Donutta's Blogs

Immersion

Published: Wed 8 Oct, 2008 | 44 Comments
Tags: Wii, Tiger Woods PGA Tour 09

It's amazing what a little bit of immersion can do. Do you want to know why the Wii is winning? It's not because it's cheaper. It's not because it's appealing to a casual market. It's because you can take any game and make it that much more enjoyable by adding motion controls. Take Tiger Woods PGA Tour 09 for example. When I worked for this site and reviewed it, I had such lovely things to say about it as:

You just don’t seem to care about anything, and being seven over par only induces feelings of apathy. I’m not asking for castles and windmills; I’m just asking for some kind of visceral feel for what I’m doing.

The analogue swing mechanic feels unnatural and doesn’t allow for proper swing control, meaning that you are likely to always smash the ball at 100% power.

As you can tell, I didn't really enjoy it. The problem was that playing golf with the analogue stick was about as much fun as eating dirt. On the Wii version, however, you have almost one-to-one controls with the Wii remote. You really do feel like you are swinging a golf club. I even found myself looking at the floor when taking a stroke so as to get a proper swing. It feels like you are playing golf, and that's a good thing.

You also remove the hassles that come with analogue control. I could never, ever get the ball to travel straight in the PS3 version because I found the analogue stick would always veer off in one direction. This was because taking a swing with an analogue stick isn't natural. It doesn't happen with the Wii version. Hell, I can even twist the Wii remote to get a draw on my swing instead of having to wade my way through spreadsheets. It's natural, intuitive, and fun. Had EA sent the Wii version for review, it probably would have gotten a 9/10.

It's this immersion from motion control that makes the Wii so successful. It's the way you twist Samus' hand in Metroid Prime 3; it's the way you thrust your hand forward to do a Force Push in The Force Unleashed; it's the way you turn the Wii wheel in Mario Kart just like you would in real life (if real life had blue shells of doom) that make the experience just feel so much more real and fun.

In short, Nintendo took a gamble, but they were right. It wasn't the sense of sight where improvements needed to be accommodated; it was the sense of touch. By allowing us to feel our games, Nintendo has given us a console that is truly in a league of its own. Sure, diehard "hardcore" gamers that stay up all night playing Halo 3 and then bragging about their performance online will disagree, but these people are dinosaurs, like the arcade anorak who refused to accept the increased production values and complexity of modern titles. The Wii offers us the closest thing we can get at the moment to virtual reality, and it's the way of the future. That is why it's selling so well.

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