News

Industries

Companies

Jobs

Events

People

Video

Audio

Galleries

My Biz

Submit content

My Account

Advertise with us

Gamers get a handle on the Wii's future features

Nintendo continues to innovate with its motion-sensing Wii controller, displaying a few new options at E3 this year. With WiiMotion Plus, the controller more accurately reflects the user's movement for functions like swordplay. 'Wii Music' allows gamers to play virtual instruments, though the results can be a little rough on the ears.

When it first came out, the main thing that drew me to the Nintendo Wii was its potential for first-person shooter (FPS) games. Finally, here was a console on which I could play a "Metroid Prime" game despite my infirmity.

By my infirmity, I mean my inability to play an FPS game with any degree of skill or finesse without the aid of some sort of motion-sensitive device. Ever since the days of "Duke Nukem 3-D," I've always been tethered to a mouse to aim those tiny little crosshairs at a target, or an actual gun prop if we're talking arcade. Give me the sort of controller found on an Xbox 360 Latest News about Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3 Latest News about PlayStation 3, and my thumbs just can't get them to line up right until I've popped off nine or 10 missing shots. By that time, someone's snuck up behind me with a bazooka, and the obvious happens. I actually got teased because of this at E3.

Then came the Wii, and its controller made FPS gaming fun for me again. Then came the Wii Zapper, which broke my heart. Selling a simple piece of plastic to turn the Wii controller into an updated version of a Nintendo Zapper was a great idea, but they put the trigger on the wrong grip. This could be fixed by reassigning the Fire command to one of the Nunchuck buttons, but not all of the games that advertise themselves as Zapper-compatible allow you to do that.

Read the full article here.

Let's do Biz