In Defence Of The Wii Rail Shooters

[crazyjackcsa]

I've done some reading on the state of the "Hardcore" scene on the Wii, and have for the most part come to zero conclusions.

A couple of games keep coming up as poor sellers, and examples of how there isn't a market for core games.

I'm referring to three games mainly. The House of the Dead Overkill, Resident Evil the Darkside Chronicles and Dead Space Extraction.

It's too bad that these games are being used as fodder as fan boys and misguided executives to bash the Wii, as they are all very good, with just one huge shortfall that units them all.

I'm not much of a rail shooter guy. I got Virtua cop as part of a 3-1 deal on the Saturn, and I bought House of the Dead 2 for the Dreamcast, and that's it.

But let me tell you the trifecta are fantastic.
Overkill is by far the most traditional of the group and feels the most like an arcade game. What makes this game is the fast arcade action and the over the top feel.

Dead Space Extraction is the most story driven of the three and techincally I think is the most robust. There were at points in this game that I forgot it was a rail shooter.

The Darkside Chronicles, while not a full blown RE game, is a must for fans, it is the most diverse with three distinct games covered and is a nice melding of the previous two.

All have made huge strides in gameplay, and story from the arcade days, and I think the genre has shown more growth that most other.

A couple of things bug me though: Why aren't these games selling? I don't mean blockbuster sales, I mean respectable sales.

RE has done the best of the bunch, with roughly a 500k in sales in 14 weeks.
Overkill sits at 600k in sales after a year.
And Dead Space was DOA with just 215k in 22 weeks.

And more to the point, why do companies think a game in this niche genre was going to be huge? (I specifically look at EA here).Has there ever been a big hit?

My final thought was the biggest flaw that ties the games together. Length. Dead Space is about 8 hours long. I got through Darkside in about 10 hours and Overkill comes in at like 4 hours. Why don't companies put more length into these things? Why not a full blown 20hour+ game? How about some actual branching paths with different set pieces? Or different enemies and paths on different difficulty settings? If you really are committed to the genre or the "core" market, why not go all out? There really isn't any reason not to.

I picked up RE at full price, the other two at half price, and am happy with the value I got. I'd really like to see more from each series though doubt I will and would love to hear your thoughts on any or all of the games.

[joshnickerson]

About the length: I agree with the idea of branching paths and difficulty settings, Star Fox 64 was a great example of this. You could blow through that game in about an hour, but you'd only be experiencing about a third of the stages. The medal system also encouraged you to go back and seek out hidden paths to boost your score, and offered an Expert Mode you could unlock if you were good enough. Stuff like that would be perfect for arcade style games like these.

About sales: Maybe if the publishers actually, yknow, put some effort into advertising these games (and I don't mean posting a flash banner ad on IGN for a week), they might actually sell more. Just a crazy idea. I mean, when you've got Nintendo Channel pimping No More Heroes 2 more than Ubisoft, the company whining about low sales, you know something's seriously wrong.

P.S. If Sega would actually get off their ass and release a Virtua Cop collection for Wii, I would buy it, full price, on day one.

[kupomogli]

10 hours for a rail shooter and you're complaining? I honestly don't think they should be any longer.

Also. The rail shooter genre has never really been any good. They're somewhat decent to if you haven't played one in a long time it'll be fun to go and play it for a round or two, but they get boring quickly. If you're playing with a friend they're more fun, but again, get boring.

Play one rail shooter and you've played them all(pretty much.) Just pick what kind you're more into. You want to be a cop? Play Time Crisis. Want to kill zombies? Play House of the Dead or the new Resident Evil games. Want to kill vampires? Play Vampire Night. You get the idea. How far this genre has gotten and the best one in my opinion is still Operation Wolf.

[izarate]

Play one rail shooter and you've played them all(pretty much.)

You could say the same about almost every other game genre out there. Every type of game evolves with baby steps.

[j_factor]

The House of the Dead 2 & 3 Return sold about 1.2 million (worldwide) and RE Umbrella Chronicles sold about 1.3 mil. I think that's about as good as it'll ever get for this type of game. I know that Time Crisis 4 "only" sold about 750k worldwide, and there aren't even any of these types of games for Xbox 360 at all. I wish I had sales figures handy for PS2 games, but I doubt games like Time Crisis 3 sold much more than that (if they even sold that much).

If 1.3 mil is tops, 600k is not that bad.

[crazyjackcsa]

10 hours for a rail shooter and you're complaining? I honestly don't think they should be any longer.

Also. The rail shooter genre has never really been any good. They're somewhat decent to if you haven't played one in a long time it'll be fun to go and play it for a round or two, but they get boring quickly. If you're playing with a friend they're more fun, but again, get boring.

