SYSTEM UPDATE: Saying goodbye to the Nintendo Wii

I’ve been writing about the Nintendo Wii U. A lot. And in the coming weeks, I will be writing more about the Wii U. A lot more.

But for just a moment, let’s press the pause button on all that next-gen hype to take a look back at the last generation. It’s just about time to say goodbye to the Nintendo Wii, a now-archaic console that quietly ushered in this whole era of motion-controlled gaming.

With the Wii, Nintendo laid the groundwork for Microsoft’s ever-popular Kinect. In 2006, when the console made its debut, I wasn’t sure how many gamers would embrace the idea of standing up, waving their arms, and gesturing as they played games, but a series of first-party Nintendo offerings (think Wii Sports) helped show developers the way.

The message from Nintendo, as always, was crystal clear: Unique, inventive gameplay would eternally trump stunning production values.

The Wii backed that with a massive library of unique games, the likes of which you rarely saw in the early days of the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. The PS3 began with uninventive but beautiful games: Genji, the obligatory sports titles, and Call of Duty. The Wii? There was the sword-slashing Red Steel, a unique take on Zelda controls in Twilight Princess and Super Monkey Ball.

The development of the Kinect and the PS Move would eventually even the playing field, diminishing the Wii’s great gameplay advantage and leaving everyone to notice the lack of HD visuals, the online community limitations and the annoyance of real batteries in an age of rechargeable devices.

But the Wii just kept striving to deliver impressive games. Even this year, in its twilight, it has proven that gameplay can still sometimes overcome hardware limitations with a trio of titles. In fact, you shouldn’t get rid of your Wii until you survive these three titles:

- Xenoblade Chronicles: Monolith’s Japanese RPG pushed the graphical bounds of the Wii, fighting the aging hardware to churn out surprisingly beautiful visuals. Worlds are lush in this 50-some-hour adventure, and everything attempts to be detailed. No, nothing is quite as clean as, say, Tales of Vesperia on Xbox 360, but the visuals were worthwhile. A unique real-time combat system tied everything together, making for plenty of fun.

- The Last Story: The last Japanese RPG you should ever play on the Wii. The Last Story continued to push the Wii’s visual engine, chugging to create a tremendously detailed Lazulis Island. Even more impressive, it reminded us that a magical story could still draw gamers in, even in the face of occasional frame-rate struggles and sometimes blocky textures. I connected with protagonist Zael and his ragtag band of mercenaries, fell in love with their individual conflicts and issues, and the decision to set the entire game on one island worked well.

Source : nydailynews[dot]com