Bunch'o'Game mini-reviews

I've played a bunch of stuff recently that I haven't posted on. Here goes:

• Mirror's Edge (360): I picked it up on a whim, and am liking it much more than I expected. If Portal is a 1st person puzzle game, then ME is the 1st person platformer. Recommended.
• Guitar Hero: Aerosmith (360): It's Guitar Hero, so you know what to expect, and can check the song list online. I do think the mixing in of video interviews with the band kind of breaks the fiction of the game, but the fiction was always only a thin glaze over top of the game itself, so not a big deal. Recommended only for die-hard GH fans. I do like the latest GH: Metallica ad though!

• Tomb Raider: Legend (360): It's tomb raider. You know what to expect. It's fairly well done as far as TR goes. C'est tout. I wouldn't recommend unless you are a die-hard TR fan or have never played any of the TR games, in which case you should play at least one.
• Shawn White Snowboarding (360): Controls a little finicky, but I rather enjoyed it once I got the hang of it. Multiplayer is fun as well but a bit non-intuitive as to how you initiate events and the like. Only recommended for fans of finicky extreme sports titles like SSX or Tony Hawk, etc.
• Sway (iPhone): A fun little physics-driven touch-interface platformer. I've spent a surprising amount of time playing it. Recommended.
• Half Life 2 (360): I went back and played through the game since I'd never played Episodes 1,2. Amazing how ground breaking a title it was at the time of it's launch. Highly recommended.
• Wii Sports (Wii): Fun for the kids. Recommended
• Wii Play (Wii): Pretty crappy. Got it for the extra controller, but the mini-games in it are really aweful with only a couple exceptions. Not Recommended.

[update: Forgot to add two titles]

• Peggle (360 arcade): Every bit the fun of the PC original with two plusses and one minus: Multiplayer modes and achievements are great adds, but the controller is a step backward for those that have played it with a mouse before, making that decathalon challenge pretty tricky. Recommended.
• Biology Battle (360 Community games): I spent some time playing some of the community games at GDC and afterward. I have to do a lengthier post about community games in general, but for now I'll just recommend the trial of this game to decide if it's for you. It's a great little shooter along the lines of Geowars but with differences enough to make it distinctive. Recommended.

The Wii and The Unhandy Valley

With Pax in town, I went into the city last night and hooked up with Jane, Casey, Andre and some other folks for good ol' geeky conversation.

A particularly entertaining piece of the evening for me was watching (sometimes facilitating, sometimes instigating) an argument between Casey and a guy (forget his name) from Nintendo, about the Wii and more specifically about it's controller.

Casey was expressing a complaint about the Wii controller that he was having trouble articulating. His point was that while it may sense motion, and that may be useful, he was dissatisfied with it because it didn't do what it *promised*.

As of late, I've been finding myself often, in discussions with coworkers, developers, other industry folk, coming back to this point about what it is that you promise the customer. It's a kind of very high-standard, high-level litmus test that you can apply to any product offering you are working on and see if it passes a straight-face test.

Anyhoo.

Casey's point was that Nintendo was directly or indirectly promising something with the Wii controller that ultimately it didn't deliver. That users expect it to sense position AND motion, but because it's only the latter, then have to get 'trained' on the device. Wii tennis, while fun, has that moment for everyone where they say "oh, I get it, it's not really like a racquet".

Further underlining the point, I added that in Wii sports baseball, it expects motion, not position, and thus bunting isn't an option. I can't just hold up the bat in the right place and let the ball hit IT.

The Nintendo guy couldn't quite grok why this was an issue, which is when I made what I think is a clever analogy:

Similarly to how there is an "uncanny valley" that refers to how, as artificial representations of humans illicit an aversive response as the approach - but don't reach - realism; I beleive there is an "unhandy valley" that occurs as methods of input to a simulation approach their real-life equivalents - but don't quite reach it.

Anyone who's tried any of the VR simulations of the past decade can attest to this, only most of those are disconnected enough that they don't approach the valley. I think the Wii controller gets near enough (or to Casey's point, sets the expectation that it gets near enough) that people have this disconnect on their first try with it.

Now, don't get me wrong, the Wii and Wii sports is good ol' fun. But there is that training step, and within it, a little bit of disappointment that it wasn't really magic after all.

I do wonder, as these types of controllers improve (position + motion, lower latency, higher precision, etc, etc), will consumers grow more enthralled with them... or will we find that the valley runs deep and wide?