Third-Party Wii developers are mocking us to the bank

A while back some of you may remember an editorial I ran here about how we shouldn't worry about the graphics of the Wii since Gamecube had many beautiful games. This was very true since the GC had games like Resident Evil 4 , Rouge Squadron 3 and Star Fox Adventures as true stand out games for the Gamecube's graphic power.

Now enter the Wii, Nintendo's New-Generation console. Not focused on graphics, but gameplay to enhance your experience. However, Nintendo has said many times that the Wii is more powerful than the Gamecube and that they do know that graphics are important to enhance enjoyment in playing video games. So the question is: At the launch of the Wii why are we seeing games that look no better than Gamecube? Why are we seeing games that look worse than Gamecube in graphic presentation?

The Wii is easy to develop for and how you make a game on it is very similar to how you make a Gamecube game. It would seem that a developer can have a game up and running with Gamecube quality graphics in a matter of mere weeks with the power of the Wii. The Wii is not supposed to be a system that just makes Gamecube quality graphics in record time for developers. Of course if developers took their time to actually see what the Wii could do beyond the initial development, we would be seeing the actual potential of the Wii hardware. Sadly this is far from being a reality from just about all Third Party games thus far:

Far Cry, a series much beloved by gamers across the world has been completely and utterly butchered in terms of presentation and graphics on the Wii. Gamecube could and has done much better and with a better frame rate. What a waste.

Red Steel, a much hyped FPS game that has failed to live up the promise on a few levels. The game suffers from extreme anti-aliasing problems. Large jagged edges on almost all walls and objects make the game look cheap and ugly. Star Fox Adventures never had this problem, in fact that game also had fur on the animals bodies with beautiful real time lighting and textures all over the place.

Call of Duty 3 looks no different than the Xbox version, maybe a little worse even. Textures look blurry with little detail. Remember Timesplitters 2 on Gamecube? Remember the S3 texturing on the walls? The closer you got to them the more detailed they got. We know the Wii is capable of this effect if the Gamecube is. Why does the Wii version of Call of Duty 3 have smeary and blurry textures then? Pathetic.

A total lack of effort to make use of the Wii hardware by Third Parties. How much did it cost Ubisoft to make Far Cry? After seeing how horrible the presentation and graphics look, probably not much. However since the game is close to the launch of the Wii, they think they can make a lot of money from this game since people are dying to buy anything Wii related during this time of year. It could work to fool a lot people, but informed ones will know better than to buy this tripe. Of course a developer would never bad mouth their product just before it launches. IGN interviewed Ubisoft on Far Cry Vengeance a little while back and they said that the game would look at least as good as the Xbox version. Well, they lied. It looks much worse than the Xbox version of the game. Gameplay is the most important thing in a game true. Don't mock us with making a game look so bad that it shouldn't even be on Gamecube. Gamers can see a lack of effort in presentation and it takes away from the whole experience. Not putting forth effort to make each game on the Wii look the best it can be just because its "expected" to look worse anyway is not an excuse.

Third Parties:

Don't mock the educated gamer.

Don't mock the Wii with your half ass efforts you call games.