Nintendo Wii Fanboy

Star Wars games have a tough time. With a few exceptions, they generally end up steaming piles of bantha fodder. For every Knights of the Old Republic or Rogue Squadron there's a Super Bombad Racing or Revenge of the Sith. Still, each console generation manages to grab hold of a few shining stars of the Star Wars galaxy, and oftentimes these games are universally praised and well-received -- after all, anything Star Wars George Lucas didn't manage to screw up is something worth celebrating.

Star Wars: Republic Commando, developed in-house at Lucasarts, seemed to pass under the radar last generation, receiving less attention than most of its contemporaries. Those who gave it a chance were treated to a squad-based first-person shooter better than the Battlefront series and considerably darker in tone than most Star Wars games (hello, Lego Star Wars). Gritty, bloody, and atmospheric, Republic Commando is an underappreciated gem and a great opportunity for the Wii to bolster its rather meager library of first-person shooters.

NEXT >>

There's a lot of goodies available to Wii gamers this week, both on the retail shelf and via download. Of course, we would expect as much, what with it being the second week of November and everything. Planning on picking up something for yourself, or perhaps a gift for that special someone? Head on past the break for the details and let us know what you'll be grabbing!

Okay, we must admit that we're kind of surprised at the clip Entertainment Weekly has for the upcoming The Clone Wars: Lightsaber Duels game. It looks kind of decent, actually, with all of the stuff going on in the background and the lightsaber battle shown being kind of action-packed. Our first glimpse of the game looked nothing like this. There's some polish now, it would seem. Of course, it is based on that movie that supposedly wasn't very good, but if the gameplay is as fun as this clip would make it seem, we can overlook that. Maybe it doesn't need MotionPlus after all?

We'd like to embed the video for you, but EW won't allow it. To see the clip, click here.


[Via Go Nintendo]

It's been a while since master of misanthropy Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw was featured on these pages, but now he's back, in full sneering mode, with a scathing review of the colossally popular Star Wars: The Force Unleashed. Like many of us, Yahtzee hoped the Wii's motion-sensing capabilities would open the door to a whole new galaxy of light saber swish-a-thons that worked, only to be disappointed.

His ire is eventually directed towards the "temperamental" Wii Remote, which he describes as "like playing any other console but with all the buttons randomly reassigned every couple of seconds." Ouch. Bound past the jump for the full, NSFW review.

According to the latest issue of EGM, which just arrived in our mail box, Wii owners could be seeing Rogue Squadron make a return to a Nintendo console, as Q from the Rumor Mill is reporting that Lucasarts has licensed out the Rogue Squadron series of games. Sadly, we're not talking about a brand new game, but rather a compilation of the N64 and GameCube titles, all on one Wii disc. With the whole Play on Wii thing, it seems like this has a good chance of becoming true.

Head past the break for the excerpt from the magazine.

And here we thought the other solutions on the market were good enough. Turns out, that isn't the case, because Thrustmaster has come in and totally set the bar really high. One of the big problems with these lightsaber knock-offs is that most have been fairly short. Well, it appears Thrustmaster's Glow Saber Duo Pack overcomes that and succeeds in many ways:

• It comes in a pack of two
• The beam's length looks like it's long enough
  
• It has a sweet handle
• It's only $17.99
• It's not as clumsy or random as a blaster

So there you have it. Thrustmaster wins.

[Via Engadget]

It looks like we should've taken those book sales as an indication of how hungry Star Wars fans were for something new. The latest game to bear the Star Wars name, Star Wars: The Force Unleashed, has managed to sell a whopping 1.5 million copies in its first 5 days on shelves. The Force is strong with ... uh, yeah. Sorry.

Darrell Rodriguez, president of LucasArts, didn't expect such high numbers, apparently. "We're blown away by the response to the game." So, how many of you picked up the game? Did it blow you away or have you found it to be sub-par?

In this edition of Point/Counterpoint, we're tackling the issue of MotionPlus and Lucasarts' upcoming Star Wars game, The Clone Wars: Lightsaber Duels. Sure, there's a rumor of another game in the works that will utilize the tech, but nothing is confirmed yet. Does a Star Wars game need MotionPlus? Read on for the debate, then cast your vote in our poll.

We were a little puzzled when LucasArts introduced Star Wars: The Clone Wars: Lightsaber Duels before the release of The Force Unleashed on Wii, whose major selling point was ... an exclusive lightsaber duel mode. It seemed as if we were being told to disregard that first game that wasn't out yet, because the real thing was on the way. Well, if this rumor is true, get ready to disregard the second game as well.

According to EGM's "Quartermann" gossip column, a grumbling LucasArts is returning to the drawing board for another Wii lightsaber game, this time designed for MotionPlus. This potential game is rumored to be out sometime next year. If this is real, LucasArts would be smart not to talk about it until they've sold at least one copy of the two existing lightsaber games.

