When the Wii first came out, I had very high hopes.  I had hoped that the Wii-mote would make a great FPS controller and revolutionize First-Person Shooters.  I had assumed that within a year or two third-party developers would have plenty of great games out for it.  I had assumed that Nintendo would stick to its promise to not abandon the regular gamers who have stayed loyal all these years.

HOLY FUCK was I wrong.

Nintendo has changed their tune big time.  I’m sorry to say the Wii sucks.  All 3 main consoles have their problems, but the number of disappointments and problems with the Wii has made it the Black Eyed Peas of the group – inexplicably popular.  Let me give you an example.  This is how Nintendo used to sell games:

 

Now, this is how they sell games:

Two years ago Nintendo was riding high: despite all expectations, the Wii was a smash hit, outsold Microsoft and Sony, and today they STILL can’t keep them in stores.  They took a big risk on the Wii, and that gamble paid off in a big way.  But now, they seem to be making all the wrong moves, and Nintendo is well on its way to fucking up everything again.

It’s been two years, and I think I’m now in the position to say just how the Wii stacks up: IT FUCKING BLOWS.  Here’s why:

1. Third-Party Games All Suck

 Hmm… I’m not a ‘Hardcore’ gamer, but I certainly do have taste and I expect quality games.  Let’s take a look at what the 360 and PS3 has to offer…

JESUSNAZIMONKEYBAZOOKACHRIST THOSE LOOK FUCKING AWESOME!!!

Okay, wait, I’m sure there’s good games on the Wii, lets just take a look…

fuck.

For some reason, third party developers don’t give two shits about the Wii, despite the fact that it is far and away the best selling console…  As in you can sell way more games to a way larger audience…  As in you’d have to be shit-for-brains stupid to snub the Wii.  The excuse we were given early on is that they all thought that the Wii would be a massive failure, and that third party developers would catch up.  Well, it’s been two years, and we have yet to see any catching.  Instead, we get:

-Tons of lame-ass kids games/Shovelware
-All those damn Lego games (Star Wars, Batman, Indiana Jones), which I might like if I were 8.
-Resident Evil 4 – yes the same game from the last gen, and they expect you to not know the difference
-Puzzle games! (Wiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii!!!!!!!!!!!!)
-Casual Gaming Bullshit
-Mini-Game Collections
–Game Party
-Pinball
-Harvest Fucking Moon
–Hooked Fishing

Not to mention how fucking dissapointing The Force Unleashed turned out.  The Wii-mote as a lightsaber – how could you screw that up?  Well, they did.  Instead of just following your movements, you use “gestures” to control your lightsaber.  WTF?!?!  Apparently, the Wii can’t even do one-for-one motion, so Nintendo announced an add-on to fix this: Wii Motion-Plus.

I agreed whole-heatedly with the general sentiment expressed by gamers at this announcement: “Why the hell didn’t the Wii do this to begin with?” Oh, and they decided to not tell any of the developers about it.  Who knows if LucasArts would have held back the release to add support for this, we can only speculate.  Here’s to hoping that they release another game, or better: a patch.

2. First-Party Games all Suck

Nintendo is famous for it’s top-notch, highest-quality first party games.  Or at least they were a decade ago.  The Gamecube first party games were notoriously mediocre, with the lone exception being Super Smash Brothers Melee, which (no-surprise), was actually developed by Hal Laboratory.  They even licensed off the Star Fox franchise to a third party developer (Capcom) who proceeded to run it into the ground.  So they turned things around with the Wii, right?  Well, only if your expectations haven’t increased in the past 10 years.  Here’s why:

-No Voice Acting

It’s 2008.   All games should have voice acting by now.  It’s pathetic that Nintendo released Mario Galaxy and Twilight Princess without any voice acting.  (Or, bizzarer-still, that in Mario, Princess Peach and Rosalina had voices, but NOBODY else does! WTF?!?!) In both games, the story is told through hundreds of NPCs and all through long blocks of text.  How fucking quaint.  The games drag for long stretches while you sit and READ your TV.  That may have been acceptable on the NES, back when you simply couldn’t do voice-acting, but not now!!!  While everyone else seems to have moved on as the technology has allowed for better, more immersive games, Nintendo continues to lag behind.  Even Brawl had a story mode without voice acting.  In fact, it didn’t even have text! That’s right – Brawl had a story mode without a story.  I don’t get why nobody else seems to be calling Nintendo out on this.

-Twilight Princess

I started this game expecting to be able to play a version of Ocarina of Time that didn’t make me feel like I was stuck in a Disney movie.  This game got AMAZING reviews, so okay, I’m ready to be blown away.  So, how is this game going to start, big action scene, right? I can’t wait! And… I’m herding sheep? Seriously? Sheep?  WTF?!?!  I keep playing for an hour, and so far I’ve done chores for the neighbors and I’ve gone fishing.  What was everyone talking about when they said this was the greatest game ever?  Clearly a case or rampant-fanboyism (but that’s for a post for another day).  So, tons of reading, the game is 80+ hours long, and most of it is spent doing menial chores… Okay, call me crazy, but aren’t games supposed to fun?

