Top Five Best Uses Of The Wii Remote (so far)

vashivihan · 04-07-2008, 09:51 PM

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When Nintendo first unveiled the Wii remote, it came accompanied by a video that instantly made people realise how brilliant this new controller was. It allowed you to do anything from chopping vegetables through wielding a samurai sword to shooting bad guys, and potentially much more besides. We’re almost eighteen months into the Wii’s life now, and it’s fair to say that not enough developers have made the most of this revolutionary piece of hardware. Perhaps the revolution that Nintendo talked about wasn’t quite what we all expected - that the controller’s true purpose was simply to level the playing field - to make gaming much more accessible to people who’d never played a videogame before. Nowadays, every man and his dog knows how to use the Wii remote, while a 360 or PS3 joypad remains alien to all but the most regular gamer. It’s a qualified success, but a success nonetheless.

And plenty of developers HAVE managed to turn the remote into something very special indeed. The very best games on Wii - with one or two exceptions - all make terrific use of this wonderfully malleable controller’s unique abilities. So we thought it was high time we took a look at some of the best examples of remote use in the Wii’s software library to date. Follow the jump for our personal Top Five…

5. Super Mario Galaxy

Super Mario Galaxy

It’s telling that going back to Super Mario 64 or Super Mario Sunshine feels a little strange, post-Galaxy. Hoovering up star bits with your pointer? Gone. The pleasingly physical shake to bop an enemy or activate a star? Nope, not there either. And the other small but brilliant little touches that you could only pull off with the remote - riding a tilt-powered manta ray, aiming a cannon up to a distant planet - are all sadly missed. But perhaps the best use of the controller in the game is in the Super Monkey Ball-aping ball-rolling sections where you hold the remote vertically like an old-school joystick and try to guide Mario through some deceptively tricky bumps and curves - particularly in the green star Trial Galaxy. The music’s tempo increasing or decreasing depending on how fast you’re moving is the icing on the cake - adding a frantic tension as you career wildly around, desperately trying to screech to a halt before you fall down those holes.

4. Wario Ware: Smooth Moves

Wario Ware: Smooth Moves

Only fourth? Yes. It might seem harsh, but Wario Ware: Smooth Moves was probably the most disappointing of Wii’s launch window titles, simply because it wasn’t Best Thing Ever material, when many were convinced it and the Wii were the perfect match. Sadly, the need to adjust your hand position before each minigame robbed the series of its wonderful immediacy - and a degree of its fast and furious pacing, too. Nevertheless, as a showcase for the Wii remote, it’s arguably unsurpassed - which in itself is another problem. You see, in demonstrating so readily exactly what the controller was capable of, it’s slightly spoiled several games released afterwards which have used markedly similar control methods for their own minigames. Two or three of Smooth Moves’ micro-games pretty much render Cooking Mama Wii entirely redundant, while one or two highlights from other games merely bring this game to mind once more. But enough carping - Smooth Moves remains an enjoyably hatstand party game, with several moments of controller-based inspiration. Perhaps most memorable of all is the game where you’re forced to shake up a bottle of champagne and spray it across a podium of racing drivers. In that single moment, you really felt as if this controller could do anything - and Wario Ware seemed determined to prove that it could.

3. Metroid Prime 3: Corruption

Metroid Prime 3: Corruption

Another thing the remote was going to be perfect for when people first clapped eyes on it. “It’ll be amazing for FPSes”. And then everyone seemed to do their level best to prove this theory wrong, with Call of Duty 3’s woolly aiming rubbing shoulders with the woefully inaccurate Red Steel. And then along came Nintendo - or, to be more precise, Retro Studios - to show everyone how it should be done. Not content with having just about the perfect look/turn calibration, Retro decided to show off a bit by including several sections (and boss battles) where precision aiming with the remote was required. Zooming down a zip line and blasting doors out of the way with your free arm? Awesome. Retro even managed to make a brilliant feature of welding - sections where you had to piece together bits of circuit boards with your plasma beam felt fantastic with the remote. Yet our pick for the control highlight of Corruption is actually a piece of nunchuk-based brilliance - casting the controller forward then yanking it back to remove a Space Pirate’s shield (or to send one of those irritating flying enemies crashing to the ground) is the sort of motion-controlled magic that shames other, lesser, developers. Everyone else bar Nintendo: must try harder.