Play one rail shooter and you've played them all(pretty much.) Just pick what kind you're more into. You want to be a cop? Play Time Crisis. Want to kill zombies? Play House of the Dead or the new Resident Evil games. Want to kill vampires? Play Vampire Night. You get the idea. How far this genre has gotten and the best one in my opinion is still Operation Wolf.

You could say that about any genre, Sports, Fighting, FPS games, RPG's. In fact, Lets:



10 hours for a Fighting game and you're complaining? I honestly don't think they should be any longer.



Also. The fighting genre has never really been any good. They're somewhat decent to if you haven't played one in a long time it'll be fun to go and play it for a round or two, but they get boring quickly. If you're playing with a friend they're more fun, but again, get boring.



Play one fighter and you've played them all(pretty much.) Just pick what kind you're more into. You want to be 2D? Play Guilty Gear. Want 3D? Play Virtua Fighteror the new Street Fighter games. Want to Use Weapons? Play Soul Calibur. You get the idea. How far this genre has gotten and the best one in my opinion is still Street Fighter 2.


See? Pretty easy. And why not a 20-30 hour game? You can add so much to the Genre, as was pointed out Starfox added the branching paths, Panzer Dragoon added the 360 degree camera. Just because it's on rails, you can't add story? Exploration of different routes? Different mechanics?

Are tightly controlled "Corridor" FPS games really any different? The only difference I see is the moving at your own pace.




Each of the games I mentioned have added more in the way of story, control and gameplay and stand heads above the games of just a few years ago. In Dead Space the action and story are so intermixed you can nearly forget you're play in a "simple" rail shooter. Darkside Chronicles adds a heck for fans of the series. House of the Dead has the humor, violence and a neat feature of being able to "push" the camera ever so slightly. All three add upgradeable weapons, bonuses and special features.

The advertisment issue is one that really seems to be a problem on the Wii. Do companies just think the large user base means they don't need to advertise. Say what you will about Nintendo, They still advertise the heck out of their games.

[Julio III]

Hmm, out of the three you listed, I only have House of the Dead Overkill. One of its main problems is its length. It is far too long. 3 and a half hours for a lightgun shooter! By the end (yes, I did it in one sitting) my arm was aching a bit due to the non-balanced weight of the HotD Overkill Hand Cannon.

You forgot Ghost Squad off your list which I have played much longer in total that HotD Overkill despite one playthrough of it being much shorter. I really enjoy it and love the way that each time you play through it you unlock something new so each playthrough is different.

I really do want to try Dead Space Extraction after reading the glowing reviews however haven't played the original Dead Space and because I hear its quite story orientated think I should play that game first even though it appeals to me less than Extraction.

Maybe the problem is that the three light gun shooters you mentioned are quite "dark" and not light and colourful (like Ghost Squad, indeed)

[Neil Koch]

Actually, I really like the length of HOTD Overkill, at least level by level. Playing the whole game in one stretch is a bit crazy, but it's great for playing a level or two at a time. The game as a whole is one of my favorites on the Wii. I really love the humor and over the top violence. The only real complaint that I have with it is that it's hard to unlock all of the weapons because after you beat the levels a couple of times, you hardly get any cash.

HOTD 2 & 3 isn't as good as Overkill, but it's still a good time, especially once you start unlocking the better weapons in HOTD2.

Ghost Squad is another good one that reminds me of the Virtua Cop games, which should be released as WiiWare.

I don't have Darkside Chronicles, but I liked Umbrella Chronicles, besides having to shake the controller so much, and the cheapness/toughness of some of the bosses. The Wesker missions were cool.

Dead Space Extraction has some of the best graphics on the Wii, and the basic action is fun, but I really didn't like the parts where you had to repair circuits while fending off aliens. The cutscenes also got to be a bit long for a game of this type. The bonus levels, which are more straightforward, but you can blow through those pretty quickly.

Medal of Honor Heroes 2 has a light gun mode, which is fun despite being a bit bland in the design department, and the censorship (no blood or Nazi symbols) waters down things a bit.

And while it's not a rail shooter, you can use a gun configuration in Call of Duty: World At War, but I found that to basically be unplayable. I haven't played the Wii version of Modern Warfore, so I don't know if that fares better.

Overall, I really like the rail shooters on the Wii, mostly because it's something that I don't have on my PS3... well, I do have Time Crisis 4, but it's a hassle setting up and calibrating the sensors, so I don't play it much.

[Icarus Moonsight]

I'd like to introduce a little crowbar in separation of rail and light gun shooters. Wii has and I like them both. I love the fact that the standard control set-up works perfectly. I have a ton of lightguns for Sat/PS1, PS2/XB and DC. They have their own bin! LOL

Otherwise, great topic. :) I'm missing quite a bit ATM, but I want to get all the lightgun/rail shooters for the Wii eventually.

