Cooking Mama: Cook Off highlights Wii Remote issues

[wraggster]

In Gamespot's review of recent Wii release Cooking Mama: Cook Off, they make a complaint that is becoming an all-too-common refrain among Wii fans: "The motion controls just aren't reliable. Some are overly sensitive... and some aren't sensitive enough."

There are bigger stakes here than the occasional botched omelette. Over the months since launch, the unpredictable Wii Remote has led to a maddening dichotomy. Some games are too easy, while others are too hard -- for all the wrong reasons.

The easy games, like Wii Sports Bowling, let the most feeble grandma instantly taste sweet victory. But the player's actions don't seem to have that much impact on the results. Swing the remote more-or-less the right way, and you're almost guaranteed a strike.

Gamers who crave a deeper challenge have to settle for battling incomprehensible controls. Wii Sports Boxing is certainly "difficult," but that's because the best strategy is "Flail your arms like a Muppet on PCP." In Wii Sports Golf, you can take the exact same swing five times in a row and get wildly different results each time. And then there's Cooking Mama. Here's a tip: go into your real-world kitchen, and cook some actual food. It'll be about 9,000 times less frustrating, and might result in you eating something healthier than your regular diet of Slim Jims and Funyuns.

So far, the revolutionary controller that was supposed to be universally accessible is confusing, finicky, and imprecise. Maybe over time, developers will learn how to create challenging games that also have intuitive controls, not just one or the other. Until then, the Wii Remote is breaking more than just TV screens... it's breaking hearts.

via joystiq (http://www.joystiq.com/2007/04/02/cooking-mama-cook-off-highlights-wii-remote-issues/)

[lightningdude]

I just got a Wii on Sunday, and got Sonic and the Secret Rings with it. The controls on Wii Sports feel just fine to me. I don't know how they tested the "exact same swing" in Wii Golf, because I, for one, can't do exactly the same thing every time.

In Wii Boxing, I actually threw punches like I was really fighting, and they actually followed my punches (as far as the game's programming allowed). And using this technique, I ko'ed my computer opponent with out getting hit a single time. How's that for strategy? I didn't "flail my arms like a muppet on pcp."

With Wii Bowling, I actually started out by playing a game without any strikes. The more I played the game, the more I was able to plan out my throw, giving me 4 strikes in one game. It's not as easy to throw a strike as they make it sound in the article.

Sonic and the Secret Rings frustrated me at first, because I thought the controls should be a little bit better. Then, however, as the game progressed, Sonic got powerups that solved my problem, proving, to me at least, that the control "problem" was in the programming, not in the controller.

As far as I'm concerned, people who are less than satisfied with the Wii controller are comparing it to expectations that it can't live up to yet. I don't recall ever playing a system quite like this, and as such, I don't expect the controls to be perfect. As more time passes, I'm sure different developers will be able to fine tune their games to work more perfectly with the controller, but as far as I'm concerned, they're doing a good job already.

(Granted, I haven't played Cooking Mama yet, to test the main complaint here.)