Bleach: Shattered BladeCastlevania JudgmentDBZ: Budokai Tenkaichi 3Godzilla: UnleashedGuilty Gear XX Accent Core
Though Nintendo consoles have not traditionally been home to a grand variety of fighting games (save perhaps the SNES), the company's latest little white machine has been fortunate enough to host a generous, if not overflowing number of solid releases in the genre. The introduction of motion control has fueled innovation in several long-running series' updates on the machine, and, at the same time, traditional control has been upheld with the system's backwards compatibility with last generation's GameCube controllers.
Then, of course, there've also been quite a few rejects to sort through too -- well-meaning, good-intentioned designs that just couldn't quite adapt to the new potential of the Wii Remote and instead offered little more than venues for players to competitively waggle against one another.
Today's edition of Cheers & Tears seeks to divide the good from the bad, then draw particular attention to the ugly. Read on below to see our picks for five Cheer-worthy entries in the genre, representing some of the best and most complete fighting designs available on the system. Then turn the page to receive our cautionary statements of concern, as we then spotlight five games that you should actively avoid -- even if you see them sitting in a bargain bin.
The most hyped and most heavily anticipated game in the history of Nintendo, Super Smash Bros. Brawl is an easy selection to headline this list. When it debuted on store shelves in March of 2008, it sailed to record sales numbers -- gamers just couldn't grab it quickly enough, especially after a solid year and a half of official, weekdaily blog updates that slowly trickled out more and more information to whet our appetites. Just waiting for the game to arrive was an incredible season to be a Nintendo fan, and it'll be amazing to see if the Big N can ever pull that level of excitement off again. Maybe with Smash Bros. 4.
Brawl offers an enhanced, updated edition of the GameCube hit Super Smash Bros. Melee's fighting engine, refined and refocused in every aspect -- and made even more robust through the addition of even more new characters brought forth from the history of the industry. Kid Icarus' Pit, Mother 3's Lucas and even third-party characters like Sonic the Hedgehog and Solid Snake arrived as newcomers and offered Smash addicts even more options than before, and the wealth of extra modes and options made available to support the core multiplayer battling focus would take pages more just to describe in brief. Super Smash Bros. Brawl is a masterpiece, and serves as one of the best games on Wii -- not just in the fighting genre, but in the entire system library.
The wait for Super Smash Bros. Brawl was a long one, especially since it was originally hoped to ship as a launch title for the system -- but, luckily, fighting fans got several solid installments of other long-running series to help ease the pain of the waiting period. Mortal Kombat: Armageddon was one such release, an enhanced Wii edition of a game that first surprised fans on the PlayStation 2 and original Xbox. On Wii, though, it was even more fun.
Implementing simple and accessible motion controls, Armageddon became the first Mortal Kombat title that you could play by actually using your own hand-moving martial arts skills (so to speak) -- simple gestures triggered a variety of special moves. It was possible to pull off a ruthless fireball, for example, with literally a flick of the wrist. The motion controls weren't required, though, as Midway smartly included support for traditional controllers as well -- that wise decision, along with the depth and sheer variety of characters and modes, made this MK sequel an excellent option for fighting fans in Wii's Year 1. (And it's still a good option today, as we wait on news of where the franchise will head next under its new owners at Warner Bros.)
For the past half decade or so, Eighting and Tomy Corporation's Naruto: Clash of Ninja series has been a source of consistently solid, totally accessible and nicely polished fighting action on Nintendo's consoles. The GameCube received several of these efforts, and the momentum didn't stop when the Wii was introduced -- we got Naruto: Clash of Ninja Revolution, and it proved to be just as exciting as always.
Adapting the popular anime series into a 3D arena fighter, Clash of Ninja captures the spirit and fun of its source material without sacrificing depth. It's got tons of characters, deep mechanics and lots of secrets to uncover in each installment. We're highlighting the first Wii edition here because, at one time, it held the title for the best fighter on the system. It's since seen a sequel in Clash of Ninja Revolution 2, but you might want to hold off on going back and buying either of them -- because this year's new follow-up, Naruto Shippuden: Clash of Ninja Revolution 3, is primed to trump them all when it arrives in just another couple of months. Believe it!
On the other side of the licensed anime fighter spectrum we have, of course, Dragon Ball Z. Dragon Ball Z: Budokai Tenkaichi 3 is the culmination of years of iterative updates to a core fighting engine that got its start in the GameCube generation, and while it certainly reached a saturation point or two along the way it's hard to argue with the quality of the ultimate result -- this is a great representation of its franchise, from the over-the-top screaming and glowing hair to the cel-shaded visuals that preserve the flavor of Akira Toriyama's character designs.
Unlike Naruto, Dragon Ball Z has had no further sequels on Wii beyond this late 2007 effort -- perhaps Atari realized it had already gone a bit beyond the peak of popularity and decided to stop before really digging into a deep hole with the franchise. Dragon Ball isn't dead, though. Fans can next look forward to the action experience of Dragon Ball: Revenge of King Piccolo, coming this October.
