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Is it just me or is Wiiware mostly craptacular?
- Thread starter lsslave
- Start date
Mark-Bozon
Member
billy.sea said:
Yeah, I totally agree with your list. There's a LOT of crap out there, but damn... just Toki Tori, Lost Winds, World of Goo, and Tetris (the best Tetris since DS... and one of the best out there) make for a great offering.
S&S is going to be sick. Man... can't wait.
Also yeah... if you haven't played Cave Story in some fashion, you're in for a treat. Super Metroid plus Mega Man... oh my yes. We played it again recently, and I did NOT get enough. Do want.
RpgN
Junior Member
NetMapel said:Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles - My Life as a King
Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles - My Life as a Dark Lord
WiiWare is awesome
The second one isn't out yet but I'm looking forward to it along with FFIV the after as well. Lost Winds is an amazing experience and am still enjoying FFCC My life as a king. Other than that Wiiware is indeed empty imo. But it's okay, virtual console makes up for it. Amazing service :3
TheUnknownForce
Member
I wouldn't say most are craptacular. Mediocre, maybe.
Out of the 81 US WiiWare releases in the past year (as it is now a year old, WiiWare), I would say, based on reviews, a third of them are recommended (>7), a third are a case-by-case purchase (around 6) and a third are absolute crap (<5 or 6).
If you are looking for GREAT titles for WiiWare, yes there has been a low amount of those this year in particular. I mean, I've only made a couple purchases this year so far (Onslaught and Bit.Trip Beat), but there is a large amount of good games waiting to be released. The thing is, with Independent developers and smaller dev budgets on the titles, you might have to experience a mediocre title every now and again to try out a new idea.
I think what really makes XBLA and WiiWare different right now is that XBLA is highly hyped up by Microsoft and has specific "events" in which a number of 'higher-profile' titles are released. Furthermore, XBLA is getting major support from some larger devs such as Namco Bandai and Capcom (those who are more interested in making HD titles), whereas Nintendo's big support comes from Hudson and Square-Enix (one producing good at best titles and the other bringing over original titles with the FF:CC name and FF4:AY). Nintendo missed the boat catering to development teams to get DLC from them; they all just went to the HD consoles for it when Nintendo had nothing to offer.
As for what this year for WiiWare will bring, we have Nicalis' Cave Story and Night Game, Super Meat Boy, the other FIVE Bit.Trip games (Core coming out this summer), more Telltale WiiWare titles (they said they were working on something soon), Swords and Soldiers, Hudson's upcoming games, Square-Enix's FF4:AY series (not to mention Taito's Bubble Bobble Plus and probably another Space Invaders soon enough), and a possible number of surprise titles to come out when we least expect. I don't see any Mega Man 9 or World of Goo-level awesome titles JUST yet, but Nicalis's games and FF4 DO seem pretty close.
Out of the 81 US WiiWare releases in the past year (as it is now a year old, WiiWare), I would say, based on reviews, a third of them are recommended (>7), a third are a case-by-case purchase (around 6) and a third are absolute crap (<5 or 6).
If you are looking for GREAT titles for WiiWare, yes there has been a low amount of those this year in particular. I mean, I've only made a couple purchases this year so far (Onslaught and Bit.Trip Beat), but there is a large amount of good games waiting to be released. The thing is, with Independent developers and smaller dev budgets on the titles, you might have to experience a mediocre title every now and again to try out a new idea.
I think what really makes XBLA and WiiWare different right now is that XBLA is highly hyped up by Microsoft and has specific "events" in which a number of 'higher-profile' titles are released. Furthermore, XBLA is getting major support from some larger devs such as Namco Bandai and Capcom (those who are more interested in making HD titles), whereas Nintendo's big support comes from Hudson and Square-Enix (one producing good at best titles and the other bringing over original titles with the FF:CC name and FF4:AY). Nintendo missed the boat catering to development teams to get DLC from them; they all just went to the HD consoles for it when Nintendo had nothing to offer.
