Now that the RRoD is pretty much taken care of let’s take quick poll of everyone here and ask what the most annoying thing is in all of gaming. I’ll give you a hint: it starts with Friend and ends with Codes. Friend Codes are the bane of any online Wii gamer (not such an oxymoron anymore) not really because they exist — I think we’ve all managed to swap our Wii’s number with the people we want to swap it with — but because our Wii friend code actually does very little since almost every single game that features online has needed its own separate code to type in.
Pain in the ass? Most definitely. Necessary? Evidently not. Confirming the rumors of a massive game ditching Friend Codes, Vicarious Visions has announced that they’ve completely dropped in-game Friend Codes from Guitar Hero 5. Speaking with IGN CEO and Chief Creative Officer at Vicarious Visions, Karthik Bala talked about ridding the system of the needless barrier to online gaming.
“Yes. No in-game Friend Codes! For GH5, we’ve implemented support for your global Wii Friend Codes. If you’ve got friends in your Wii address book, they’ll automatically be added to your friends list in game, so you can easily connect up with them in online multiplayer games. It’s much easier to maintain a single list of friends on your Wii that you only have to enter once and use that address book directly in-game for invites, etc.,” Bala said.
Along with doing away with the hassle of individual Friend Codes, the Wii version of the game has been graphically revamped, shoved full of features the 360/PS3 versions aren’t going to have and, most excitingly, DS connectivity. With Friend Codes being far less of a hassle do the extra features sell you on the Wii version instead?