And, finally, a pick that's sure to have half of you scrolling down to the Comments box already. Castlevania Judgment was pre-judged by just about every Wii fan to be a disappointment, most people having made up their minds about the title's lack of merit months in advance of its actual release. Those that gave it a chance after its retail debut, though, were pleasantly surprised -- what looked like a misstep for the series at first glance turned out to be a surprisingly polished and fun fighting design.
It's still not going to win over everyone, as design decisions like characters being re-imagined by Death Note's manga artist and a time travel storyline that brought together heroes from all eras of the franchise timeline will remain divisive no matter what. But if you actually push pause on your preconceptions and give it a chance, you may well find yourself having quite a bit of fun -- the game really came together in its finally few months of development, and deserves a second look if you wrote it off after your first impressions.
Over on the Nintendo DS side of the corporate coin, SEGA's licensed Bleach fighters have been remarkably good -- Bleach: Dark Souls is still in contention for the title of top overall fighting game on the system. Here on the console end, though, things haven't faired nearly as well for the anime property -- Ichigo just can't seem to get into the swing of motion control.
Bleach: Shattered Blade arrived near the end of the Wii's first year on the market, and basically checked in nothing but an overblown wagglefest. Attack horizontally? Waggle. Attack vertically? Waggle. Pull off complicated combos? Waggle again, just faster than before. It's a too-simple design that lacks any of the depth of other anime-based fighters featured on the previous page, and is one game that Bleach fans need to avoid. The DS titles are a much better option for all you aspiring Soul Reapers out there.
One of the Day 1 launch titles available in the first wave of Wii releases, The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy probably racked up quite a few sales just by being there for early adopters to have as an option while standing in line to buy their shiny new Wiis. Those proud new hardware owners were likely disappointed after they got home with their purchase, though, as this cartoon-licensed fighter was nothing more than a quick-and-easy GameCube port.
No enhanced visuals, no added technical merit. Billy & Mandy is simply marred by a lack of overall effort, as even the Wii Remote controls it implements are limited. Clearly an afterthought. The Wii didn't have to wade through the waters of wussy Wii-makes like this for too long, as GameCube ports that make the leap any more (like the New Play Control series, or Metroid Prime Trilogy) seem to have a lot of extra effort invested to make the double dip seem justified. But Billy & Mandy? Well, we just hope you weren't swept up into the excitement of Day 1 launch celebrations so much that you ended up buying this one.
Now, before you get too upset, hear me out. Guilty Gear XX Accent Core is a solid fighter -- it's a capable update to a long-running and well regarded franchise, and it was a good first effort on Wii. Just not with the Wii Remote.
Accent Core is one of those games that just doesn't work at all with the Remote and Nunchuk combination, and trying to shoehorn the series' signature style onto that controller setup just resulted in frustration. Anyone who'd never played a Guilty Gear game before and gave it a shot on Wii probably left the franchise for good in disgust after just a few minutes of trying to get their fighters to properly react -- not a good thing. The game did include support for the Classic Controller, which made it much more in line with what you'd expect from the series and pretty much saved the day, so this Tears selection isn't without redemption. But then it got itself made obsolete a bit later on by the release of Guilty Gear XX Accent Core Plus, so there's another negative to deal with.
So the first Wii Accent Core is a bit of a mess, and best left alone. Fair enough?
Earning the award for the Most Generic Name for a Video Game in the History of Ever, Legend of the Dragon is, quite possibly, the most instantly forgettable game in the greater Wii library. It has absolutely nothing to maintain your interest or make you want to pick it up off a store shelf in the first place. But, if the impossible does occur and you get it home to take a spin in your system, it proves to be even worse than that -- if that's possible.
It's generic, far too simplistic, and based on a cartoon license that I really am having trouble actually recalling -- did Legend of the Dragon really exist? I guess it did, at some point. It must have been equally worthless. So please enjoy this picture of a young man named Billy getting strangled to death by some kind of WereJaguar man.
Last up, everyone's favorite Tokyo-destroying giant lizard monster. Godzilla games have never been good, and Pipeworks Software teamed up with Atari to perpetuate that trend at the end of 2007 with this piece of trash -- a four-player brawler which promised to bring multiplayer monster-bashing action, but brought, instead, a mass of frantic buyers furiously searching for their receipts to be able to bring this one back to the store.
It's repetitive, boring, controlled by (of course) Wii Remote waggles and has no lasting value whatsoever. The camera is broken and the control is laggy, and you can't even enjoy destroying the urban environments -- which is basically the point of the Godzilla franchise in the first place. Skip over this one, and skip over every other Godzilla game ever made as well. You can buy the entire collection of old Gojira films in a Best Buy bargain bin somewhere for the same price you'd pay for even one of the horrid game interpretations of the famous dino beast.
Battle over. That's it for another edition of Cheers & Tears here on the Wii channel, and, as always, we hope you've been properly warned away from the worst while getting redirected toward the best. If all else fails when you're looking for a fighting fix, just put your Brawl disc back in for another go. You know it won't disappoint.
