Electronic Arts had some pretty decent titles on the show floor this year, besides the cavalcade of sports titles that they come out with every year; said show floor is where I got my only looks at Skate It for the Wii and DS, SimCity Creator for the Wii, and Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince for Wii. Both Nintendo Gal and I got a lot more time to hear about, and try out, the highly anticipated Rock Band 2. Read on to hear impressions of all.
I was quite excited to see Skate It on the floor this year, as I highly enjoyed what I played of skate on the 360 and wanted to see Balance Board integration. The rep first handed me the DS version of Skate It, and I’m pleased to say it performs admirably. If you’re familiar with the"Flick-it" controls of 360’s skate, then you’ll jump right into the DS version, as the stylus acts exactly like the right analog stick; simple strokes on the touch screen will have you quickly performing ollies, flips, grabs, manuals, and whatever else you’d like. It’s extremely intuitive, and it barely took me any time at all to get used to tricking myself out, unlike skate, which I never felt like I got the hang of. The game also looks excellent, pushing the DS’s graphics capabilities well, and I’m told the game’s framerate will be reliably steady upon the game’s release; this is one I’ll hopefully be trying out once it comes out.
After some time with the DS version, the Balance Board opened up, and I stepped on to give the Wii version a try. The game is played by shifting weight on the Balance Board, while using a Wii Remote in one hand to handle things like speeding up; normally, you’ll be standing perfectly balanced on the board to go straight, and shifting your weight slightly left or right will turn you, and making a jumping motion will cause you to ollie. The idea works well on paper, but I ran into a bit of a problem when trying to control it the first time: my balance sucks, and the game made me extremely aware of this extremely quickly. Whenever I tried to turn left, I’d have to counterbalance afterward to prevent falling over and end up right back where I started; I soon found that subtler motions work well too, but those weren’t very easy either. The turning mechanism seemed a bit hypersensitive, and I was told they were still working on fine-tuning it, so I hope the whole process gets easier later on. Those misgivings aside, the game looks fine, runs fine, and doing tricks with the Wii Remote is a bit more intuitive than my rant three lines up would make it seem. There’s also a remote-only control option that works fine (you gesture like you’d flick on a 360), but it wasn’t as much fun without the Balance Board, truth be told; I think the game is being built around the board experience, so if you’re looking to pick this game up, here’s hoping you have one.
While walking around and popping my head into the shot of G4’s coverage of the show (you may have seen me on G4, or even on ESPN at one point), a rep pulled me over to try some of the mini-games from the Wii version of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. First up was Wizard Dueling, in which I tried to knock Draco Malfoy off his feet and down for the count. There are three to four spells to be used here, all gesture-based, and I’m glad to say that they’re responsive, not confused, and feel like wand motions. I managed to successfully land nearly every attack I tried, as well as block against some spells sent my way. Once I kicked Malfoy’s butt into next Tuesday, I tried out some Quidditch, which was also surprisingly entertaining. Harry is flying about a loosely pre-set path, and you need to guide him more specifically by pointing the Wii Remote at the screen, like one section of Twilight Princess. There are two main things to do here: 1) guide Harry through rings that extend his time to catch the Snitch, and 2) try to knock the opposing player off his broom, which is extremely fun. EA has managed to make the process of playing Seeker rather intuitive and also rather intense, with the dueling Seekers and the fine-tuned motion control. I haven’t played a Harry Potter game in years, but Half-Blood Prince’s mini-games surprised me with their responsiveness and attention to detail, and I’m eager to see more along these lines.
The other title I was introduced to on the show floor was SimCity Creator, as the associate producer, Charles Murakami, showed me around the finer points of the game. If you’ve ever played a SimCity title before, the core mechanics have not really changed; build a city, maintain it well, destroy it if you like. There are some Wii-specific things going on this time, though, one of the most hyped-up being the ability to make curved roads, which is a first for the series; just draw roads on screen with the remote, simple as that. There are also some other remote-specific things going on, my favorite of which were the motion-controlled disasters. When choosing a disaster, hitting the "?" option gives you some very weird and random stuff, including, but not limited to: a gigantic spiked ball that you roll around by tilting the Wii Remote a la Super Monkey Ball, a pointer-controlled tornado, and a herd of giant llamas. You can also take a closer look at your town by flying around in a motion-controlled plane, and there will even be some missions to complete when in this mode. This is basic SimCity with some extra fun tacked on, so fans of the series may want to pick this game up when it is released.
I’ve always been fairly pleased with EA’s dedication to the Wii and its motion control, and with all the practice it’s got under its belt the titles of this year really are starting to shine. Let’s hope these titles get the same amount of polish in every aspect upon release.
