zelda's which I felt had fantastic and fun dungeons. The fetch quests in Twilight Princess really killed it for me. The game is very good besides these complaints which I have.
More Zelda, Scarface, and Godfather:
An example of what killed it for me: the first fetch quest (collecting the twilight tears or something) was alright, the second one got on my nerves. The third one took me SIX HOURS to finish. I was really sour on things after that, but it was behind me...... Then I was about to enter the Wind Temple, of course, FETCH QUEST. I played around with it for a while, and then put the game down. I got Godfather and Scarface around this time, and while they aren't nearly as well crafted games, they were MUCH more fun. Scarface is essentially Vice City with a lot more to do; though the music selection isn't as cool for the most part. My complaints with Scarface are: the balance, there are a lot of difficulty spikes; the post-era music, Scarface should have been pure 76-83 music, not Motorhead and crap like that. Otherwise, Scarface is a lot of fun, and the game really benefits from Wii Remote controls.
Resident Evil 4:
Resident Evil 4 Wii Edition. I have already discussed this a lot, EVERYONE who has a Wii needs to get this game, it launched for under 30 dollars, there is no reason why this gem should go unbought. Speaking of Resident Evil, Capcom recently shipped its 1 millionth unit of it, that was back in November; but since they have shipped more than 500K more copies, so I think people are really catching on. Capcom also has Zack and Wiki, I admit, I haven't played it, but apparently the game is really really good, the critics seem to like it but it has been somewhat of a commercial failure. This game might be on my list now due to the Smash Brothers delay in North America.
Metroid Prime 3 and other stuff I didn't play:
Metroid, I passed on. I was REALLY hoping that they would do a third person shooter with this one, but it is another FPS. It was nice for the first few times I played a game like this (Turok 1, 2, and Prime 1; Prime 1 really being just a Turok game with a much higher budget) but I was hoping that Prime 3 would go to a third person view. I am not really much of a fan of the first person view in adventure type games. Prime 3 was relatively well reviewed, and I haven't given it a fair chance, but I have a strong feeling that I don't think I'll like it.
Geometry Wars, this is another fairly well reviewed game, I have only played the Xbox Live version of the game, and I felt it was brilliant; it was like some insane version of Robotron. Although I played it enough that I don't think I would want to go back to it on Wii despite the enhancements.
More Resident Evil:
There is Resident Evil Umbrella Chronicles as well, this game is more of a 1 and a 2 player game; in that there are single player designed missions and two player designed missions. It is strange, you can play the 2 player designed missions alone, but I do NOT recommend it at all. In addition, there is a lot of RE lore in this title which is a very nice addition. I am REALLY looking forward to a sequel to this game, and I am excited about The House of the Dead games coming to Wii, which I heard are supposed to be very much like this game. Although it doesn't make much logical sense, the competition between the two players for kills and destruction really adds a lot to the "co-operative" play within this title.
Mario Galaxy, well, you know the story =)
The Virtual Console:
I am SOOOOOOOO happy that this feature was included. I was really happy to get the DKC games, Sin and Punishment, Mario 3, and ActRaiser on the system; these games I have been playing very regularly. I also played much more Street Fighter 2 Turbo than I thought I would (The computer is considerably more difficult than World Warrior or Super Street Fighter 2, I have discovered; and this is why I play so much!). ActRaiser was the first game by Quintet that I played: it was the father of Soul Blazer, Illusion of Gaia, and the youngest and most attractive sister: Terranigma. ActRaiser 2 is more like an adopted son in a new family with a different wife.
Sin and Punishment:
Sin and Punishment, while the title is 1200 points it really is worth it. It is one of the best games to come out for the N64. Similar to Starfox 64, it is an On the Rails shooter, only it is TOTALLY insane. It is developed by Treasure, the same highly acclaimed company that did Radiant Silvergun and Gunstar Heroes. I must say, I really enjoy playing this game, it is more fun than I thought it would be. It is not incredibly long, but it has a lot of replay value.
