House of the Dead: Overkill (Wii)

[danny_galaga]

I've had this for a while, but only recently realised how wonky the controls are. Does anyone know why? To explain, if you are in the Wii's menu, the pointer is pretty accurate (hold it right up to your eye and point wherever, and that's pretty much where the cursor points). And when you go into House of the Dead, that's the case for the first few menus. But once you get into the game, it's all over the place. The cursor accelerates exponentially up the screen. How did the developer turn something that was pretty accurate into something so woeful?

This game is great, but it would be damn near perfect with proper aiming. The best I can do is to adjust it in control settings so that the general area in the middle works ok. Most of the time that is where you are pointing after all. And use the automatic shotgun to compensate for inaccuracy...

[Howard_Casto]

Well if you don't care about 2 player mode just get typing of the dead OK for the pc.  It includes House as well.

[elvis]

I've had this for a while, but only recently realised how wonky the controls are. Does anyone know why? To explain, if you are in the Wii's menu, the pointer is pretty accurate (hold it right up to your eye and point wherever, and that's pretty much where the cursor points). And when you go into House of the Dead, that's the case for the first few menus. But once you get into the game, it's all over the place. The cursor accelerates exponentially up the screen. How did the developer turn something that was pretty accurate into something so woeful?

The standard Wii library for pointer/WiiMote stuff is pretty awful.  Horrid acceleration, loses accuracy in the corners - just crap.  To be fair, it's designed to make the WiiMote feel better for pointer movement rather than absolute accuracy.

SEGA wrote their own pointer stuff for a few games - notably "House of the Dead 2 & 3 Return" and "Ghost Squad" (I recall reading an interview with the developers on these porting projects to Wii specifically, and the fact that they threw out the provided WiiMote code in favour of their own for this very reason).  Play those games compared to other non-SEGA gun games, and the lightgun movement is fantastic (good enough to turn the cursor off).

HotD Overkill went back to the Wii's provided libraries.  Add to that the fact that the Wii really struggles with this game (frame rate drops all over the place), and it's a shocker by comparison.  I consider it a party game at best, and just avoid it if I'm in the mood for actual light-gun gaming.

I'm not sure about the "Gunblade NY / LA Machine Guns" port on Wii.  I own it, but haven't played it since purchase to compare.  I'm assuming since it's AM2 porting, they'd use the same good quality pointer code that was used in the earlier HotD games and Ghost Squad.

[danny_galaga]

But why is it that just being in the Nintendo Menu (the first thing you see when you turn on the Wii) the pointer accuracy is fine (not woeful like you suggest) but then when you go into the House of the Dead game, it sucks balls? Why not just use the standard code or whatever and at least have reasonable accuracy, rather than make it worse with your own code? That's what I don't understand…

I will have to check out HOTD 2 & 3 to compare.

[danny_galaga]

I've now tried HOTD 2 & 3 and Gunblade/LA. They are definitely better than Overkill that's for sure! In fact, it seems to me that Gunblade is the best out of those. Compares to the wii menu, maybe better. Will have a closer look some time. Be hard to measure though.
 It makes me even sadder that the aiming in Overkill was screwed up, it's a damn good looking game, with hilarious B movie mirth and a great soundtrack. Funny you mention Overkill as a party game, because that is when it gets the most play!