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sbking42's WiiSPACE (Wii)
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| [September 14, 2009 02:51:30 PM]
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WiiSPACE is a homebrew retro style space shooter for the Wii. Its style and gameplay are similar to Geometry Wars for the Xbox 360, which is a much more polished game because it is not homebrew. However, I find that the controls are much better suited for the Wii, and the enemy AI is significantly more interesting in WiiSPACE. The player is a red triangle that looks very much like the triforce from Zelda. You move by using the thumbstick on the nunchuck, aim using the light gun on the wiimote, and shoot by pressing and holding B on the wiimote. You have unlimited ammo, and the firing type is a fast continuous machinegun type fire. The enemies consist of various colored shapes, each with their own unique AI and formations. There are also a few bosses, but I have only gotten to one so far. There are four powerups (extra life, shield, shooting powerup, bomb), which are all some form of yellow/white pentagon. The goal of the game is a typical high score system, with the ability to upload high scores to a server using the Wii’s wi-fi.
WiiSPACE is actually a pretty fun space shooter, especially on multiplayer. Multiplayer is harder than single player because all players share an extra life pool. Honestly, the creators of WiiSPACE have handled the wiimote controls better than even most commercial games for the Wii. The light gun is very smooth and the character is quite easy to control even though it moves pretty fast (about 2-3 times as fast as the player in Geometry Wars). After only a couple deaths it became relatively easy to swerve in and out of the 20-30 enemies that may appear on screen at any given time.
The coolest part of the game is the many random enemy formations that appear. Even after an hour or so of gameplay I do not think I’ve seen all of the enemies or patterns that the game has to offer (this is unusual for a space game). Some enemies, like the green rectangles, form in two rows that cross the entire screen horizontally at the top and bottom, then move toward the players in a converging walls type of situation. Others, like the blue squares, will quickly move toward the player then stop for a few seconds. With some practice, you can move out of the way at the last second so that the pack of 10-20 blue squares all converge on generally the same spot, the kill them all with only a few shots. One rare type of enemy is basically two pink circles connected by a pink line. This type of enemy will shoot a line out to you, which grabs onto the player, and then the circles rotate around, reeling you in. Each type of enemy has at least 3 patterns that they appear in, and can quickly fill the screen with enemies.
The first boss has a simple pattern but a lot of health. He is basically a green wiremesh sphere surrounded by a circular shield of white lines. He takes up about a fifth of the screen‘s area. It has two attacks. He can shoot a long stream of white polygons, which all shoot towards the player’s location but will not follow the player after they have been shot. The other attack is simply a radial burst of about 15 white polygons. In order to defeat the boss, you have to wait for it to emit a bomb powerup, which you can use to temporarily disable its shield.
For a homebrew space shoot-em-up, WiiSPACE pleasantly surprised me. The controls are very well handled, and I was drawn into the game much more than many of the crappy commercial games that have been spewed out for the Wii. Nintendo should really take a lesson from these independent game developers, instead of finding ways to inhibit people from softmodding their console in order to take advantage of homebrew games like these. Finally, I really just don't understand how a little homebrew game like this one has better light gun controls than 80% of the commercial games out there, and even the wii's own menu controls.
This entry has been edited 1 time. It was last edited on Sep 14th, 2009 at 17:19:08.
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sbking42's WiiSPACE (Wii)
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Current Status: Playing
GameLog started on: Monday 14 September, 2009
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