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Wednesday 20 February, 2008
Session 2
Gameplay:
This time around, my neighbor and I chose to play table tennis and the tank game. In table tennis, the gameplay is essentially the same as air hockey - you pretend that the wii remote is the paddle and move it back and forth to hit the ball, or press A when it's your turn to serve. The tank game is a little bit more complicated to play - we ended up taking out the stick controller, which has a little joy stick on it that you use to move your tank around the screen, while you use the wii remote to aim on your target (the enemy tank), and the trigger to shoot. The goal is to shoot the tank before it kills you or your partner.
Design:
I'm going to write this entry on all the games I played during the two sessions, since they were all relatively short in their gameplay sessions and share a lot of the same design elements. My favorites in the wii play series were definitely the balloon shooting game, air hockey and table tennis, for different reasons.
I really liked table tennis for the way that it makes use of the space on the screen. Your mii is being watched as he plays by all the other miis in the game - I even recognized a few of my friends' avatars in there, which was cool because you feel the sociability of the game even despite (or in addition to) the person you're playing with. I also think that the design of the wii remote is especially innovative, not just for these games but in general, because it's so easy to use and so adaptable - you can hold it like a paddle, aim it like a gun, tilt it as though you're bearing down on the throttle of a motorcycle, and so forth.
Another game that I especially thought was well designed was air hockey, if anything just for the adaptable control (you can tilt your paddle) and the sheer fact that you can score on yourself, which made the game more fun to play socially since it gave everyone the chance to make fun of me, which I always like.
The game that I thought was least innovative in this group was the balloon shooting game, since it's basically a rip off of tetris and doesn't take as much advantage of the cool wii remote as it could. This is made up for, though, by the cool level design and story of the game. I really like the way that it incorporates your characters into the game - on the third level, you can earn extra points by shooting the target that has your opponent's face on it, yet lose points if you shoot one with your own face on it. In the final round, also, the goal is to shoot alien ufos before they abduct your wii characters, which is pretty funny but also kind of disturbing when you hear the wiis screaming after being abducted.
In all, there's not really much room for a lot of narrative in wii play because it's essentially just arcade type games adapted to the wii console. The wii remote, though, and the game's integration of the player via her mii are what sets it apart from other games. I love, love, love the wii because it is so easy to use and the remote can be adapted to suit just about any game, even sport type games (table tennis, air hockey, bowling) because the way the player uses the remote mimics exactly how one would play the game in real life, which I think is awesome.
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