New Wario Land Shake It! trailer is all kinds of great

Does look good… but I find these waggle movements for the sake of waggle movements really tedious. I understand why people like them, but I wish they’d allow customisable controls. There’s certainly enough buttons to be working with.

There’s a lot of waggling going on in there, definitely. The big fish at the end makes up for it, though.

I’d be a lot happier with the concept of the Wii if more games offered standard controls as well as pointywagglyshaky controls.

The thing that really pisses me off about Wii waggle games is that I literally have to move my furniture to play them. And then I have to sit bolt upright in the chair or they don’t work properly. It’s such an effort.

Precisely. Not only did Nintendo blow off the hardcore gamer, they also excluded the fat, lazy ones.

It’s the fact that it actually doesn’t work unless you’re positioned properly that puts me off. It’s really frustrating. Stopped me finishing Mario Galaxy, if I’m being honest.

Yeah… galaxy was another example. Tons of buttons going unused yet they make me twitch the controller for the spin attack. Just annoying. =/

That game was amazing as well. I should go back, really.

Thing is a lot of the controller buttons just aren’t easily accessible in normal use – it’s quite badly designed. Then with waggle controls you have to make allowances for gesture recognition times. For example is the player doing a spin attack or just moving about a bit, so there is always a delay – with a button there is no ambiguity.

Some games work really well – Wii Sports Tennis is stonking, but works for specific reasons – it’s all waggle and limited, so the game and player know what to expect. Others where timing is not so critical or the gesture is set and expected can work well too – Warioware and Zak for example.

I’m going to play devil’s advocate here, and say that I quite like the physicality of waggle, when it’s used well. Often it’s pointless, but in games like this and Galaxy (I’m genuinely amazed that people don’t like Galaxy’s controls) it makes perfect sense. The spin attack in Galaxy actually feels less abstract than pressing a button. A quick shake might not seem an advance to some, but it adds a greater sense of weight to your actions for me.

I also think you all must have tiny rooms or something, because the only time I really need to position myself very specifically when playing Wii games is when I’m playing something which requires very precise pointer control (ie Trauma Center).

Motion controls are going to be more and more prevalent as we move through this generation onto the next. Cliff was talking about cameras sensing the player’s position yesterday, so it’s not just Nintendo that’s thinking in this direction. I’m afraid everyone will have to get used to them pretty soon.

@Hero of Canton: I’ve no issue with them including the controls, nor with those who like them… but it annoys me that I couldn’t remap it.

The pointer stuff was well done in Galaxy… I just didn’t rate the waggle.

I agree with Psycho (although I haven’t actually played Mario Galaxy). Pointing I can see a lot of mileage in, but ‘motion controls’ really aren’t all that unless the motion actually replicates the movement you’re making on the screen. Bowling, swinging a golf club, all those things lend themselves to the motion control and they work well for the most part. The problem is where the motion doesn’t replicate real-life, at which point it just becomes a gesture-based way of replacing a button-press and is no better than a button press (and, indeed, worse in many cases).

Nintendo hit upon something that the public liked in the Wii Remote, but I think it’s a big mistake to try and shoehorn it into every game. They really should’ve packed in a classic controller as well, to encourage devs to offer a better range of alternative controls in situations where the fit isn’t particularly good.

Canton: It’s not the controls I don’t like, it’s the fact that you have to sit directly in front of the sensor bar within a required distance from the TV for it to work properly. I just wish it wasn’t light-based, although I’m sure there was no other way to do it. The Galaxy controls were great, it’s the fact that I’m forced to physically sit in a single position that pisses me off.

@ Blerk: That’s a good point you make, though I get the impression that it would make devs even lazier – most simply wouldn’t bother using the remote at all. At which point the Wii would become all too similar to the other consoles, but would suffer from the comparison by being comparatively underpowered.

I’ve spoken to a couple of people who belong to the school of thought that Nintendo should have not bothered with the nunchuk even – just made every developer work around the remote, and really position the Wii away from the PS3 and 360. It would barely share any games that way, and many titles would likely use the tech in more interesting ways. Though with the technology still in its relative infancy, I’m not sure that’d be a good idea. And people will always still want traditional controls and traditional games which simply couldn’t work on the tech as it is now.