MTV’s games reporting continues to surprise me - in a totally good way. They’ve got an interview with Mike Chrzanowski, an associate designer with Vicarious Visions who are working on the Marvel: Ultimate Alliance game, and it’s very readable, and very informative. IGN? Time to step up, eh?
I think one of the biggest issues that people have with the Wii so far is the possibilities of imprecise controls. After Red Steel’s E3 showing, that certainly seemed to be one of the most repeated comments on it - that the controls just didn’t feel solid enough. Recent reports suggest that the game has gone through a number of control overhauls in order to get it ready for the Wii launch, including the implementation of 1:1 sword movements, which sounds like a lot of fun.
As much as I’m looking forward to Marvel: Ultimate Alliance - as a pretty huge fan of Marvel games in general, particularly good ones - I’ve got to say; at this point, I’d rather play it on Xbox 360 than the Wii. Or at least, that was how I felt until I read Chrzanowski’s comments on the port. “In some cases people will do something that’s not going to work right, and in that case they’re probably going to have to adjust the way they do it,” he says. “But that’s a rare case.”
This is absolutely what I want to hear about the Wii right now. Forget all the pissing about with rumours of graphical revolutions yet to come or whatever - I want to know that, when I buy one, it’s going to offer the same kind of precise controls that I’m used to with other consoles. And let me be clear here: I’m not doubting the abilities of Nintendo to produce a console that can provide a quality experience, but rather the abilities of developers to get it right. I fear there’s going to be a lot of lazy ports with bad controls on the Wii, but at least this game won’t be one of them.
Chzanowski also mentions Vicarious’ work with improving the control methods was to simply measure players inputs and tweak the code as neccessary. “Within a week it went from being 60 to 70 percent reliable to 97 percent reliable,” he says. Awesome news - now let’s see that it gets to 100% before launch.