7 launch titles announced for Wii from Ubisoft,

[Julius Seeker]

Red Steel, Blazing Angels, Far Cry, GT Pro (featues 80 licesed cars for both of the car obsessed people here at the Shrine), RayMan, Open Season, and Monster 4X4 are all launching with Wii from Ubisoft. That's quite a commitment. In the announcement Ubisoft also said it has many more titles in the works for Wii from established franchises as well as brand new titles. Though it remains to be seen what changes will be made to the Wii versions of the non-exclusives.

Far Cry and Blazing Angels both make extensive use of the Wii-mote.

http://wii.ign.com/articles/723/723080p1.html for more detailed info.

[Blotus]

None of these really appeal to me unless Red Steel turns out to be good. And why RayMan? They ought to just be making BG&E2.

[Julius Seeker]

Why Rayman and not BG&E? The answer is simple, both games are very similar, probably on the same engine, BUT:

Rayman generally receives higher review scores
Two: Its sales are MUCH higher
Three: Rayman is Ubisoft's flagship series. Even though Ubisoft Montreal has been releasing some of the best games in existence, Prince of Persia and the Splinter Cell titles.

I think that probably has something to do with it.

I personally really liked BG&E, but if I had a choice between BG&E or Rayman, the choice would be easy, I would pick Rayman.

I've also been following the development of Red Steel almost ever since I heard of the game. The only problems the E3 demo had was that the swordplay was not yet implemented, and the controls were still a little loose. The swordplay has since been implemented and the controls have been fixed up. I have a lot of faith in Ubisoft, as far as 3D action titles go, they are about as talented of a company as there is in the videogame market.

Far Cry, I have a bit of interest in, I don't know a lot about the series, I played one of the games on Xbox, it seemed fairly good. I do know that the Xbox game received a lot of praise; a lot had to do with the AI which is supposedly more advanced than any other action game on the market. It will be very interesting to see how they tweek the game for Wii release.

Blazing Angels could turn out really well, the major issues with the Xbox version were the controls (the Wii controller is much better for this type of game).

I'm not into cars/monstertrucks or hunting (I assume that is what Open Season is), so I am not interested in those ones either.

Anyways, this doesn't matter, the interesting point is that half of the games that Ubisoft currently has in development are Wii launch titles.

[Lox]

I am also looking forward to Red Steel. If they can deliver some tight controls and "realistic" sword fighting, then I will be hooked.

[Nev]

Jury's still out for me on the Wii. Much as I want to support the innovation, and much as I find Sony's recent press antics a source of mingled amusement and despair, I'm at a point in my gaming "career" (as it were) where both "more of the same only better" and "extreme graphics whoring" appeal to me tremendously. I missed out on fawning over graphics the last generation (actually, I missed out on most of the last generation, period, and am still catching up) and feel like doing a lot of it this time. So I still plan on getting a PS3 first, if I can, out of all the next-gen systems. The XBox 360, nice as it is, is still battling with my relentless grudge against Microsoft's lifetime history of business practices. It's odd - usually I can separate a company's actions from products I really like, enough to support that product without wanting to support the company as an entire entity - but for some reason I've never been able to with the 360. I will have to get one, I think, when Lost Odyssey comes out, *if* that game is good...otherwise, I may keep on missing it entirely.

The biggest inducement for me Wii-wise would actually be the direct-download service. If that's good, I'd buy a Wii at launch with no launch titles at all!

[Zeus]

None of these really appeal to me unless Red Steel turns out to be good. And why RayMan? They ought to just be making BG&E2.

Only 7 people bought BG&E and Rayman sells like crazy, that's why. I hope Ancel makes 12 more BG&E games, but that ain't likely going to happen. There was an article about them making the 2nd and 3rd games, let's just pray that happens

[Zeus]

I'm going to get the Wii, but it the controller is really going to have to prove itself to me. I think it's cool and all, but like the analog on the N64, I don't think it's going to be all that good until it is more refined.

I'm baffled by the distaste people have towards the N64's stick. It was the best analog stick of any standard controller of any console system ever IMO. I still have more degrees of movement in Mario 64 than in any other game I've played since.

[Flip]

I hate the position of the N64 analog and never noticed that it had more movement than anything else out there, so that is kind of a technological waste. Plus, it is small and slips off my thumb a lot, i dont like the texture on the top, it accomplishes nothing to me.

[Zeus]

my big gripe with the n64 analog is that I've had a lot of controllers stop working on me and the analog is all loosey goosey on all the controllers that still work. In addition to that, I REALLY liked the sega saturn analog that came with NiGHTS and the N64 one felt all weird in comparison. I'm sure there's reason for loving it, but my experience with the controller left much to be desired.

I've heard about the looseness of the N64 sticks a lot, but I never had that issue. And we played Goldeneye and Mario Kart a SHITLOAD during university. Well over 200 hours of 4-player in Goldeneye and around that for Mario Kart.

I felt that it gave me the best precision in terms of movement on screen. In Mario 64, I fiddled around trying to see how sensitive it was and got 5 distinct speeds of movement. Not sure if it's just a programming thing or not, but in most games, especially nowadays, you only get two: walk and run, and NEVER more that than in any non-N64 games. Even the 'Cube doesn't have that sensitivity in its games, so this isn't a pro-Nintendo rant here. It's important in things like FPSs and 3D platformers but you don't see it anymore. I can't imagine why they wouldn't want to put it in if you have the sensitivity so I'm making an assumption that all of the analog sticks in console controllers other than the N64 one just don't have the sensitivity; including the GC one. Heck, most of the time, if it isn't an FPS or 3D platformer, I'm not even using the stick, particularly on the PS2 which I feel has the stick too far into the middle on the controller. I played all of Shadow of the Colossus with the D buttons on the PS2 controller, and that's basically a 3D action platformer.

It's just odd that I've seen a regression in the sticks since the N64 one rather than an progression. But I've heard a lot of people complain about it, so I can see why. At the end of the day, no one complained about the PSX/PS2 controller in terms of its feel but a ton complained about the N64. That's why the GC is basically Nintendo's molding of the N64 and Dual Shock controllers into its own design (even with that stupid C stick; but the second stick is hardly used in games, so it really hasn't affected gameplay).

[Julius Seeker]

The Gamecube and PS2 analogs blow in comparison to the N64 one. Try playing Ocarina of Time on N64, then on Gamecube, you can easily see how much better the N64 stick is.

The Wii controller received great E3 reviews. The console won best of the show due mainly to the controller. I would not worry too much.


Plus to answer Zeus's question, the controllers are less sensitive nowadays because less sensitive controllers have greater durability. People are idiots, they are needlessly rough with the analog sticks on controllers. I noticed that my red controller and my blue one are loose, and those are the ones used by people who were rough with them. My green and yellow ones are absolutely perfect, the green one is my personal controller (the one that only I use), and it is the oldest, most used, controller I own. Yet, my Gamecube and PS2 controllers are still relatively fine, I had one PS2 controller casualty and it was because some of the buttons started doing only the same thing (IE, no button would function as a triangle or X since they both did the same thing as the circle).