As for what this year for WiiWare will bring, we have Nicalis' Cave Story and Night Game, Super Meat Boy, the other FIVE Bit.Trip games (Core coming out this summer), more Telltale WiiWare titles (they said they were working on something soon), Swords and Soldiers, Hudson's upcoming games, Square-Enix's FF4:AY series (not to mention Taito's Bubble Bobble Plus and probably another Space Invaders soon enough), and a possible number of surprise titles to come out when we least expect. I don't see any Mega Man 9 or World of Goo-level awesome titles JUST yet, but Nicalis's games and FF4 DO seem pretty close.
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Ptitle3tinj4tz?from=Main.SturgeonsLaw
By this metric Wiiware having 10-15 good-to-great titles is a pretty solid ratio.
By this metric Wiiware having 10-15 good-to-great titles is a pretty solid ratio.
I wouldn't know. I've barely played any of them.
The lack of demos is absolutely crippling to my interest in WiiWare. Then again, I've never been interested in blindly stabbing in the dark when it comes to my expenditures.
Basically, it takes incredible word of mouth, internet videos being thrown in my face, and continued recommendation over the course of several weeks to get me to even consider a WiiWare game.
But, I mean....I guess you have a right to bitch if you just poured a ton of money into the service to try out all of these mystery games and found out they were crappy.
The lack of demos is absolutely crippling to my interest in WiiWare. Then again, I've never been interested in blindly stabbing in the dark when it comes to my expenditures.
Basically, it takes incredible word of mouth, internet videos being thrown in my face, and continued recommendation over the course of several weeks to get me to even consider a WiiWare game.
But, I mean....I guess you have a right to bitch if you just poured a ton of money into the service to try out all of these mystery games and found out they were crappy.
A Human Becoming
More than a Member
This has been a recurring joking on the Giant Bombcast for good reason.
XBLA and PSN have mountains of shit available too -- none of the services has a great ratio of good to bad, but do video games in general? Not really. For me personally, I'm not inclined to buy much of anything I can't re-sell, so I've avoided Wii Ware mostly just like PSN and XBLA.
Davey Cakes
Member
It's just you. There has to be at least 20 games on the service that are near "must-buy" status, especially for people who say the Wii has no games.
Davey Cakes
Member
And here I was thinking WiiWare, as a download service, had one of the better first years.
Honestly, I know people like to mention that everything they say is opinion, but c'mon, I really don't see how, even with opinion taken into account, people can't give credit where credit is due and admit that WiiWare is pretty damn solid. The ratio of good/bad is small, sure, but that's the case no matter what service you're looking at.
Think about it this way: the launch of WiiWare alone had three games that were potentially worth people's time. LostWinds, MLAAC, and Defend Your Castle, because all these games had good reception. THEN you can add in the opinion that games like Pop and TV Show King may also have been worth taking a look at, even though they didn't really stack up as well. Just apply this approach to the entire service, and it's obvious that there's a lot of good content to check out. The variety isn't bad either.
I don't see why all the "opinion" chatter has to be about WiiWare merely being mediocre to bad. If anything, opinion should only make the service sound better, since subjectivity doesn't bypass quality, which a lot of WiiWare games (especially the overlooked ones) have.
Honestly, I know people like to mention that everything they say is opinion, but c'mon, I really don't see how, even with opinion taken into account, people can't give credit where credit is due and admit that WiiWare is pretty damn solid. The ratio of good/bad is small, sure, but that's the case no matter what service you're looking at.
Think about it this way: the launch of WiiWare alone had three games that were potentially worth people's time. LostWinds, MLAAC, and Defend Your Castle, because all these games had good reception. THEN you can add in the opinion that games like Pop and TV Show King may also have been worth taking a look at, even though they didn't really stack up as well. Just apply this approach to the entire service, and it's obvious that there's a lot of good content to check out. The variety isn't bad either.
I don't see why all the "opinion" chatter has to be about WiiWare merely being mediocre to bad. If anything, opinion should only make the service sound better, since subjectivity doesn't bypass quality, which a lot of WiiWare games (especially the overlooked ones) have.
DaBargainHunta
Member
It's pretty craptacular, yeah. I've only bought one game on the service so far - Alien Crush Returns. I'm not saying there aren't other good games - I know there are - but the ratio of good to crap isn't very encouraging.
