We thumbed through the IGN message boards after our recent review of Metroid Prime 3: Corruption -- a game that we awarded a high 9.5 rating -- and readers had a variety of questions for us. One that stood out was, did we think that a third party could make a game that would rival Corruption's innovative utilization of the Wii remote? We said sure, yes, absolutely, it was bound to happen eventually, but we honestly figured such a feat would be several months off, if not years. So imagine our surprise when we got our hands on Medal of Honor Heroes 2 for Wii this week and discovered very quickly that EA Canada seems to have nailed the control scheme.
Indeed, if our brief, but revealing play test with a few key portions of the war-time shooter was any indication, Heroes 2 may prove to be more powerful proof that Wii is the ideal console for fast and furious first-person experiences. What the demo also proves beyond any doubt is that the Wii rendition is absolutely not a quick and dirty PSP port and we hope all of our readers will take notice now because, frankly, this surprisingly adept undertaking is set to blow a hole through both Call of Duty and Vanguard before it.
We're diehard Nintendo fans, just like you are, so when we first heard that Heroes 2 was coming to both Wii and PSP, we prepared for the worst. Typically, games simultaneously designed for handheld and console have a way of looking and playing exactly like one another, which never bodes well for home system owners. Take, for example, SEGA's Alien Syndrome, a shooter that might've gone further on Wii if it didn't look like a PSP game. Or Heatseeker. Or Legend of the Dragon. We could keep going, but we'll spare you. The point is, we've been groomed to believe that dual-development equates to sloppy or careless Wii games.
As lead producer Matt Tomporowski demoes the Wii version of the shooter for us, he speaks to this, explaining that team members have periodically checked the message boards through the title's development cycle and are always disheartened when posters assert that Heroes 2 will be dumbed down mechanically or graphically on Wii. Sure, he adds, the two versions are bound to share some commonalities, like enemy artificial intelligence, for instance (which he notes is very smart), but Heroes 2 on Wii is brought to life via a new game engine, vastly improved graphics, completely overhauled controls and even a few exclusive play modes. Tomporowski further elaborates that EA Canada took a look at its competitors, from Call of Duty 3 to Vanguard, learned from them, and then set out to create a first-person shooter that would fully capitalize on Wii's strengths.
Sounds good, of course, but do we really need a war-time shooter? In Heroes 2, there is at least a little twist on the sub-genre, which has in recent years become ridiculously overpopulated. You play as Lt. John Berg, an operative for the Office of Strategic Services, which preceded the CIA and Special Forces groups of the military in the time of World War II. You won't be jumping in and out of different factions -- you'll always be in control of Berg, whose mission begins near Normandy Beach and continues onward through bombed urban cities, sewer systems and ultimately to a Nazi base. Berg's story is told via pre-game monologues complete with moody voice acting and ambient spy photographs.
The Wii iteration of Heroes 2 features three gameplay modes, including Campaign, Multiplayer and Arcade, the latter of which is completely exclusive to the home console build. Arcade mode is very clearly designed to both take advantage of the Wii Zapper, which provides a gun-like case for the remote and nunchuk, and to be easily accessible for players who haven't already fragged for years. Arcade actually takes you through all eight levels from the campaign, but there's a key difference: it's on rails; you merely point the Zapper (or alternatively you can play with the Wii remote and nunchuk) at the screen and shoot at enemy soldiers, leaving movement to the game itself. It's very much like the shooting levels in Rayman Raving Rabbids or like those from the forthcoming Ghost Squad or Resident Evil: Umbrella Chronicles.
Movement through the environments is slow and a little mechanical, in our experience. You never quite feel like you're running along because you move forwardly at a window browser's pace and the on-rails turning is just as sluggish. You may come to a dead end, at which point the game will very slowly turn you to the left or right, before the action continues. However, the gunplay is very responsive and, even with the Zapper, which has left us nonplussed in the past, feels good. When you consider that Arcade arrives as an alternative to and not in sacrifice of the campaign mode, you can't help but feel it's a complementary inclusion.
