Call of Duty 5: World at War (Wii)

[patrickl]

I loved Medal of Honor 2 on the Wii. Sure the AI was ridiculously dumb and the scripting was so silly that sometimes the soldiers would just pop-up around me (when I was hiding in a room). Still, the controls were great and to me it was the perfect integration between a light gun shooter and an FPS.

So, I was dying to play the new Call of Duty. Big disappointment though. The game doesn't use the wiimote as a lightgun, but more as a joystick. Point the Wiimote left and the cursor slides slowly (or fast) to the left, point the Wiimote to the right and the cursor slides to the right. There are some different control settings and a bigger dead zone allows for a bit more light gun type game, but then the steering becomes impossible. WTF?!?! Are you kidding me? Didn't these people understand that the biggest plus of Medal of Honor 2 and Metroid Prime 3 where the great control schemes?

To make matters worse, the scripting and AI in COD5 is just about as bad as in MOH2. You can fight for hours while enemies keep swarming your position. Sprint for the checkpoint and suddenly all opposition is gone?!?!? Sometimes an ally and an enemy stand next to each other and they will be firing at targets far away from them. Seriously bizarre. It's cute how team mates sometimes pick up a grenade and throw it back at the enemy though. On the other hand, because I was usually storming the enemy positions they tend to throw the grenade right back on top of me.

The sound also sux. There is constant screaming of "Banzaaaai!!!" (when fighting the Japanese) and the volume is always the same. No matter if the enemy is far away or if they are actually just about to stick a bajonet in your back. No 3D sound either obviously.

The game is brutal though. Bullets are flying everywhere, I really felt pinned down now and then. POWs are tortured or executed, enemies burn alive from the flame thrower, etc etc etc. The detail is great too. The scenery is done in done with a lot of attention to detail. It's kinda wasted because the Wii isn't able to display the graphics properly, but still. It's a nice short documentary of WW2 too, with some B&W footage of actual WWII battles mixed in with mission descriptions.

I did finish the game though and that doesn't happen much with Wii games. Usually I get bored in 15 minutes or half an hour. I'd actually say I finished the game way to fast. Didn't keep track exactly but it couldn't have been more than 6 or 7 hours.

[DaveMMR]

I thought you sold your Wii?      I might be thinking of someone else though... 

I think I'm starting to backpedal a bit and agree with you more about graphics since I finally starting tinkering with gaming on the PC (I get into that kick once every couple of years). 

Now I'm finding that I want to play FPS only on the PC for the mouse control (and graphics, though I don't have the coin for highest quality).  The Wii has that advantage of having control quite similar to mouse aiming.  So it's a shame that COD5 messes it all up.   The system's been out long enough so to me that's just lazy programming.  Oh well...

[patrickl]

I thought you sold your Wii?      I might be thinking of someone else though... 

Nope, I'm the one who mostly dislikes the Wii games (Medal of Honor 2 and Excite Truck being just about the only exceptions), but I keep the Wii mostly for my kid. He loves it to death (Barnyard, Bee Movie, Pokemon and lately Lego Batman).

I think I'm starting to backpedal a bit and agree with you more about graphics since I finally starting tinkering with gaming on the PC (I get into that kick once every couple of years). 

Now I'm finding that I want to play FPS only on the PC for the mouse control (and graphics, though I don't have the coin for highest quality).  The Wii has that advantage of having control quite similar to mouse aiming.  So it's a shame that COD5 messes it all up.   The system's been out long enough so to me that's just lazy programming.  Oh well...

Lol, I actually thought that this time I would settle for lesser graphics and go for better controls. I initially wanted this game for my PS3, but saw that it was also available on the Wii. I'm not sure what extra's the PS3 version would bring, but I can hardly imagine that I would like aming a shooter with a joystick any better than what I get now on the Wii version. Although using the Wiimote as a joystick is woefully inaccurate. The Wii version actually allows you to use the jostick on the nunchuk for aiming as well, but I felt that that was even worse.

I know I should play FPS games with a mouse on the PC, but I wanted to play something on the TV again. Big screen, lots of noise.