wco81 wrote:Tried tennis first, singleplayer. The serving animation was odd, I would flick the wand to get the toss and then when I swung, the animation was at best 3/4 swing if not sidearm. I tried straight vertical swing but the animation on screen was the same.
But the bigger deal is, at most I only had to take two shots before hitting a winner which wasn't returned. There were no rallies requiring me to hit more than twice.
I quit and looked for settings to increase difficulty but couldn't find it. I would hope there are different settings or the game would be boring singleplayer.
The skill level of the competition changes as your level advances. Each match you play raises(or lowers) your overall level, and the level of your competitors rises accordingly. It is a solid system, with easy entry, rapid advancement if your good and decent competition. The rallies lengthen because the better skilled players get to more of your cross-court shots.
wco81 wrote:Then I tried baseball for awhile. Couldn't score any runs. Am I mistaken that you can't field or throw to a base? If you can't get the ball out of the infield, even a grounder, it's called an out as soon as it's fielded and there were never any throws to a base.
Balls hit to the outfield were either caught or usually a double. Again, they ruled it a double after the outfielder fielded the ball, sometimes shallow where you should be able to limit the runner to a single. But there was no throwing to the base?
It is not a baseball simulation by any means, so they just simplified it to show one part and "announce the results of the play". I think that is too simple in many ways, but it does keep the game moving quickly. I've seen shallow outfield plays ruled singles, and botched infield plays - I even pulled off a bunt down the third base line. Again, some of these things may only show as you advance in skill like in Tennis.
wco81 wrote:On pitching, I didn't know about holding the buttons down to get different pitch types. I just tried different throwing motions and it didn't affect location, just velocity based on how much acceleration I had in the motion. I could feel my shoulder straining a bit. I tried just flicking my wrist and saw that it had the same effect as moving my whole arm, trying to emulate a throwing motion.
So you could sit on the couch and play this. You could stand up and try to do a proper motion but it makes no difference.
Pitching location is controlled by the directional pad (high/low, inside/outside), and the A button and B button alone or in combination change the pitch type (screwball, curve, & splitter, respectively). You can switch to a side/underhand pitch style by hitting the 2 button near the bottom of the remote. There is more depth, variation and strategy involved in the pitching than I thought at first, and I actually enjoy working a batter.
Most of the Wii Sports games are only measuring the change in the accelerometer, so however you are comfortable making a quick motion works fine. It is up to you whether you get into it or play casually, which is great, and also means people with limited motioning abilities can still play.
wco81 wrote:Didn't see any depth in these games but I understand these are more demos than full-fledged games, which would appeal more to casual gamers in a party setting or kids.
But even if they did a full-fledged game, it appears the wand is only measuring the acceleration and just whether there's a motion or not, not the nature of that motion. It would be cool for instance if you can do a sidearm pitching motion and you got that on screen. But that can't work really unless it's processing the posture and relative arm position of the player.
It would be easy to dismiss it as form over substance but it doesn't really even track your form.
As I said above, there is much more depth than I expected in these tech demo games. The remote can track acceleration as well as tilt or torque; bowling and tennis both allow the user to put spin on the ball, so there is some gyroscopic measurement taking place. There should be nothing stopping a developer from measuring the tilt of the controller and calculating sidearm, underarm or overhand from that measurement, beyond the difficulty in taking into account the myriad of ways that motion would vary from individual to individual and how best to interpret it.
It will be interesting to see what developers do in the coming few years. The information than can be gathered from the remote should lend itself to a broad application of games, and combined with the pointer information could be eye-opening. Whether anyone besides Nintendo tries to do anything beyond ports certainly remains to be seen, but I see great potential in the technology.
I'm still learning more and more what the simple Wii Sports title can really do. It seems I'm learning some new stuff every time I play.
Of course I've searched all over and can't find any extra controllers anywhere but at least I'll have the system. I'm assuming the bowling in Wii sports will let us just hand off the wiimote between players.
