As I said in comments to my last post, my next goal for the Wii was to play Legend of Zelda : Twilight Princess. I did play, but not past where I’d gotten on the GameCube version. I’m currently almost as far along as Girl got on the GameCube, including one battle which had made her vow not to play it again (despite her being the serious Zelda player in our community). Along with that, we received two other games, Mario Party 8 and SSX Blur from GameFly. As of last night, I’ve played them all, at least a little bit.

Mario Party 8 is much like the other Party-type games I’ve seen — basically you go around a game board, collecting things (in the case of MP8, coins and stars), and once everyone has gone, a random mini-game is played. MP8 has quite a few minigames (SexyWife and I played 3 very different games, and I watched JB’s son play part of a 50 turn game that played through most of the games). These are all little four-player games (1vs3, 2vs2, or every man for himself) that are all little takes on ways the WiiMote can be used. MP8 doesn’t use an extension controller, but allows the remote to be turned on its side for steering, or pointed at the screen, or shaken like a can.

This game seems mostly successful, maybe because I knew what I was expecting, and it fits the feel for the Wii at my household. It might be a bit different once JB’s son leaves, but I still want to have a good game of MP8 with SexyWife at some time. I’m very glad we have the two controllers. This game feels very much like the DS WarioWare did to me — a bunch of quick examples from the mouth of Nintendo of what to do with their controller. I suspect that’s what the WarioWare games are generally about (including the Wii one) but I’m only recently converted to Nintendohood so my only evidence is a few discussions with SexyWife about it.

I still look forward to someone who thinks up something really different to do with the controllers, something I’ve been thinking about as I’ve played the first few games on it.

SSX Blur, which I played only minimally (although came in first in one race) tries to use the controllers in a unique way. The previous game in the series that I played (SSX Tricky for XBox) I recall as being a bit kludgy, with multi button/trigger presses to do the different tricks.

SSX Blur relies heavily on the nunchuck for steering and for tricks. This puts it in my left hand which isn’t that odd, when you think about a traditional PS2 controller. Tilting the nunchuck stick turns you left/right, pushing it forward speeds you up (and seems to use your boost), pulling it back slows and stops you. twisting the nunchuck clockwise/counterclockwise turns you right and left even more than the stick (and it’s possible to do both at once). Pulling rapidly up on the nunchuck (tilting the front up, basically) is a jump. Moving it while pressing “Z” (the larger button on the nunchuck) after a jump gets you the four different holds.

The WiiMote handles spins (and that seems backwards to me, as though the holds should be on the wii mote and the spins on the nunchuck), and throws snowballs and some things like that. In a race, you mostly don’t use your right hand at all, unless you are going for points. In general the controls feel like they almost work, but never quite.

It feels very close, the turning stuff became natural very quickly. Jumps were ok, holds not too bad (but there was one of the four I never figured out, and having to adjust from steering to hold-selection on the left seemed odd.) The WiiMote was ultra sensitive, and it wasn’t really clear how to stop turning (other than landing). Having holds and turns on different hands is good, though, since Tricky allowed for combinations of spins and holds as more complicated tricks.

I eventually got frustrated with it, and handed it off to JB’s son, who didn’t fare much better. I could see they were trying, and all I could think was that maybe the next version would be better. I’m going to play a bit more, do the tutorials yet again, and try to get a better handle on the atomic pieces before I do more races. It probably only has one more session-chance to convince me. I’ll write more once we do that.

I’ve spent the most time playing Zelda, here again we see a half-hearted attempt at verisimilitude which doesn’t quite work, but it doesn’t matter because the developers focused more on ease. Ultimately, I think these are the two most important qualities of the controller in terms of the affordances it offers. Certainly accuracy is important, as well as response and the wireless communication must work. But in terms of playing the game, once the technical stuff is working, all that is left is how well the controller gets out of the way and becomes natural.

