Kwaad said:
There are no realistic tennis games on the Wii. The wii basically just uses the accelerometer to determen when to swing. (like a button) and uses the 'tilt' to determine which side, to swing on. There is no. 'angle' Upward swing, Downward swing, or anything else. Without the ability to 'realisticly' play tennis. So far, the best tennis game for the Wii... is no better than a tennis game for the PS1. There are no 'realistic' motions, other than a 'stupid' swing. I love tennis. Wii Tennis = not 'realistic' |
Actually, there very much IS an 'upward swing' and a 'downward swing' in Wii Sports tennis. You can 'scoop' upward to hit a long, slow lob, or chop at the ball to send it low and fast (and risk hitting the net, which I do far too often). You can even put spin on the ball to get it to take a curved path. If you swing nice and steady, you'll see that the ball isn't spinning. The spin is the reason the tennis balls are red and yellow instead of solid green; it's so that you can see what the ball is doing. What the game does not do is distinguish between forehand and backhand swings. I suggest you go a few rounds in the practice mode and see exactly how much control you have over your swing. You might be highly enlightened.
Anyway, the technology just isn't there yet to have 1:1 motion controls. I'll be the first to admit that. But that doesn't mean that every game that uses the accelerometers is stupid, either. The immersion in Wii Sports comes not just from the accelerometers, it comes from many different things. You swing the remote like you would a tennis racket. The remote plays a "whock" sound on its speaker when you hit the ball. The remote vibrates when you hit the ball. Your Mii is in the game holding the racket. All of these things come together to create a very satisfying experience. For me, this is more satisfying than ultra-realistic graphics.
Another note I'd like to make about graphics is that graphical horsepower and technical competence do not make a game immersive -- it's what you DO with the horsepower that matters. Fluid, life-like animations make a game immersive, just like stuttering, awkward animations can ruin immersion. A coherent vision of the game world and attention to detail makes a game more immersive, just like models or textures that look out of place or needlessly repetitive can ruin immersion. The more graphical horsepower you have, the more resources can be brought to bear to create visual immersion, but it's more about art than it is about pixels and polygons. Typically, you don't get noticeable differences in things like animation quality and world design until you have an order of magnitude increase in horsepower.
The same can be said of the Wii Remote. Accelerometers, rumble, and built-in speakers do not automatically make a game more immersive, it's how the game uses them that counts.