-Wii Fit

So this is what it takes to get girls to play video games – make them boring as all hell and have the game constantly reminding you that you’re fat and out of shape.

-Wii Music

The less said about this disaster the better.

-Wii Play

Everyone knows this is a controller with a 10 dollar game attached.  But anyone who’s played it knows the game is hardly even worth the 10 bucks.   Nintendo really cut corners with this one.  Half the mini-games are just plain worthless.  The rest of the games are so limited, that they have virtually no replay value.  All they had to do was add a few options and they would have had a good duck hunt, tennis,  laser hockey, billiards, and tank games.

-Wii Sports Resort

I’m not the only one who was looking forward to a Wii Sports 2, but the games they selected for this one don’t excite me at all.

If a console is only as good as its games, then the Wii ranks a few notches above shit-sandwich. Oh, and that promise Nintendo made to not abandon the regular gamers?  Yeah, that was a lie.

3. Brawl Sux

Yes, that is an actual move in the game Super Smash Bros Brawl.  It’s the perfect image to represent this game.  In fact, I wish it had been on the cover.

Everyone who was looking forward to Brawl basically just wanted Smash Bros. Melee with online play – That’s it.  That’s all we wanted.  That’s all it would have taken to make Brawl one of the best games ever made.  And did they did they deliver?  Were they able to do this one simple thing? No, they weren’t, because the Wii’s online system is FUBAR.

Instead they ruined the balance of the game, beat my favorite character, Fox, with the ugly stick so he’ll look as awful and stupid and cartoon-y as he did in the worst Star Fox game, Star Fox Assault.  And added some gimmicks like “Smash Balls” that give you a “Final Smash” (except it’s not a finishing move, it can come at any time in the middle of a match, so why call it a “final smash”?)

If Nintendo doesn’t understand the importance of Online Play, they should stop making games.

4. Online Sux

Online sux hard.  Really Hard.  Harder than Titanium, Diamond, Carbon Nano Tubes and Adamantium combined. There’s no screen names.  Instead, you get the wonderful Friend codes system.  FOR EVERY GAME.  Yes, that’s right, every single game has its own friend codes.   THERE IS NO UNIFIED SYSTEM.   AAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Holy Shit, I didn’t know it was possible for one of the most profitable companies in the world to fuck up this bad.

5. The Controls Suck

-The Wii-Mote Sux

The Wii-Mote could have make a great FPS controller, and a great controller all-around for that matter, had they done it right.  But no, they fucked it up.  The way they designed the Wii-Mote, the on-screen cursor doesn’t match up to where you point, it’s always way off, and there’s no one-to-one motion.  So basically, what started as a great idea for a motion controller devolved into a half-assed attempt.  Here’s hoping the Motion-Plus fixes that.

-Classic Controller Sux

In order to still support normal games, you need a normal controller.  The saving grace of the Wii should have been the classic controller: Normal games use the regular controller, instead of forcing gamers to use the Wii-mote, which only works with games designed for it.  Otherwise, the Wii-mote becomes a tired gimmick and the Wii becomes one big joke.  Only the classic controller didn’t come with the Wii, so support for it has been lacking.  And, it only works when plugged into the Wii-mote, so you have to have it dangling from your controller the whole time.  Talk about a nuisance.

6. The Best Game came with the system

It’s a sad state of affairs when the most entertaining game for your system is the free one that came with it.

7. Wii Shop Sux

8. No Extra Storage and the USB Ports are useless.

Nintendo was so stupid they didn’t even think to sell you a hard drive to hold all the stupid crap they want to sell you.  Which means Nintendo has fucked up so bad, they can’t even properly screw you over with add-ons anymore.  Even the SD card slot doesn’t support cards over 2 Gigs. [Update: Nintendo finally released a system update to support SD Cards up to 32 gigs, which is great, except it took them 3 years to do it…]

And the USB ports don’t support simple things like Ethernet adapters or keyboards or hard drives.  You’ll have to buy official brand name add-ons from Nintendo, assuming they ever decide to release them.

9. The Browser Sucks

Most video on the web is now in flash players.  The problem with this is that now every internet device needs full flash support, especially devices for your TV, to watch most videos.  And guess what?  That’s right, the Wii’s flash support is sketchy at best.

Combine that with the fact that the Wii is not high-def, it makes the browser damn-near useless.  Have fun reading the web at the amazing resolution of 640×480.

10. Even Homebrew Sux

My last hope is Homebrew software, but I’m sad to say that  the hombrew stuff is very, very alpha release.  Not even beta.  Tones of bugs, poor support for hardware, lacking tons of essential features.  Most homebrew stuff is old GameCube homebrew that they have yet to add support for Wii hardware.  While I hope that things will slowly improve, I’m not holding my breath.

UPDATE: Homebrew quickly became awesome soon after I authored this.  Check it out.