[crazyjackcsa]

How would you make the distinction between the two? Rail shooter and Light Gun shooter?

[j_factor]

How would you make the distinction between the two? Rail shooter and Light Gun shooter?

Light gun shooter: Virtua Cop, Time Crisis, Area 51, Lethal Enforcers, and all the games we've been talking about in this thread

Rail shooter (properly): Panzer Dragoon, Rez, Sin & Punishment, Star Fox, etc.

[crazyjackcsa]

Light gun shooter: Virtua Cop, Time Crisis, Area 51, Lethal Enforcers, and all the games we've been talking about in this thread

Rail shooter (properly): Panzer Dragoon, Rez, Sin & Punishment, Star Fox, etc.

I see, I never thought of it like that before. They're so closly related that I guess I just considered them the same genre

[swlovinist]

The wii has some great third party games, you just have to dig alot. I love that these light gun games have been recognized by some . They are way better than they have been given credit for.

[crazyjackcsa]

The wii has some great third party games, you just have to dig alot. I love that these light gun games have been recognized by some . They are way better than they have been given credit for.


Exactly! The genre has come a long way, and is being dismissed by some. Like I said, traditionally I'm not a huge fan of light gun games but each of these games has left me wanting more, whiich is both a good and a bad thing.

[kedawa]

The Wii is just an awful system for these kinds of games. I'd rather use an actual light gun or even a mouse than the flaky Wii pointer.

[crazyjackcsa]

The Wii is just an awful system for these kinds of games. I'd rather use an actual light gun or even a mouse than the flaky Wii pointer.

How does a gun really differ from the wii remote? I've found it to be far more reliable in aiming than the guns, and both are better than a mouse( not by much) and heads above a standard controller.

Another issue with guns is the weight, they also seem to be heavier and the balance is off. Sure it looks cooler, but that's it.

And the Wii a bad system for this type? Tell me what is the ideal system?

You're the only person I've heard that had a problem with the pointing aspects of the controller.

[Julio III]

How does a gun really differ from the wii remote? I've found it to be far more reliable in aiming than the guns, and both are better than a mouse( not by much) and heads above a standard controller.

Another issue with guns is the weight, they also seem to be heavier and the balance is off. Sure it looks cooler, but that's it.

And the Wii a bad system for this type? Tell me what is the ideal system?

You're the only person I've heard that had a problem with the pointing aspects of the controller.

Well, I agree with that the Wii remote is nothing like a real lightgun. Its more like dragging a crosshair across the screen. With a lot of calibration you could probably get it to behave pretty much like a real light gun but I never have the patience for that.

[jb143]

The Wii is just an awful system for these kinds of games. I'd rather use an actual light gun or even a mouse than the flaky Wii pointer.

It isn't quite the same with the cursor and the cursor not being exactly where you point at, but I wouldn't call it flaky. You don't have any bright lights in the way that are messing it up do you? Windows that let in too much sun, candles, any other IR sources, etc...? They can screw it up and make it act flaky.

[j_factor]

Well, I agree with that the Wii remote is nothing like a real lightgun. Its more like dragging a crosshair across the screen. With a lot of calibration you could probably get it to behave pretty much like a real light gun but I never have the patience for that.

But that's how the GunCon 3 and LCD Top Gun both work, too. If anyone has a better idea for a light gun that would work with non-CRT displays, I'd love to hear it.

[Icarus Moonsight]

If you're hardcore, you'll use a real gun and have a bunch of LCD building gnomes that hotswap the sets for each shot. :p

Re: Rail shooters: I still play Counter Force. Port of Ex Zeus for PS2. I like the game, started dev for the DC... Maybe that had something to do with it. It has problems, sure, but it's fairly hard and fun. Would like to try the PS2 version and see it the wiggle-waggle is a hindrance or an improvement.

[kedawa]

I prefer aiming with the sight on the gun, rather than an onscreen cursor. Maybe I'm in the minority when it comes to these things, but I don't think I've played a console lightgun shooter since the 8bit days that actually got it right.
Everything since then has been either a compromise like the Wii, or suffered from half-assed calibration.

[Icarus Moonsight]

I can't remember if it was HotD 2 & 3, Overkill or both, but you could perform an excellent calibration and even turn off the cursor. With a gunshell like the Perfect Shot, gameplay is indistiguishable between something like a Guncon or even an arcade set up. Connect a nunchuck and you enter a realm of domination, control-wise. Oh, LCD/flatscreen able to boot. Wii ownes the lightgun genre this round. In fact, it is (somewhat arguably, PS1/2 give it a good run) the essential console for the genre.

[kedawa]

It certainly has the games. I'll have to look into that HotD calibration thing.
I'd like to see how the Wii would handle Virtua Cop 3.