Blog a Day- Day 20- Not all 3rd Party Wii Games are BaD...Though Most Are
Published on February 20, 2014 8:24 PM
Part of the Series - Blog a Day (BaD) 2014
8 minute read
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I have a ton of badly made Wii games. I've discussed this a little in my king of crap blog. However, sometimes developers did attempt to make a good game...or at least not one that is total garbage. So, I'll do a best of and worst of. But not all Wii games are bad...though most are, so here is a list of titles maybe you missed out on or should be thankful you did.

1. The Best From Capcom:

Zack & Wiki: Quest For Barbaros' Treasure

I've already discussed how this point & click game is a fantastic take on point & click games of old. The cel shaded style, the humor, the puzzles, all of it is just a wonderful experience you probably didn't get a chance to try

 

Best Honorable Mentions: Resident Evil 4 and Okami Wii ports- Two great games you can get on other systems

The Worst:

 

Spyborgs/ Dead Rising Chop Till You Drop- Spyborgs is a generic beat em up (As if the wii doesn't have enough) and Dead Rising was a watered down and badly done port.

2. The Best From Majesco: A Boy and His Blob

Another underappreciated gem and a fantastic reimagining of an NES classic. Majesco and Wayfoward knocked this game out of the park making this a rare game that surpasses the original.

The Bad: Just about everything else

Well there isn't one sole game to put blame on. But that hasn't stopped Majesco from publishing or developing clunkers such as Swords, Mad Dog McCree gunslinger pack,  and Pirates: Plund-ARRRR!

3. The best from Ubisoft

Red Steel 2/ No More Heroes 1 & 2, The first Rayman Raving Rabbids.

  

Ubisoft has done some commendable work for the Wii. Red Steel 2 was a vast improvement over the original game (which felt like a rushed launch game), No More Heroes 1 & 2 were published by them and they are good. Also the first Raving Rabbids game was chuckle induced crazy mini game compilation

Honorable Mention: Rayman Origins- If it weren't multiplatform...would've included it on the best list

The Worst: Any thing after the first Raving Rabbids, The Petz series, any licensed crap (open season, NCIS The game, CSI, etc. are all honorable mentions)

4. The Best From Square-Enix: Final Fantasy: Chocobo's Dungeon

I've never played a mystery dungeon crawler before I got a Wii. This somehow became the system that got a lot of them though and Chocobo's Dungeon is the best of the bunch.

The Mediocre of what could have been good: Dragon Quest Swords: The Masked Queen and the Tower of Mirrors/ Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: The Crystal Bearers

 

Other than taking the crown of uneccessarily long titled square-enix games these games had potential to be better than what they were and while not bad, they certainly weren't very good either.

The Worst: Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Echoes of Time

Hey here's an idea....let's take a Nintendo DS game and badly port it over to the Wii home console! What that's a bad idea!? Poppycock! I say poppycock good sir!

5. The Best From Sega: Sonic Colors, Mad World

 

These two games have the same writers which is saying...something. Not to mention both did equally different things. Colors got fans to believe in Sonic a little more (though some still didn't like it) and Mad World was a gory, over the top beat em up.

 

Honorable mentions: Sonic & Sega All Star Racing/ House of the Dead Overkill- Both went multiplatform, but both were very solid efforts. 

The Worst: Super Monkey Ball Banana Blitz/ Step & Roll, Sonic & the Black Knight, Any licensed crap gets a nod for honorable mentiion(Iron man, Incredible hulk, The golden compass)

  

A case of bad controls ruining a game quite frankly. The monkey ball games had your monkeys careening over obstacles whther through standard or wii balance board controls, and Sonic was a bad idea in execution as flailing around when you have to precision strike is never fun.

6. Activision/ EA

The best: Activision had nothing exclusive to wii except Tony Hawk's Downhill Jam so we gotta go with the best multiplatform titles with games like Goldeneye 007, Ghostbusters: The Video Game, Spider-man: Shattered Dimensions, and whatever CoD game floats your boat. Ea did have some exclusive titles that worked such as Boom Blox, and some multiplatform titles were received better on the wii like The Godfather or Tiger Woods PGA Tour.

The Worst:  Activision has Whatever CoD game doesn't float your boat, multiple Barbie games, EA meanwhile commits the sin of continuing to crap on Will Wright's legacy with games like Spore Hero, the My Sims series and Sim animals.

7. Konami/Hudson & Tecmo/Koei

Okay I'm getting drained by all this so why not end this already....I'll lump these two and their subsidiaries together since both have winners and losers.

