Or any of the other Wii game bundles for that matter. Why? It’s not fully playable out of the box.
I’m surprised at people’s lack of attention about this. How is this different from Wii Sports (Outside the obvious?) Even if you couldn’t afford more than one controller, you could still play multiplayer Golf and Bowling. You could play multiplayer straight after bringing the console home, no other purchases required! How long had it been since consoles did that?
Outside of multiplayer, you can still play every sport in single player. Not the case in Nintendo Land. You have to use the gamepad only modes. This feels to me as if the Wii didn’t have a Nunchuck included.
This is a big reason for Nintendo Land’s lack of value: it depends on if you have enough already purchased controllers. Could this have been solved by tossing in a WiiMote? Maybe, but the root of the problem is the “asymmetric gameplay” bullshit that’s forcing everyone to buy two different sets of controllers.
This is a good point. Wii Sports was very simple because everyone knew that every sports game required a Wii-mote. Only boxing required the nunchuck (and not many people did the boxing).
People are asking, “Will Nintendo Land be the next Wii Sports?” But what if it is the opposite. What if Nintendo Land royally bombs? Nintendo may have made Wii Sports and Wii Fit, but Nintendo also made Wii Music and Wii Sports Resort. The ‘included games’ on the 3DS did nothing to sell that console. Face raiders? Meh.
I’m siding more on the ‘bomba’ because Nintendo has shown that it doesn’t think highly of the Wii Sports consumers. They just think they are shallow gamers who are so de-evolved they might as well have paws instead of hands as they cannot play ‘normal’ games. I think the Wii Sports gamer is one of the most demanding and savviest of customers out there. They are the toughest to sell to which is why they require so much marketing muscle. The easiest consumer to sell to would be the hardcore who buy literally anything.
I expect most of the included games in Nintendo Land to get old after a weekend (with virtually no reason ever to return to Nintendo Land). I am very surprised they put in Balloon Fight. Nintendo has always shied away from Balloon Fight because it is a blatant Joust ripoff and Nintendo feels ashamed for it. This is why we are only seeing the ‘endless mode’.
“But isn’t the Nintendo Land games what you wanted, Malstrom?” How do you say that, reader? “Aren’t they all simplistic arcade games?” When was the last time you played the arcade, reader?
I was just playing around some with MAME, tweaking my arcade joystick (because it must feel right) and was blown away with how entertaining the games still are. Arcade games are very intense experiences. They are a graphic and sound fiesta that erupts your senses.
Nintendo Land has none of that intensity. The graphics and sound seem pedestrian at best. Nintendo Land is Wii Play on stilts.
One year from now, it will be very interesting to hear how people talk of Nintendo Land. It isn’t impossible that people talk of Nintendo Land as the biggest joke ever and slobbering game journalists can hang Nintendo Land as an albatross around Wii U’s neck. Since Nintendo Land is using fantasy IPs, the minimalistic style in graphics and sound comes across as cheap and lame. In sports, it is a different story. In sports, people care about accuracy about the game. Wii Sports players were fascinated that the tennis ball moved in exact response to how they swung the controller. Since Nintendo isn’t trying to charm players with the fantasy elements of these fantasy IPs, everything is relying on the ‘assymetric gameplay’. And that is a bet I’m not willing to take.
Malstrom's Articles News 