The Turnaround

Wow. I never imagined a year ago that I'd be writing things like this, or discussing the amazing success of the Wii with friends. I did predict that the system would be out-selling the PS3, but my faith in Nintendo to come through was not nearly great enough to anticipate what we are witnessing these days.

Just in the past few weeks, we have seen an incredible surge of third-party support for the Shiny-White-Goodness, with a wide variety of both ports and original IP's showing up in the lists.

For the mature gamer, we have The Godfather: Blackhand Edition, Scarface, Mortal Kombat: Armageddon and Manhunt 2. For just about anyone, there's DDR: Hottest Party, Guitar Hero, Godzilla Unleashed, Transformers: The Game, Dewey's Adventure, Zorro, Spiderman 3, SSX Blur, Alien Syndrome and Heatseeker, to name a few.

These titles are not all going to be triple-A, but that's beside the point; Nintendo is garnering WAY more third-party support, both here in the States and overseas, than the Cube ever had! There are even rumblings about certain key Square Enix franchises moving over to Wii (Kingdom Hearts, anyone?), which could be earth-shaking as far as long-term ramifications are concerned. And perhaps even more significant is the fact that the above list doesn't include many already-announced third party efforts, such as Resident Evil, or the amazing first party lineup Nintendo has in store for the coming years.

Yes, it's early. Yes, some analysts still foresee PS3 rising to the top in the future. Yes, there are some very sloppy ports and gimmicky games being made for Wii. In my mind, though, none of those things matter; what matters is, Wii is rocking the house, and I imagine it will for a good long time to come!

One day, while I was shooting Nazis...

I am a WWII FPS nut. I own each Medal Of Honor for GameCube, plan to buy each one for Wii, and I'm playing Call Of Duty 3 for Wii right now.

I must say that I am quite pleased with the game; the controls are solid, story compelling (of course, it's history!) and the visuals, while nothing to write home about, are a notch or two above the GameCube quality.

As I've played through the campaign over the last couple of weeks, a funny thing has happened, though. See, COD3 incorporates "Battle Actions", not only on Wii, but on PS3 and XBOX 360 as well. Battle Actions add some immersion to the game by requiring motions (or button presses) in a sequence at various times, such as installing a timed charge for demolition, fighting an enemy in close quarters for a weapon or rowing a boat across a river. I have been very pleased with some of these, as they must be considerably better on the Wii than on the other platforms, and disappointed in others, as they just don't work very well.

But there has been a side effect, I think, to these actions; I have completely adjusted to the FPS controls in the game. Whether it's because of the stark contrast to the unusual nature of the Battle Actions, or simply because FPS control in COD3 is very well done, I realized this afternoon that moving, pointing and shooting in the game have become totally second nature to me.

I can't say this yet for other FPS'es on the system; while I love Red Steel, the control is still somewhat wonky to me, and Far Cry's control, though improved over Red Steel, still doesn't quite make it.

So, there it is! I'm sure that FPS will only get better from here on out, but know this; COD3 has done it right. Now I only have to wait for Metroid Prime 3!