There are few things more fun than watching people try to figure out how to handle a new Wii game. With traditional controllers, unless you were staring directly at peoples' hands, it was hard to see their bibbles and bobbles as they worked out how to make things go, but with the Wii, you can see all the flails and foibles in full and fantastic motion. That's the real secret of Wii's success -- why do you think multiplayer is so popular with Wii owners? -- and even people at the Games Convention aren't immune, as this footage of some dude attempting to play Star Wars: The Force Unleashed, unequivocally proves. Luckily, it's a pretty long video, so he's got lots of time to get used to Vadering around.

Despite it being arguably the best thing to come from Nintendo's E3 line-up, everyone isn't happy about MotionPlus. At the top of the list of disgruntled folk is none other than LucasArts. Why? Well, according to a blurb from the latest issue of Game Informer, which was transcribed by a GAFfer (the one with the Arkham Asylum reveal), third parties weren't privy to the info before Nintendo's press conference (if they read us, they would have learned about it a day beforehand). That's old hat to us all, though.

The problem is that LucasArts specifically took the time to craft The Clone Wars: Lightsaber Duels specifically for the Wii. See, everyone wants a 1:1 lightsaber game and it would've been a fantastic way to market the game. We guess that ship has sailed ...



[Via CVG]

This week, graphics professionals and enthusiasts flocked to SIGGRAPH to share and discuss the latest technologies and techniques for making gorgeous computer graphics. The focus of the convention is mainly offline rendering (the stuff that we see in print, movies, and television that's too complex to be rendered in real time), but as computers and game consoles become more powerful, many of these methods and effects make their way into the realm of realtime rendering. Ten years ago, the opening cutscene for Super Mario Galaxy would have needed to be rendered by a cluster of computers and converted into full motion video.

Even though the Wii is not pushing graphical fidelity the way this generation's HD consoles are, we've still come a long way and there's much to be appreciated. There are all sorts of graphical effects that, over the years, have been added to the game artist's palette, and in this edition of Revolutionary, I'd like to draw your attention to a few of them.

When games like Super Mario Galaxy come along, we find ourselves questioning how it's possible for them to look so good, while most other Wii wares have the appearance of games designed for a much weaker platform. It's easy to forget that the Wii's hardware comes from the strong pedigree of Gamecube when much of what we're looking at reeks of Playstation number two.

With multi-platform shovelware, and even a few high profile titles that didn't get any special consideration on the Wii (Guitar Hero 3 and Rock Band, I'm lookin' at you!), developers often drop assets and effects to a lowest common denominator. In the class which Wii is placed, the Playstation 2 has the lowest and most common specs, so our Wii graphics are brought down to its level. The PS2 has had its share of beautiful games, but the methods for making them so beautiful are uncommon enough that they're largely ignored when making games that will have to be replicated on another console in the same class.

It's often the first and second party games or that rare, exclusive third-party effort that is given the budget and time to explore the depths of the Wii's fixed-function graphics hardware and pull off something it wasn't expressly designed for. And considering that the core technologies in the Wii were designed nearly a decade ago, there's a lot of "new tricks" that artists and programmers have had to teach the "old dog."

That's according to LucasArts president Darrell Rodriguez. We imagine the Force Unleashed team's shoulders drooping a little in unison every time LucasArts undersells their game in favor of serving the larger Clone Wars multimedia hype machine.

This Entertainment Weekly video interview with Rodriguez, Clone Wars TV series director Dave Filoni and George Lucas, as well as members of both the DS and Wii dev teams, features a little bit of excellent-looking footage of the Wii game. According to Krome's Robert Walsh, the Wii game is designed to allow players to replay experiences from the TV show.

LucasArts' goal of a totally convergent game/show experience is cool, but it's kind of a shame that they're spreading those particular character designs across so many screens.

Ever hear that expression "if it ain't broke, don't fix it?" Traveller's Tales has, as the company has become quite the cash-earner with its LEGO line-up of games, so why change? "We've gotten started doing some LEGO games on the Warner IP... down the line," says Traveller's Tales' Jon Burton. Also, he wants to dabble in films and the like, while also keeping his "day job" in games development. What a multi-tasker!

"And for me personally, I think further in the future we're making a kids' TV show... using some of the tech we've developed for games," Jon said. So, what kind of kids' show? He wouldn't name anything specific, nor would he comment on what the next LEGO game from them will be (well, aside from the soon-to-release LEGO Batman). Looks like we'll just have to wait and see.

What kind of LEGO game would you like to see next?

Never really watched The Clone Wars show, so obviously, the art style for the games is a little, uh, striking. Okay, let's be honest -- if you're not accustomed to it, it's ugly. But now that we're seeing some screens from the game, the look is starting to seem normal. Maybe even sort of okay. By next month, we'll probably be digging it. We're fickle.

There's just one thing dampening the ol' enthusiasm, though. Now that we've seen the swordplay in Wii Sports Resort with Wii MotionPlus, it's hard to get excited about a pre-accessory game like this. We want lightsaber duels, and we were told first to look to The Force Unleashed, and then to Star Wars: The Clone Wars -- Lightsaber Duels. Look, it's even in the name. And yet, now it seems somewhat diminished by a dude slicing at a block of wood in a beach-themed mini-game collection.

If nothing else, the two (or three) will make for great comparisons when they're all released. But somehow, we think we might not be alone in hoping, for once, for a delay.