Right, I gave this a bash last night. I had heard that their was negative criticism of this game but I didn't read any of the reviews so started playing with an open mind.
On starting the game the presentation is kinda funky whereby you choose the options and modes by grabbing a particular neon sign and dropping it into the middle of the screen to select it. Funky - but not necessary.
On starting the game, the story is told with artwork overlaid with voice acting and subtitles. After a bit of loading you then get to play. You turn and aim by pointing the remote and move about with the nunchuck anaolgue. The remote "trigger" B button fires and the A button locks the camera on to an enemy. Once locked on, moving the remote forward zooms in on an enemy and back zooms out. To reload you wave the nunchuck down, same goes for picking up weapons and opening doors. Nunchuck 'C' button jumps and 'Z' ducks.
On initially playing this game I must say that I didn't like it. The controls just seemed to cumbersome, it was difficult to evade being shot whilst also trying to aim at the enemy and shoot them. Turning your character with the remote to face in the right direction then also trying to point the dot at the enemy was extremely difficult with my character just looking everywhere but the right direction and getting killed. After this frustration I went into the options and changed the sensitivity down to low which the blurb recommended for people getting used to the Wii controls. This made a big difference for me. The character now turned slightly slower when using the remote which gave an opportunity to actually aim at an enemy and get a shot on target. I progressed a lot further with this control style and picked up some different weapons - The Uzi, shotgun and the Samurai sword!
Sword fighting was actually quite fun, more enjoyable then I expected it to be. You actually use two swords, one broken one in your left hand for blocking and the main one in your right for swiping. Blocking an attack is done by moving the nunchuk left or right at the correct time, when done correctly you can parry your oponents attack and get a strike of your own. You strike an enemy by waving the remote in their direction. It actually works quite well although you can't really get any kind of combos going with your strikes. The maximum I managed was only 2 unaswered strikes. It was fun nonetheless. When you defeat an ememy in sword play you can choose whether to finish them off or not. Sparing them seems to give you a bonus.
The more I played it the more I started to kind of enjoy it especially when you get some different weapons as opposed to the standard pistol
The graphics are not that great (especially through composite!) and they definitely look and feel last gen. The game follows a fairly linear path but is not as bad as I thought it would be, you wonder about and can choose different doors and routes to go through with various enemies blocking your path until you get to the final destination.
I did notice some slow down when there appeared to be not much going on which was a little worrying but it only happened once and not during any of the other more intense battles. Also the voice acting of the enemies when you fight them in the game does get repetitive. It seemed everytime someone appeared they repeated the same line calling me a bastard. And when I hid behind something to recharge my health they always seemed to ask where I was or that they had lost me. The enemies did tend to look the same too
As I stated the control system improved for me by putting it on low sensitivity and after a bit more practice I got better at moving whilst simultaneously aiming. It does take a while to get use to the control system (could be the same for other shooters of this type like Metroid).
Pointing the controller is definitely not like pointing and firing a gun, its more still a feel of pointing at people with a mouse even though the trigger button is suitablably positioned.
A couple of other things to mention are that you have to get used to constantly pointing the remote at the screen you can't put your hand down to rest it otherwise you'll go out of range of the sensor bar and be looking all over the place. A few times I found that I had moved my hand out of range and my character ended up looking up at the ceiling. It takes a few seconds to get back in range in which time you could be shot at
There is also a fair bit of loading in this game, the game will stop for a few seconds and you will hear the Wii chugging away trying to load the next sequence - I didn't notice any of this pausing or loading when playing Wii Sports. There is also noticeable noise from the Wii when loading - not on the scale of the 360, but you can hear it (Note: I was playing at night with the volume fairly low)
I'm gonna play some more tonight as the game definitely grows on you the more you play it. I think you will have to give it a couple of hours to get used to the control method and its nuiances. If you only play this for about 15 minutes you probably won't like it as I didn't in my first 15 minutes. But once you get the sword and a few weapons there is a kind of 'one more go' feel to it. Its definitely not everyones cup of tea though.