Obviously, the Campaign Mode gives you full freedom of control a la a more traditional first-person shooter, and with that gained maneuverability comes a wealth of gesture attacks, too. EA Canada has catered the Arcade Mode, though, to make use of gestures whenever possible. For example, depending on whether or not you play in Arcade or Campaign Modes, you will eventually come to a point in one of the beginning stages where you'll need to set a bomb to explode a submarine. Either way, you'll have to make a twisting gesture - either with the Wii remote and nunchuk or with both encased in the Zapper - to set the timer. As an aside, you're even able to determine how much time you leave yourself to get off the submarine. If you're a daredevil, you needn't twist the dial on the countdown timer very much, but you may unwittingly blow yourself to smithereens before you can safely escape.
Tomporowski was eager to demonstrate to us how the game has been designed to very intuitively work with the Zapper. To that end, he gunned through a series of soldiers and finally made it to a sniper point - a barricade with a convenient viewpoint of an enemy retreat below and with just enough sliver space for us to aim the barrel of our rifle forward. To control the sniper rifle, you simply point the Zapper at the spot you want to shoot on-screen. Meanwhile, you can scope in and out very easily by pressing the analog stick forward or backward respectively on the nunchuk. The aiming mechanic takes some getting used to because it's very loose - it actually drags a bit -- but it's also relatively immersive.
In Campaign Mode, you have full freedom of your character and can run in any direction, look in any direction, and shoot at anything or anyone you can see. Think Call of Duty 3 except with significantly improved graphics and controls and you'll have some idea of what to expect. To start, EA Canada enables you the ability to fully customize your control setup. Sure, you can set your maximum up and down look, but you can also feather your horizontal and vertical sensitivity, your aiming sensitivity and, best of all, your dead zone (commonly referred to in these parts as the elusive bounding box). Because the controls can be so tightly tweaked and because Heroes 2 runs at a locked 60 frames per second, you can continually fiddle with the dead zone and the look / aim sensitivities until you stumble upon the perfect match for the way you play. The standard configuration is already highly responsive - better than Call of Duty 3 or Vanguard and not far behind Metroid Prime 3. However, after maxing everything out and dropping the dead zone down to its smallest size, we walked away with a look / aim speed several times that of Prime 3 and the ability to a 180-degree flip with the Wii remote in a half second, as opposed to the two and half seconds it takes in Corruption. We're not sure we'd want to play the game like that - you'll make dramatic on-screen movements if you so much as sneeze - but if you've got the finesse to maintain control with that much speed at your fingertips, you have that option, which is a first on Wii.
We're Metroid Prime 3 fanboys so we're slow to suggest that anything could already better it in the control department. We're going to need much more time with Heroes 2 before we can definitively make that call. But based on what we've played so far, the game controls very well and with all the customization options at your disposal, we honestly don't see how the shooter won't at the very least give Samus a good run for her money, which is something of a shocker. (To be fair, though, Corruption skews more on the adventure side and hence you don't need all that extra turning speed. In Heroes 2, you do need to flip on a dime to fight off hordes of soldiers.) If there's a downside, it's that the main character in EA Canada's shooter seems to jog through levels, not run, which is directly opposite of the speedy rate at which Aran explores the alien terrain in Prime 3. The main character in Call of Duty 4 moves much quicker, too, if you'd rather use that as a reference point. We're hopeful that EA Canada will implement an option to up the run speed because - unlike the PSP build of the game - you can't even temporarily sprint.
You move through the locales in the game with the nunchuk's analog stick and aim with the Wii remote. In Campaign Mode, holding the A button brings up your iron sights for precision targeting and you're able to twist the nunchuk left or right to very effectively lean in the appropriate directions; this is extremely useful when you want to peek around a corner or barricade and sight-in on an enemy. The most uncomfortable control mechanics relate to using the D-pad to crouch (down) and to cycle between weapons (left and right), of which two - a primary and a secondary - can be carried at any time. The list of guns includes everything from the aforementioned Luger and Thompson to the MP40, two sniper rifles (American Springfield being one of them), a powerful shotgun, and a colt, in addition to grenades, artillery guns, and mortars, among others. Many of them come to Wii with custom gesture systems attached, which is a new feature that Tomporowski was itching to show us.