Rash said:
As far as I know, the PSN Store good/bad ratio was way better when it started. And probably the XBLA too.
Seriously, when WiiWare started (at least here in Japan) the only things worth it were Dr. Mario (which barely introduced anything new) and My life as a King, which at least I enjoyed quite a lot. But other than that? Ewww...
edit - I google'd Swords and Soldiers and that game actually looks like fun and something that's not half-assed at all. That could be fun
Davey Cakes
Member
Exactly.DeaconKnowledge said:
It's all like this:
Guy #1: "DISCLAIMER: This is my opinon. Okay, so Wiiware isn't that great because it has 60 games that aren't worth my time."
Guy #2: "What about the 20+ games that are?"
Guy #1: "LA LA LA! I CAN'T HEAR YOU!"
Davey Cakes
Member
Japan's launch was horrible, though, and everyone can admit to that. The US launch was better, and within, like, a month, we also had games like Dr. Mario and Toki Tori show up.Mik2121 said:
Combine this with one of my previous posts and there you have 5 games that may be worth people's time. And this is within the first month of WiiWare in the US. Again, just apply this approach to the rest of the service. Yeah, the good/bad will stay small, but it won't necessarily shrink even further. In fact, as games like Bit.Trip Beat, Swords and Soldiers, and Cave Story show up, I'd say that ratio is getting larger.
launch? In the US the WiiWare launch was actually great. Very high signal to noise ratio. It has definitely had its ups and downs, and I'd probably say, just like all of the services, there is way more crap than gold.... but WiiWare has a great number of excellent titles on it over its first year. You could probably hit the system with 10,000 points ($100) and still probably not get all of the must-play games on the system. Not only that, but it is also host to some of the best games on the system period.Mik2121 said:As far as I know, the PSN Store good/bad ratio was way better when it started. And probably the XBLA too.
Seriously, when WiiWare started (at least here in Japan) the only things worth it were Dr. Mario (which barely introduced anything new) and My life as a King, which at least I enjoyed quite a lot. But other than that? Ewww...
edit - I google'd Swords and Soldiers and that game actually looks like fun and something that's not half-assed at all. That could be fun
radioheadrule83
Banned
lsslave said:
Regulus Tera said:
DaBargainHunta said:
DaBargainHunta is just bargain hunting, which I can forgive, but come on guys -- to be an authority on these things you've gotta at least try the games.
I get the feeling that the kind of negative perception of the service present in this thread is mainly resultant from there not being hyped or known properties all over the service and a lot of people aren't REALLY interested in indie development as much as they'd like to think. Their eyes scan right past the Pops, Defend your Castles and Artstyle games and look straight for the Bionic Commando, Wipout, Final Fantasy type titles. The small unknown games nobody is giving a chance are the ones with the most potential to become the next Geometry Wars, SSHD etc.
borghe said:
This is true.
Hunahan said:
I do think a lot of people would be interested in / buy more if there were demos and stuff.
Even just videos of gameplay on the store would be great.
-WindYoshi-
Banned
Bonk's Adventure is a great game you nincompoop!
no, it's from lack of demos. Really. Nintendo NEEDS to get demos out there for the service, and for Wii in general. word of mouth today just is nowhere near as influential as demos are, and if nintendo wants the service to pickup they NEED to put demos up at the very least for the seriously good titles. $10-15 is simply too much money to make a totally blind buy on, not to mention a purchase that once you make it has $0 resale value. Surely they have to understand this.radioheadrule83 said:
nincompoop
Banned
The last 2 months have been crap, but before that it was doing great. Any gamer should have no problem finding 20-30 games worth buying, including the best downloadable game of all time (BUY TOKI TORI YOU MOTHERFUCKERS).
borghe said:
Don't know about XBLA, but PSN has way more good titles imo, and I'm no fanboy (though I must admit I went from loving Nintendo to completely ignoring it in the last two years with exceptions like Mario Galaxy, Brawl and the DS, though I wonder when will they release a better hardware or at least make better use of the DSi.. can't wait for a pokemon card game like Eye of Judgment, but on the DSi, that would be incredibly awesome and sell tons of DSi's).