2. Kororinpa

Kororinpa

If someone tells you that the Wii remote can’t cope with the precision demands of most modern games, you have our permission to shove a copy of Kororinpa into their stupid cakehole. Sideways. Instantly making Super Monkey Ball: Banana Blitz looking like the hastily tossed-off piece of nonsense it undoubtedly is, Kororinpa shows that the Wii remote can be programmed to respond to the daintiest movement, with its tilting maze stages making fantastic use of the controller’s flexibility. Rather than merely asking you to tip the remote in a single direction, you’ll often be rotating it in a totally different way, before flipping it another to toss your ball from one side of a platform to another. And, when you reach the later stages (like level forty bastard three), your palms will be sweating as you barely nudge the remote to one side to negotiate some perilously thin walkways. And you’ll need the dexterity of a ninja to get all the gold medals and unlock the secret stages, with some levels requiring you to hurtle headlong towards the end of a platform before slamming on the brakes and making a leap of faith onto a moving pathway below. If you’ve not played Kororinpa yet, then do so immediately - not least because it’s one of the very few Wii games that you can pick up for less than a tenner if you shop around.

1. No More Heroes

No More Heroes

No More Heroes deserves as much praise for what it doesn’t do with the Wii remote as what it does. Anyone who’s suffered the tricep-annihilating feat of endurance that is Samurai Warriors Katana will know exactly how wrong a sword-swinging game on Wii can go. So, for the majority of No More Heroes’ fights, you’ll merely be required to repeatedly jab a button to set your combos in motion. The motion controls are reserved for executing the coup-de-grace upon your foes - a prompt comes up to swing your remote in one of the four main directions and protagonist Travis Touchdown will swiftly slice them into a million swirling black pixels. What no blood? Well, not in the UK or Japanese versions, but in the context of the game, this stylistic choice makes a weird kind of sense. What’s particularly brilliant about No More Heroes’ combat is how satisfying it is. Authentically Lucas-esque lightsaber swoosh sounds? Check. Crunchy, bass-heavy sound effects as your enemies are destroyed? Check. A series of gloriously show-offish wrestling moves to finish off stunned opponents? Checkeroo. It’s a textbook example of how to make fighting accessible yet fantastically gratifying. The game’s best Wii remote moment comes outside the fights, though. Picking up a ringing remote to take a call might have been done before - Wario Ware getting there first once again - but it’s just a brilliant touch to hear the entire conversation (in femme fatale Sylvia Kristel’s Gallic tones) by holding the remote up to your ear and listening. In a climate where so few third-party developers make the effort with Wii, we salute Suda 51 and his Grasshopper team for raising the bar.

lets just say that there are better titkes like mohh2 as best fps comtrols. there is also godfather. linkage

Dbomb3 · 04-07-2008, 09:53 PM

? wow i am amazed that no more heroes is top of the list. i need to pick a copy up

CantGetAWii · 04-07-2008, 09:54 PM

Metroid Prime 3 has had the best controls so far, and made me feel like I was in the game.

No More Heroes had it pretty good as well with button pressing and Wiimote waving divided up nicely, but I wouldn't put it at number one for controls.

Barbz911 · 04-07-2008, 10:30 PM

zack and wiki was GREAT how wasnt that on the list

linuxghost · 04-08-2008, 08:10 AM

I love the Wii controls for Resident Evil 4. I can only hope more shooters/FPSes in the future are so much fun to play.

linuxghost · 04-08-2008, 08:10 AM

With that said, I still need to pick up Metroid Prime 3. It looks really good.

Dbomb3 · 04-09-2008, 04:19 AM

NO YOU NEED TO PICK UP NO MORE HEROES...

just like me., and u hey cantgetawii, is it worth buying? im confused

(>.<)

George · 04-09-2008, 07:49 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by linuxghost

I love the Wii controls for Resident Evil 4. I can only hope more shooters/FPSes in the future are so much fun to play.

Yeah I'd say resi evil 4 controls are almost as good as MP3s.

Wii_BrEnDo2007 · 04-09-2008, 07:59 PM

aaaand no mention of PES damn these people need to explore wii

raisinghelen · 04-12-2008, 06:40 AM

My best 5 (other than Wii Sports) would be:
1. Trauma Center
2. Metroid Prime 3
3. Zack & Wiki
4. PES 2008
5. The Godfather

Dbomb3 · 04-13-2008, 02:22 AM

based on reviews, Okami should be on there.

Skorp · 04-13-2008, 02:52 AM

I would say.

1. Metroid Prime 3
2. Super Mario Galaxy
3. Zack & Wiki
4. The Rest

Atomheart · 04-13-2008, 03:09 AM

MOHH2 and The Godfather should definately be on there. Those two seem to showcase the potential of the controls beyond gimmicky waggle, which is what all of the games in the list had.

What a joke of a list! Then again, the author is a nobody on a nobody website. It might as well have been written by some noob here.

jimbo · 04-13-2008, 10:19 AM

MK should be on there now