Overall - Average with potential if you stick with it. Not a system seller, if you're deciding between this and Zelda your choice is easy
More opinion after I've played it a bit more
ps. There is no blood in the game which I found quite dissapointing
On starting the game the presentation is kinda funky whereby you choose the options and modes by grabbing a particular neon sign and dropping it into the middle of the screen to select it. Funky - but not necessary.
On starting the game, the story is told with artwork overlaid with voice acting and subtitles. After a bit of loading you then get to play. You turn and aim by pointing the remote and move about with the nunchuck anaolgue. The remote "trigger" B button fires and the A button locks the camera on to an enemy. Once locked on, moving the remote forward zooms in on an enemy and back zooms out. To reload you wave the nunchuck down, same goes for picking up weapons and opening doors. Nunchuck 'C' button jumps and 'Z' ducks.
On initially playing this game I must say that I didn't like it. The controls just seemed to cumbersome, it was difficult to evade being shot whilst also trying to aim at the enemy and shoot them. Turning your character with the remote to face in the right direction then also trying to point the dot at the enemy was extremely difficult with my character just looking everywhere but the right direction and getting killed. After this frustration I went into the options and changed the sensitivity down to low which the blurb recommended for people getting used to the Wii controls. This made a big difference for me. The character now turned slightly slower when using the remote which gave an opportunity to actually aim at an enemy and get a shot on target. I progressed a lot further with this control style and picked up some different weapons - The Uzi, shotgun and the Samurai sword!
Sword fighting was actually quite fun, more enjoyable then I expected it to be. You actually use two swords, one broken one in your left hand for blocking and the main one in your right for swiping. Blocking an attack is done by moving the nunchuk left or right at the correct time, when done correctly you can parry your oponents attack and get a strike of your own. You strike an enemy by waving the remote in their direction. It actually works quite well although you can't really get any kind of combos going with your strikes. The maximum I managed was only 2 unaswered strikes. It was fun nonetheless. When you defeat an ememy in sword play you can choose whether to finish them off or not. Sparing them seems to give you a bonus.
The more I played it the more I started to kind of enjoy it especially when you get some different weapons as opposed to the standard pistol
The graphics are not that great (especially through composite!) and they definitely look and feel last gen. The game follows a fairly linear path but is not as bad as I thought it would be, you wonder about and can choose different doors and routes to go through with various enemies blocking your path until you get to the final destination.
I did notice some slow down when there appeared to be not much going on which was a little worrying but it only happened once and not during any of the other more intense battles. Also the voice acting of the enemies when you fight them in the game does get repetitive. It seemed everytime someone appeared they repeated the same line calling me a bastard. And when I hid behind something to recharge my health they always seemed to ask where I was or that they had lost me. The enemies did tend to look the same too
As I stated the control system improved for me by putting it on low sensitivity and after a bit more practice I got better at moving whilst simultaneously aiming. It does take a while to get use to the control system (could be the same for other shooters of this type like Metroid).
Pointing the controller is definitely not like pointing and firing a gun, its more still a feel of pointing at people with a mouse even though the trigger button is suitablably positioned.
A couple of other things to mention are that you have to get used to constantly pointing the remote at the screen you can't put your hand down to rest it otherwise you'll go out of range of the sensor bar and be looking all over the place. A few times I found that I had moved my hand out of range and my character ended up looking up at the ceiling. It takes a few seconds to get back in range in which time you could be shot at
There is also a fair bit of loading in this game, the game will stop for a few seconds and you will hear the Wii chugging away trying to load the next sequence - I didn't notice any of this pausing or loading when playing Wii Sports. There is also noticeable noise from the Wii when loading - not on the scale of the 360, but you can hear it (Note: I was playing at night with the volume fairly low)
I'm gonna play some more tonight as the game definitely grows on you the more you play it. I think you will have to give it a couple of hours to get used to the control method and its nuiances. If you only play this for about 15 minutes you probably won't like it as I didn't in my first 15 minutes. But once you get the sword and a few weapons there is a kind of 'one more go' feel to it. Its definitely not everyones cup of tea though.
Overall - Average with potential if you stick with it. Not a system seller, if you're deciding between this and Zelda your choice is easy
More opinion after I've played it a bit more
ps. There is no blood in the game which I found quite dissapointing
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