I won't list the games I think are good for the PSN because this is a WiiWare thread, but yeah.. I don't think you can even compare the quality from XBLA and PSN with WiiWare.
nincompoop
Banned
XBLA and PSN have been out a lot longer. How many great games did they have after only one year?Mik2121 said:
I have a PS3.... I have spent around $125 on PSN games and probably more on movies and TV shows. I know the system. Yes it has great games, and possibly more great games, but it was also out for 1.5 years before wiiware hit. my point wasn't that wii has just as many good games. my point is that PSN has the same shit. Go Sudoko, Jeopardy, Noby Noby Boy (sorry, worst $5 ever), and the list can just go on and on. Yes it has Last Guy, Warhawk, MM9, SSDHD, etc. But there is still a LOT of crap on the system also.Mik2121 said:
Likewise with wiiware. There are probably 20-30+ good to excellent games on the system well worth their cost. And then a bunch of shit. It's like that on XBLA also. This wasn't about which service has MORE great titles. Just that there seem to be hardly any on WiiWare which is just flat out false. Or that there isn't any crap titles on the other services which is just as false.
jman2050 said:
Uhm? Ok, what about this:
I own a Wii since release date, bought about 18 games in the first year and lots of VC games, also when the WiiWare started I bought DrMario and My life as a King and played the hell out of mLasK. After that, I didn't see any interesting game even though I played some at a friend's house and didn't really enjoy any of the games he purchased... or at least not enough to make me want to pay that money for them.
I also happen to own a PS3 (bought it when GTAIV got released.. also never owned a PS2 and sold my PS1 when the N64 got released so I could purchase it.. and it's one of my fav. consoles, heh) and I just tend to compare the overall quality of the PSN games and the WiiWare games, and even though some have the same price, the difference in quality and content is huge in my opinion, which is one big reason for me to just stop buying those games.
Davey Cakes
Member
I don't even see why we're arguing about which download service is better than the other.
The existence of Mega Man 9 across all of the platforms makes all of their download services legitimately awesome.
The existence of Mega Man 9 across all of the platforms makes all of their download services legitimately awesome.
Alien Crush Returns
Art Style:Cubello
Art Style:Orbient
Art Style:Rotohex
Bit.Trip: Beat
Bomberman Blast
Bonsai Barber
Bubble Bobble Plus!
Dr. Mario Online RX
Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: My Life as a King
Jungle Speed
LIT
LostWinds
MaBoShi: The Three Shape Arcade
Mega Man 9
Space Invaders Get Even
Strong Bad Episode 1 - Homestar Ruiner
Strong Bad Episode 2 - Strong Badia the Free
Strong Bad Episode 3 - Baddest of the Bands
Strong Bad Episode 4 - Dangeresque 3: The Criminal Projective
Strong Bad Episode 5 - 8-Bit is Enough
Swords & Soldiers
Tetris Party
Toki Tori
World of Goo
Seems like theres a number of games to me that people could be interested in. I dont understand the whole mentality that OMG I HAVE ONE WIIWARE GAME WIIWARE SUCKS. How about just buying another one of the many good games out there instead of saying the entire library of games is shit.
Art Style:Cubello
Art Style:Orbient
Art Style:Rotohex
Bit.Trip: Beat
Bomberman Blast
Bonsai Barber
Bubble Bobble Plus!
Dr. Mario Online RX
Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: My Life as a King
Jungle Speed
LIT
LostWinds
MaBoShi: The Three Shape Arcade
Mega Man 9
Space Invaders Get Even
Strong Bad Episode 1 - Homestar Ruiner
Strong Bad Episode 2 - Strong Badia the Free
Strong Bad Episode 3 - Baddest of the Bands
Strong Bad Episode 4 - Dangeresque 3: The Criminal Projective
Strong Bad Episode 5 - 8-Bit is Enough
Swords & Soldiers
Tetris Party
Toki Tori
World of Goo
Seems like theres a number of games to me that people could be interested in. I dont understand the whole mentality that OMG I HAVE ONE WIIWARE GAME WIIWARE SUCKS. How about just buying another one of the many good games out there instead of saying the entire library of games is shit.