Closing:
Quite a good first year for the Wii, it was a lot better than the SNES, N64, or Gamecube. The Wii is showing a lot of promise going into the next year (and I just realized I missed several titles of note while writing this); the first half of the year is bringing both Smash Brothers Brawl and Mario Kart.
*Note: this will probably be edited later, there are some things that I didn't cover that I may want to*
BREAKING NEWS:
Sorry to end this off on a sad note, but Retro Games developer Mark Haigh-Hutchinson has died at 43. He is known for his work on Paper Boy, Metroid Prime, and numerous Starwars titles on PC and N64 (Shadows of the Empire).
Now I know it has been out for a year and almost 2 months now. Though most of us weren't even able to get our hands on one until later anyway.
So I will start off by saying that it has been a fantastic year for the system as it now is entering the 20 million units sold area; it has outsold the Gamecube in all countries it has been released in outside of North America.
Wii Sports and Casual Games love:
Though, anyway, while major websites are all hailing Mario Galaxy as the game of 2007, I would say that it came a little too late for me to call it that. Then again, I didn't really get much of a chance to start playing it until this year. My game of 2007 could be no other than Wii Sports. While not being the first Casual game, it was the first console game to be famous as a casual game; though the trend it is following comes from the success Nintendo saw with the genre on DS.
What is a casual game? It is a game that is simple to play, and is designed to be easily picked up and put back down. The first successful casual games were MS Solitare, Mine Sweeper, and Reversi. Casual games had remained fairly popular on PC, and started to gain some popularity on Cell Phones and handheld systems in recent years. Despite the term "casual game" it does not necessarilly mean they are designed strictly for "casual gamers" as many fans of these games can be considered "hardcore gamers" or gamers who will sit down and play games for hours, whereas casual gamers more or less play them for short periods of times rather than long term sessions. Needless to say, a lot of hardcore gamers really took a liking to casual games; including myself.
Wii Sports is a great game for parties, I like it better than say, Guitar Hero or DDR, because those games utilize their own music, which is rather distracting during a party (which most of the time has its own music). It's also a game that non-gamer girls love to play, which is very important; it's the type of game that leaves no one out. A great complimentary game is Wario Ware, whose multiplayer mode was my most played casual game section of the last year; and overall I would say 50-60% of the console gaming I did last year was multiplayer between Wario Ware and Wii Sports. So that combo really won me over last year; this year it will likely be Brawl and Mario Kart which are not casual games, but can be described as "party games" which are games that designed more specifically for offline multiplayer (though these ones have online multiplayer too), but are not designed as casual games. It will be interesting to see which games win out between people.
Zelda Twilight Princess and disapointment:
Anyway, at the release of the Wii one of the Launch Titles was Zelda; Twilight Princess which achieved large critical success. Though I admittedly did not have nearly as much fun with this title as I hoped I would have. I found that it had a lot of chore-like fetch quests, and 80% of the time I was playing it was hoping to see if the next part would be good. Since Twilight Princess I have played some of Majora's Mask and Ocarina of Time, and those games are indeed considerably stronger than Twilight Princess. Graphically, Twilight Princess has some beautiful scenes, but most of my favourite portions of the game were in the first few hours of play, within Ordone Village and the surrounding forest which I felt were fantastic locations. I also enjoyed playing around in Lake Hylia the first time I got lost in there; but other than that, the game seemed relatively in sub-par in comparison to other Zelda titles. My two favourite dungeons were the Desert Temple and the Ice Temple. The boss fights are all really well done, but unfortunately I can't say that the dungeons leading up to them were very interesting; an incredible difference from the other three 3D Zelda's which I felt had fantastic and fun dungeons. The fetch quests in Twilight Princess really killed it for me. The game is very good besides these complaints which I have.
More Zelda, Scarface, and Godfather:
An example of what killed it for me: the first fetch quest (collecting the twilight tears or something) was alright, the second one got on my nerves. The third one took me SIX HOURS to finish. I was really sour on things after that, but it was behind me...... Then I was about to enter the Wind Temple, of course, FETCH QUEST. I played around with it for a while, and then put the game down. I got Godfather and Scarface around this time, and while they aren't nearly as well crafted games, they were MUCH more fun. Scarface is essentially Vice City with a lot more to do; though the music selection isn't as cool for the most part. My complaints with Scarface are: the balance, there are a lot of difficulty spikes; the post-era music, Scarface should have been pure 76-83 music, not Motorhead and crap like that. Otherwise, Scarface is a lot of fun, and the game really benefits from Wii Remote controls.
