In our quest to find a game that showed the full power of the Wii MotionPlus, Anthony and I turned our attention toward Wii Sports Resort, which was essentially the centerpiece of Nintendo's booth. While in line, we decided that we wanted to play a game together, and the fencing game looked perfect for our purposes. We stepped up, took a Wiimote each, and got to slashing away at each other.
The jump below will lead you to our thoughts on the fencing game and how the Wii MotionPlus works in tandem with it. You might be pleasantly suprised at our results.
Anthony: We played a few games Chad already previewed, but Chad is stupid and we aren't so it's okay if we double-team them in our own inimitable fashion, except it isn't inimitable since Hamza and Dale ripped it off because they're tools .
But I read Chad's preview of Wii Sports Resort and thought, "this is just Chad being easy to please, or something. It can't really be as shallow-yet-enjoyable as he claims."
But we played the fencing deathmatch mode.
Ashley: I'm not sure "deathmatch" is a good way to put it. The swords look like they were made out of twisted balloons.
Anthony: Twisted balloon deathmatch.
Ashley: I thought it was going to be pretty shallow at first. Just hacking away at one another and simple all-around blocking.
Anthony: And you hadn't even played Red Steel 2.
That's how Red Steel 2 is.
Ashley: Like, a single block move.
Anthony: Yeah, exactly.
But I was really quite glad to be proven wrong.
Ashley: The B button initiates the block, but depending on where you're holding the Wii MotionPlus, you block a different area of your body.
Anthony: Yeah. When we played, I wanted to test if the blocking was a really binary thing where if you block horizontally, you will parry a downward sword blow No Matter What, and vice versa.
And that's not the case.
Ashley: Your blocking leaves the rest of your body vulnerable.
Anthony: I held my sword vertically and hit the block button, but when you came down with a vertical slice on a different area and I got owned. Same thing with a horizontal slice.
You could still hit me with a downward blow and kick my ass if I hadn't blocked in just the right place, which I loved.
Ashley: Just like it ought to work!
Anthony: Yeah, exactly.
I guess there was a sort of three-hit combo system in place to keep the fights from being insane wagglefests, which I thought was pretty decent.
We had some good back-and-forth combat, I thought.
Ashley: I lost every time.
Anthony: My definition of "back and forth" differs from yours.
But, I mean, it felt like an actual DUEL.
Which is more than I can say for anything I found in Red Steel 2.
Ashley: I felt like the Wii MotionPlus was really responsive. I didn't feel the delay that I felt when I used it to play other games.
Anthony: Does that swordfighting game convince you that the Wii MotionPlus is the real deal, or do you think they just sort of cleverly designed around its assumed flaws?
Ashley: Gosh, I really don't know. They may have a better idea of how to use the technology or something.
Everything else I used it with wasn't developed by Nintendo.
Maybe they know something no one else does.
Anthony: Maybe they know that Bustin' makes me feel good.
Ashley: I refuse to let another of these conversations end with that line.
Anthony: You're a cunt.
Contest:
6:10 PM on 06.04.2009
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This is definitely the kind of experience I would've wanted from the Wii, but without the outlandish context I still don't really find it exciting. It's cool to see as a kind of tech demo, but really when it's all stripped down to the pure basics of sword fighting like this I might as well just take up arms and see if my brother'll duel me. It's hard to get swept up in the atmosphere fighting with what Ashley describes as twisted baloons.
WRONG. Chad is smart. :p But otherwise, a good preview. XD
Ba-dum-cha!