Caveat: I’m a weenie, and am playing on Hard. So it’s slower going for me than many.
Graphics: Pretty. For standard def, it looks pretty darn good! I’m glad to see the Wii can actually put out some decent images. You can barebly tell the difference between the prerendered stuff and the in-game stuff. No real jaggies that stick out. Nothing ‘pops’ out of the screen at all as strange. Textures are nice. Terrain looks good and isn’t too rectilinear.
Controls: Interesting – I normally never use ‘lean’ for example, but here, I might. Not super precise, but interesting. The little melee fight you have to do with the gun stock is pretty cool. Kinda immersive, and tiring – but not bad.
Gameplay: This is, alas, where I feel the game falls down. It’s a standard scripted roller-coaster ride through WWII. Little golden waypoint stars on your compass to tell you where to go. Little ‘trigger’ points which set the Krauts after you, or set off scripted events on the board. Maybe it’s me being a whiner, but I kinda feel like – haven’t we done this before? A lot? Repeatedly? Is this all there is? After the 4th or so time of having an explosion go off and one of my teammates pick me up, I start to tire of the scripting. After one of the assualts on a heavily fortified German position, I start to wonder – I keep killing them, and they keep coming back? What is it specifically that I have to do in order to advance? Go to my little gold star point? Does it matter if I kill the Nazis? Should I just go to where I’m told?
As in “Red Steel” there’s no health meter, just don’t get all shot up all at once and you don’t die. This solves the “Attrition Death” problem I blogged about before. But it feels wimpy. I dunno.
AI: Annoying. Teammates get into the line of fire, die, and then you lose due to friendly fire. And your teammates don’t help you when you actually need it. They may occasionally cap a bad guy. But that’s less often.
Conclusion: – A Console that allows for innovation does not necessarily cause innovation. It’s nice to see the games can be immersive, and the control scheme and sound effects and graphics feel pretty immersive – it’s just immersing me into a Disney ride where I have to shoot some baddies for the ride to move to the next thing. Feh. I’ll beat the game, mind you, as I always do, and I will enjoy it, and I am enjoying it now, but let’s see this for what it is – a decent game, not a great game, or even a good game.