I got the Wii Zapper for Christmas along with a copy of Medal of Honor Heroes 2 for the Wii. If you’re not familiar with either, the Wii zapper is a peice of hardware that the Wiimote and nunchuck click in to to form a rifle of sorts to make it supposedly much easier to play FPS games and MoH is a WW2 shooter game. I decided to give them both a try and started up the campaign on easy mode. I adjusted the control options to what I usually use and the game began. Normally I’m “OK” at these types of games. I’m not a pro at console shooters but I’ve always been able to advance through them with little to no trouble. Woah was I surprised with this one.
Medal of Honor Heroes and the Wii in general incorporate an odd movement system that requires you to use the nunchuck to move forward, back, and stafes. In order to look left/right/up/down you must physically aim at the screen with the wiimote and bring your cursor to what’s considered the “dead zone” and it turns your character as if you were looking that direction. I simply can’t get used to it. Right off the boats onto the beach in a WW2 game I’m being sprayed down with enemy machine gun fire and my character is stuck running in circles because for some reason I can’t wrap my brain around the controls.
I finally managed to get moving forward and I began to shoot at the enemies. Unfortunately my aim was no better either and Graev kept laughing at me and telling me I’m spraying and praying too much when I shoot be focusing on small bursts and hiding behind cover. Easy for him to say! I try crouching and my character looks at the floor and spins. I try running through doors and I kid you not it took me 2 minutes to try and line myself up enough to go through. I tried throwing a grenade and I couldn’t seem to manage much more than lobbing it 2 feet.
Since the campaign wasn’t going smoothly I tried to go online and play. Surprisingly EA has dedicated servers set up. The graphics appear to be dumbed down in-game but they do allow up to 32 players at a time which is a decent number for a console and for the Wii. It’s standard MoH multiplayer. You pick a team, your gun, and you fight. I wish it were that simple. Needless to say I was slaughtered as I ran around in circles trying to find the enemy while probably some 11 year old Wii prodigy child laughed at me and had the satisfaction of pwning a noob.
Graev has dubbed me horrible at the Wii. I guess I am. The Wii has defeated a mighty foe today, but I’ll be back soon.