The Best:  Well nothing really stands out on konami's side apart from elebits (which basically felt like a demo launch game, though not a bad demo launch game) and Silent Hill: Shattered Memories in the multiplatform territory. Hudson meanwhile had Kororinpa: Marble Mania and the sequel Marble Saga: Kororinpa which weren't bad. Tecmo Koei when not working together don't have much to work with. Koei has the cult favorite Opoona and Tecmo didn't really have much aside from Fatal Frame 4: Mask of the Lunar Eclipse

The What could Have been better: Lost in Shadow, Bomberman Land. Both of these games could have achieved so much more, but ultimately didn't offer it. Lost in Shadow had a great presentation and unique scenario that just felt so under devleoped, meanwhile Bomberman's mini games were tired and lacking in fun.

The Worse: Castlevania: Judgement, Scene It?: Twilight, and Lost in Blue: Shipwrecked re among the worst from Konami's side. Castlevania became a bad fighting game, Lost in Blue a bad survival game, and Twilight...just sucks something awful. Hudson had games like Calling, Wing Island, and Rooms: The Main Building...which has you exploring....you guessed it...rooms. Tecmo and Koei have had clunkers as well from an ill timed port/remake of Rygar: The Battle of Argus (Coming 6 years after its PS2 Rygar: Legendary Adventures counter part) SPRay (A poor man's ugly, bug riddled step child of Super Mario Sunshine, and Samurai Warriors: Katana was an unecessary arcade experience to the franchise.

I know I've forgotten a lot of other publishers/ developers, but these are some of the main ones. Hopefully just to give you some insight as to what to buy or what to avoid all together.


Comments
17
Posted on February 20, 2014 8:47 PM

Great blog. I have a lot of those myself. Zack and Wiki is great!

Posted on February 20, 2014 10:04 PM

It really is great. So underappreciated for when it was released. A shame really.

Posted on February 20, 2014 10:13 PM

... and it released at the bargain price of 30 bucks if I remember correctly. I snapped it up the first time I saw it. I am so glad I did. Both my son and I got plenty of fun out of it.

Posted on February 21, 2014 12:56 AM

Yeah I got mine under $20 I think before they pulled some of the copies. I know that it can be somewhat rare to find with some of the price gougers out there

Posted on February 20, 2014 8:50 PM

Does Twilight: Scene It? suck as a game or on principle of being a Twilight tie-in?

Posted on February 20, 2014 10:04 PM

Both lol.

Posted on February 20, 2014 9:05 PM

I definitly agree with Okami, Rayman Origins and Sonic Colors. All three are great.

You're spot-on with Sonic & The Secret Rings, though you could have also mentioned the badly implemented level-up mechanic, the also badly done abilities and the bland minigames.

Posted on February 20, 2014 10:06 PM

Ah I didn't mind Secret Rings or Black Knight, but I can see the issues with them. I more or less had to put a bad Sonic game there....I forgot Zero Gravity though which was bad too.

Posted on February 21, 2014 6:29 PM

I actually confused The Secret Rings with Black Knights. My bad.

Though I should say that I actually liked Zero Gravity.....

Posted on February 22, 2014 4:29 PM

It's alright. It's a little humorous though I'll admit.

Posted on February 20, 2014 9:22 PM

It's sad, the name "spy-borgs" has so much potential! 

Posted on February 20, 2014 10:07 PM

you know I read something somewhere that it was orignally conceived as something different before being turned into the beat em up game that it became. Maybe Spyborgs could've had potential!

Posted on February 20, 2014 10:38 PM

Zack & Wiki and A Boy and His Blob are fantastic on the Wii.  I never played the Chocobo's Dungeon game.  Namco and Hudson also made some great Wii titles.

Posted on February 21, 2014 12:47 AM

Ah I can't believe I forgot about Namco...D'oh! I really enjoyed the Klonoa Wii remake and the less said about Soul Calibur Legends...the better lol.

Posted on February 22, 2014 1:30 PM

I am still kicking myself for getting rid of Zak and Wiki.

Posted on February 22, 2014 4:28 PM

Oh that kinda sucks. You should try and find another copy if you ever get that urge to play it again.

Posted on February 22, 2014 4:30 PM

What sucks even more is that Gamestop has copies for 3 bucks, but the only available ones in my area are in unsavory neighborhoods.  Otherwise it is 10 or so on amazon and such