Take, for example, the shotgun. You aim and shoot with the Wii remote and B-trigger, but you reload the weapon after every damaging blast by making a pumping motion with the nunchuk. The maneuver is very satisfying. (As an aside, if you're using the Zapper in Campaign Mode, another possibility, you'd pull the entire peripheral down and back again to create that pumping motion.) Then there's the bazooka. This one's a little trickier. Here, you pretend that the Wii remote is the barrel of the huge gun itself, so you flip it upside down (the infrared pointer facing away from you) and rest it on your shoulder, right next to your ear, careful to keep your finger on the B-trigger. Next, you aim at enemies and objects with the nunchuk's analog stick. When you're ready to blow something up, you fire with the B-trigger, and when you do that you'll both hear a bazooka sound from the Wii remote's internal speaker and simultaneously feel the controller rumble. It's pretty well implemented, as goofy as it may read. You control a stationary artillery cannon by motioning clockwise or counterclockwise with the nunchuk to steer the giant unit right or left, and snap backward with the Wii remote to fire off massive blasts. To yield a heavy machine gun, you twist both the Wii remote and nunchuk to the left or right, as you'd do in Wii Sports Boxing to dodge offensives, and then you fire with the B-trigger. There's even a melee attack - you thrust forward with both the Wii remote and nunchuk to knock out nearby enemies. (In the online multiplayer mode, you can tap Z button for a secondary, but weaker melee attack, too.)
One of our favorite new inclusions was built exclusively for Wii. In two areas during the game's eight levels, you'll need to use a mine detector to walk through a deadly field without blowing yourself up. When you first take on this task, you'll have all the time in the world to figure it out, but on the second occasion you'll need to make it through before a countdown timer runs out. To accomplish this dangerous undertaking, you merely move very slowly through the environment and both listen to a Geiger counter noise (emitted from the internal speaker) and take note of the rumbling controller. If you don't hear or feel anything, you're on the right path. If you do, you'd better take a step back or you'll be blown sky high. The mechanic works extremely well. In another area, you'll need to tune a radio station by twisting the Wii remote left or right in order to receive instructions from the military. It's a small addition, but it does up the immersion factor.
We only got to run through portions of the single-player levels, but we had fun. Enemy artificial intelligence seems respectable. BioShock, it isn't, but at the same time, if your strategy is to camp behind barricades and pop at enemies, you will eventually notice that they'll start throwing grenades your way. If you're particularly bold, you can press the minus button on the Wii remote to kick the grenades back at them, or if you'd prefer, you can toss your own grenades. Simply hold down B-trigger and point at a spot you want to hurl the bomb - you'll see a reticule - then make a throwing motion. You can cancel throws at any time by tapping the B-trigger again, or if you do nothing the reticule will eventually disappear and you'll go back to gunplay. If you press up on the D-Pad, you can alternatively underhand toss grenades toward soldiers.
Tomporowski asserts that Medal of Honor Heroes 2 will run the average player at least eight hours and that doesn't even consider the ambitious online multiplayer component, which is compatible with up to 32 simultaneous gamers. Our play test was very single-player focused, but EA Canada did reveal that you'll be able to fully customize the online experience so that you and your friends can use zapper controls, or assign "easy" lock-on mechanics (which are also available for the single-player experience); once your reticule turns red over an enemy, you tap Z and you will effectively hold the lock wherever he runs. In Campaign Mode, this option is only available on the easy setting and it can be turned off or ignored. You'll also be able to boot players, vote gamers off, and more. There will be six custom maps specifically designed for the multiplayer mode. According to Tomporowski, even with 32 players online, Heroes 2 runs at 60 frames per second and barring any lag should be silky smooth. That, coupled with the speedy and wholly customizable control scheme we experienced in the single-player affair, has us very excited for the network-enhanced fragging to come.
Medal of Honor Heroes 2 has a clean, polished look to it and the presentation is enhanced by the smooth fluidity. Obviously, it looks better than Call of Duty 3 and largely one-ups Vanguard's visuals. The game's graphics are enhanced by a quasi-bloom effect, depth of field blurs, screen shakes, on-screen blood splatters and lighting effects that illuminate the immediate environment. The particle effects system is adequate, but not nearly as impressive as, say, Call of Duty 3's. While smoke billows from some wrecked ships, it's not nearly as realistic as the spreading mass of black air in Activision's shooter. EA Canada is smart about its priorities, though. As soon as you gun down enemies, they disappear - very likely a means to maintain the 60 frames motion, which rarely dips. Although today's screens do not reflect this truth, Heroes 2 does support both progressive scan and 16:9 widescreen modes.
We'll have much more on the game in the coming weeks, but for now feel free to look over a handful of new Wii screenshots. If you're looking for a fast and frenzied first-person shooter on Nintendo's console, you need to put this game on your radar.