That can happen a couple of ways — enough games can use the controller in the same way until it just feels natural that it be that way. WASD movement, and the PS2 controller are that way for me. FPS (or FPS-like) games that don’t use WASD feel awkward, until I’ve mapped them over. Console game makers seem to have mostly settled on the same basic functions on the PS2 controller — a few games (mostly RPGs) that use a different scheme (like swapping what O and X or Triangle and O mean) are a constant, minor frustration. In one RPG I kept using items when I thought I was leaving a menu. That was pretty annoying.

I suspect we’ll see that arise for the Wii,but it hasn’t yet. The makers of Zelda (again, Nintendo) have given it some thought. In general, the right hand (remote) controller is your sword. They made a big deal of this, because Link has traditionally been left-handed. The GameCube and Wii versions are inverted mirrors of each other just to accomplish that. Pretty much any movement with the WiiMote makes Link swing his sword (if it is out); the A button is a lockon-jump or finishing movement. I find that when fighting as a wolf it’s easier to use A button than shake the controller to attack. When I have a sword it’s easier the other way. I’m not sure why, except the enemies you fight are different, and the wolf doesn’t have access to ranged weapons to take out flying enemies.

The nunchuck has dual duty as movement with the stick, and z-targeting. The z-target also lifts your shield, which is, of course, in your left hand. There’s a shield attack move which is like punching with the nunchuck, and which I’ve rarely gotten to work, because there’s another nunchuck move, the spin attack. I really don’t understand why it’s on the nunchuck, but shaking it makes link do his spin attack (which is done with his sword, of course). About half the time I want to shield attack, I wind up spin-attacking instead. Which sucks when I just did a spin attack because instead of spin attacking (it has to recharge) or shield attacking (which is what I’m trying to do), Link just does nothing. And that’s about my only control-related issue with the game so far.

When a ranged weapon is out, the WiiMote becomes a mouse that you can use to target. Games which use an analog stick to move a target around the screen suck. And this was very much the case with the GameCube version of Zelda. The battle that made Girl quit involved jousting with a large orc-like creature on a boar, while you were on your horse. In the first version of this, you only have a sword, and it’s a pain, but not horrible. The second version is much harder (being also at night, harder to see your enemy) and the dude is, apparently, tougher. The solution here is to shoot him a couple of times with you bow. You can’t target him, he’s too far away. And you are racing along on your horse while he charges at you. In the GameCube version you’ve got to manipulate the target with the analog stick while also holding down the button that fires the bow and not forgetting to keep you horse moving and moving out of the way when it all happens way too fast. With the WiiMote it’s easy. Steering is in your left hand. The A button, on top of the remote, urges your horse around. The B-trigger is held for the bow and you do the amazing thing and just point the remote at the enemy. Not messing around with moving in a 2-d space. Just reach out and point, something humans are sublimely good at and which, well, shooting a bow is kind of like.

I had him down in two arrow shots (both hit), and I turned to Girl and asked her, “Was that the hard battle?” She just looked at me, swore, and told me she hated me forever. Maybe she’ll play the Wii version between quarters (you’re welcome to camp out and play, of course, Girl). This ease of targeting, especially when you have to shoot so many things in the eye (it is a Legend of Zelda game, after all) totally cancels out any other controller issues (of which I’ve only encountered the one).

In a lot of ways, that’s all I can say about the game. The horse and wolf-forms are new, but otherwise it’s a Zelda game. Get a movement-oriented item (lantern, iron boots) go to the dungeon find the items there (map, compass and big key) along with the new weapon (boomerang, bow). This game adds a shadow component that requires another step, moving around in wolf form, gathering dark bugs that has to be done pre-dungeon. Then it repeats the formula. I’m on the third iteration at this point, ready for the dungeon part. Yes, it’s largely the same game but it’s fun and it makes the transition to the Wii very well.

A couple more games are on their way from GameFly: Elebits, as well as one of (Resident Evil 4 or Cooking Mama). Trauma Center (which was unbearably hard on the DS) is high on our list, and probably soon as the next one comes out in a few months. I’m waiting on a good cRPG (not that there were many on the Cube, either), Metroid Prime 3, and something that’s going to knock my socks off in amazement.

Because that last one is coming, and it’s going to come from outside Nintendo, and change the way we see things, controller wise. It’ll probably be a casual game that your mom likes to play, too.