E3 Previews — Lego Star Wars Complete Saga and LittleBigPlanet

Nintendo's success has marked a refocus on games for the sake of fun, and nothing exemplifies this trend better than the Lego Star Wars series. Lego Star Wars: The Complete Saga will be the first game to offer the functionality gamers have wanted since they first saw a wiimote: motion-controlled lightsaber battles. It's not dueling, but it is a lot of fun. In the same vein, with even more creativity added in, is Sony's imaginative LittleBigPlanet . With Media Molecule finally opening up a bit of the user based content-creation process to journalists, 1up offers one of the first hands-on with the game's core mechanic: "Fusing various pieces together can forge entirely new objects. Place hinges and wheels on a pile of wooden blocks and suddenly you have a makeshift jalopy rolling through the stage. With a tad more work, you can transform that car into a massive (yet ridiculous) rolling wooden dragon. We didn't have quite enough time (or experience) to bust out a run-and-jump rally to put Super Mario Bros. World 8-2 to shame, but we can't wait to get our hands on the open beta due out later this year."

Comments

Re:Dueling

[g4pengts]

What you propose sounds like a reasonable way to solve the blocking problem. But there is another problem I see with sword fighting. If our movement makes a 1:1 translation into a game, doesn't that means in order for me to be good at the game, I actually needs to be good with a sword?

Harder than you think

[alvinrod]

The problem really isn't mapping where the sword should be or how it should move. Eventually someone will figure out a good way to make this possible and you'll be able to wave your Wiimote around and have the coresponding on-screen sword follow its motions very carefully. The real problem comes into play when you have another sword, or anything to deflect its blows added into the mix.

For example, I'm fighting an enemy with my sword and swing at him. He counters, meeting his blade with mine, causing both to bounce back from the force slightly or to slide against each other. However, my actual hand has met with no such resistance and has followed through as though my blade sliced through his sword, body, or anything else in the way as though it were nothing. On screen I'm locked sword to sword with my foe, but my hands suggest that I slashed through him. How is the mapping handled from here? Should the position that my hand ends up in be the new centered location for determining the swords next move, which would make further attacks awkward and unrealistic, or should the blade on the screen magically move to the position my hand suggests it's in, which doesn't make for a very realistic game.

The best idea I've ever heard for this solution is to have the controller respond with some type of feedback, a rumble, a sound, or something else, to notify the user that their blow was deflected. The user would then be unable to attack further until they managed to sync the remote position with their hand with what is displayed on the screen. Assuming the feedback is powerful enough and the player manages to learn to anticipate the deflection enough, eventually they will serve as their own feedback, stopping their swing as soon as they feel it has been deflected. To use the above example again, as soon as I were to feel a rumble from the Wiimote or hear two swords clashing, I would halt my downward motion and position the controller as though my blow had been met, allowing me to once again regrain control and continue with the battle.

While there are a lot of programing difficulties to be worked out, it still requires a lot of time for the player to become accustomed to the system and actually care to become familiar enough with it to enjoy playing the game. I don't forsee this as being something that casual players would be interested in taking the time to accomplish, and I'm not entirely sure if the hardware available now can offer all of the necessities in order for this to succeed.

Re:Really.

[Phorion]

if watch one of the few games that actually tries to follow the remote, like the baseball bat in Wii Sports, the remote is terribly inaccurate and loses track of where it actually is unless it's pointed at the IR bar.
Actually, no. On my Wii, the baseball bat tracking in Wii Sports is spot on. When I'm batting, I even sway the Wiimote around a bit (like you do with a real baseball bat before taking a swing) and watch as the Mii batter on screen does the same thing. Oh, and the IR bar doesn't even participate in these actions; it's only used for the pointer, not the motion sensing.

However, it's funny you should mention this, because I went to a friend's house for a Wii Party and we ended up playing tennis a lot. I'm usually pretty good, but I was horrible here. The controls seemed incredibly sluggish, to the point where there was a good 1-second delay between my backhand and the corresponding action on screen. I even tried different controllers, and they were all the same.

So I'm wondering about the build quality of the Wii consoles. The first one I bought back in November had a different set of problems (the IR bar / pointer tracking was very, very jittery, and the cursor would keep disappearing). I exchanged this one for my current console, and haven't had any problems (and Nintendo tech support is ridiculously wonderful, by the way). Out of three consoles I've seen, two have had completely different problems with the communication between Wiimote and console. Is this more of an epidemic than I had thought?

-p