Resident Evil 4:
Resident Evil 4 Wii Edition. I have already discussed this a lot, EVERYONE who has a Wii needs to get this game, it launched for under 30 dollars, there is no reason why this gem should go unbought. Speaking of Resident Evil, Capcom recently shipped its 1 millionth unit of it, that was back in November; but since they have shipped more than 500K more copies, so I think people are really catching on. Capcom also has Zack and Wiki, I admit, I haven't played it, but apparently the game is really really good, the critics seem to like it but it has been somewhat of a commercial failure. This game might be on my list now due to the Smash Brothers delay in North America.
Metroid Prime 3 and other stuff I didn't play:
Metroid, I passed on. I was REALLY hoping that they would do a third person shooter with this one, but it is another FPS. It was nice for the first few times I played a game like this (Turok 1, 2, and Prime 1; Prime 1 really being just a Turok game with a much higher budget) but I was hoping that Prime 3 would go to a third person view. I am not really much of a fan of the first person view in adventure type games. Prime 3 was relatively well reviewed, and I haven't given it a fair chance, but I have a strong feeling that I don't think I'll like it.
Geometry Wars, this is another fairly well reviewed game, I have only played the Xbox Live version of the game, and I felt it was brilliant; it was like some insane version of Robotron. Although I played it enough that I don't think I would want to go back to it on Wii despite the enhancements.
More Resident Evil:
There is Resident Evil Umbrella Chronicles as well, this game is more of a 1 and a 2 player game; in that there are single player designed missions and two player designed missions. It is strange, you can play the 2 player designed missions alone, but I do NOT recommend it at all. In addition, there is a lot of RE lore in this title which is a very nice addition. I am REALLY looking forward to a sequel to this game, and I am excited about The House of the Dead games coming to Wii, which I heard are supposed to be very much like this game. Although it doesn't make much logical sense, the competition between the two players for kills and destruction really adds a lot to the "co-operative" play within this title.
Mario Galaxy, well, you know the story =)
The Virtual Console:
I am SOOOOOOOO happy that this feature was included. I was really happy to get the DKC games, Sin and Punishment, Mario 3, and ActRaiser on the system; these games I have been playing very regularly. I also played much more Street Fighter 2 Turbo than I thought I would (The computer is considerably more difficult than World Warrior or Super Street Fighter 2, I have discovered; and this is why I play so much!). ActRaiser was the first game by Quintet that I played: it was the father of Soul Blazer, Illusion of Gaia, and the youngest and most attractive sister: Terranigma. ActRaiser 2 is more like an adopted son in a new family with a different wife.
Sin and Punishment:
Sin and Punishment, while the title is 1200 points it really is worth it. It is one of the best games to come out for the N64. Similar to Starfox 64, it is an On the Rails shooter, only it is TOTALLY insane. It is developed by Treasure, the same highly acclaimed company that did Radiant Silvergun and Gunstar Heroes. I must say, I really enjoy playing this game, it is more fun than I thought it would be. It is not incredibly long, but it has a lot of replay value.
Closing:
Quite a good first year for the Wii, it was a lot better than the SNES, N64, or Gamecube. The Wii is showing a lot of promise going into the next year (and I just realized I missed several titles of note while writing this); the first half of the year is bringing both Smash Brothers Brawl and Mario Kart.
*Note: this will probably be edited later, there are some things that I didn't cover that I may want to*
BREAKING NEWS:
Sorry to end this off on a sad note, but Retro Games developer Mark Haigh-Hutchinson has died at 43. He is known for his work on Paper Boy, Metroid Prime, and numerous Starwars titles on PC and N64 (Shadows of the Empire).
Last edited by Julius Seeker on Thu Jan 17, 2008 5:47 pm, edited 1 time in total.
-Insert Inspiring Quote-