Davey Cakes
Member
It's the Wii.Chumly said:
You guys seem to be misinterpreting me, I am not saying the service is terrible OR the good games are terrible, I was just stating that going through the list of titles they have there is a LOT of garbage on there.
Also, I have PS3 and checking the PSN it is very obvious that the difference in quality is minimal at best, I don't have XBLA but I would imagine "small quirky titles" means "rushed shitty product" to many developers
Well while after the 4 games that I have abandoned irked me a bit (apx 21-22$) because they were so terrible (and this is DEFINITELY an opinion, a good game or a bad game is ENTIRELY up to the user!) but in reality, deleting them and forgetting they exist is a lot easier to swallow.
Buy 4 new games, trade them in at GS/EB, total loss = MINIMUM 120$.
No matter what its a loss, but 20 is a lot less of a loss than before.
PSN thankfully has demos which makes it a lot easier to figure out what is good (and the reason I will buy some titles from there for the first time soon) whereas WiiWare I will be reading reviews, GAF hype, and watching videos.
The worst thing is VC, I think one of the biggest selling points of VC is nostalgia and as a Nintendo kid growing up that makes the c64, sega, and tgfx games pretty much nothing to me.
Definitely a hard run but buying ANY bad game is a loss of money no matter what, it is because I realized that I became a more frugal gamer. I buy the games I would love and not the ones that are good but just not for me.
Also, I have PS3 and checking the PSN it is very obvious that the difference in quality is minimal at best, I don't have XBLA but I would imagine "small quirky titles" means "rushed shitty product" to many developers
Meier said:
Well while after the 4 games that I have abandoned irked me a bit (apx 21-22$) because they were so terrible (and this is DEFINITELY an opinion, a good game or a bad game is ENTIRELY up to the user!) but in reality, deleting them and forgetting they exist is a lot easier to swallow.
Buy 4 new games, trade them in at GS/EB, total loss = MINIMUM 120$.
No matter what its a loss, but 20 is a lot less of a loss than before.
PSN thankfully has demos which makes it a lot easier to figure out what is good (and the reason I will buy some titles from there for the first time soon) whereas WiiWare I will be reading reviews, GAF hype, and watching videos.
The worst thing is VC, I think one of the biggest selling points of VC is nostalgia and as a Nintendo kid growing up that makes the c64, sega, and tgfx games pretty much nothing to me.
Definitely a hard run but buying ANY bad game is a loss of money no matter what, it is because I realized that I became a more frugal gamer. I buy the games I would love and not the ones that are good but just not for me.
Nuclear Muffin
Banned
Sorry but I can't agree with this, Wii Ware has an excellent lineup of must haves (especially when you consider that XBLA is two years older and PSN one year older!) Take away the retro ports from XBLA and I actually own more Wii Ware games then XBLA or PSN!
While it's true that there haven't been a lot of quality releases recently apart from Bonzai Barber (If that's your sort of thing) it has already amassed a solid library of greats that have already been listed (Special nod to Bomberman Blast as well, 10x better than Bomberman Live/Ultra, best Bomberman game ever)
And for those noting that World of Goo is also on PC, guess what? so are most of the good PSN/XBLA games (That includes the likes of Braid and BC Rearmed)
I'd personally put XBLA and WW as tied equally with PSN as dead last (There's almost nothing exclusive that I'm interested in and I'd rather get em on 360 most of the time)
While it's true that there haven't been a lot of quality releases recently apart from Bonzai Barber (If that's your sort of thing) it has already amassed a solid library of greats that have already been listed (Special nod to Bomberman Blast as well, 10x better than Bomberman Live/Ultra, best Bomberman game ever
)And for those noting that World of Goo is also on PC, guess what? so are most of the good PSN/XBLA games (That includes the likes of Braid and BC Rearmed)
I'd personally put XBLA and WW as tied equally with PSN as dead last (There's almost nothing exclusive that I'm interested in and I'd rather get em on 360 most of the time)