The Countdown, Continued
As promised, here is the continuation of The Countdown, beginning with my third game choice. This also marks the point in my list from which I will not be buying the games at launch, but only after I’ve expended a great deal of attention on games 1 and 2 (Zelda and Red Steel). And if possible, I’ll wait until reviews emerge as well.
Andrew’s Complete Wii Buying Guide (Part 2)
3. Trauma Center: Second Opinion.
It’s a surgery game. Come on! This is a genre that needs to have more games in it, and fast. This is also a genre that lends itself perfectly to Nintendo’s line of innovative user interface devices. Remember that first video that unveiled the controller, back when it was still dubbed the Revolution? This sort of thing that would have fit right in with those demos: cooking, conducting, and triple-bypass surgery right in your living room. I will shamefully admit that I have never played the DS precursor to this title, but I’ve heard heard good things. So that’s why, barring abysmal reviews, this will become my #3 game.
4. WarioWare: Smooth Moves & Rayman Raving Rabbids (tie).
Every good game collection needs at least one party game. Here are two. Both are collections of mini-games suitable for four drunken friends at 2 in the morning. Both look pretty good. But I don’t really need two party games—nor can I afford that. So I plan to let a review or two surface on this issue before deciding.
At this point, I am probably leaning towards Rayman, because the “Rabbid” theme of the game just looks like some solid humor to me. And has anyone else noticed that every video Nintendo’s released of WarioWare features adolescent to teenage girls? It’s not like they made different edits of the same actresses either; I’m quite certain there are multiple gameplay videos out there, each containing a distinctly different group of young girls. Is that really the target audience? Or am I just reading too far into this little coincidence, and simultaneously making myself appear creepy?
6. Excite Truck.
The big question here is whether this title can live up to that name. While the concept of an Excite Bike sequel has a nice ring to it, something like this obviously can’t be considered a true sequel. It would be like calling airplanes the sequel to shoes. Sure, they’ll both help get you from point A to point B, but the two are so wildly different that there is no suitable metric for comparison. (Alternative analogy: air conditioning is like the sequel to ice.)
The potential I see in Excite Truck is the same as in Trauma Center: a perfect interface. You hold the remote like a steering wheel and it behaves like one, but with one feature not commonly found in automobile steering wheels: tilt. Remember how in older games (actually, I probably still do this), when trying to pull off a particularly tricky move, you’d find yourself physically leaning in the direction you wanted to go? As if swaying the controller suddenly would grant Mario that extra push he needed to clear another pixel or two. Well, now that stuff actually works!
I only have one game left that I want to mention, but this post is getting long. I’ll have the final installment up in a day or two.