Conduit 2 Wiimote Controls

I guess the timing is right to present the sequel to our Conduit/GoldenEye Wiimote Controls – my control settings for the first Conduit adapted to the sequel to The Conduit, which isn’t exactly The Conduit 2, but simply Conduit 2, a.k.a. DUKE NUKEM’s official return to video games. (The previous Note still applies, so keep those conditions in mind) My controls are geared toward an exploration/realism perspective, so it’s probably not the l337 onrine FPS’ing scheme suited to all those childish twitch-turning high-jumping strafe-running genre conventions that you were hoping to employ. I am raging infinity suns, but it’s not how I play shooty games.

Fortunately, this project includes somewhat less ranting and more explanation/analysis. Read on for screens/details and technical issues the gaming press probably didn’t mention in the reviews.

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Random QR Codes

This is a handful of Miis created by our staff. Many of these had been given birth during the magickal 2006 Holiday Season. In a short time, they became self-aware and now possess souls (some taken from small children).

If 3DS has cameras on both sides, who’s scanning who?

Update – 2011/12/30

Update – 2012/07/19

Update – 2013/01/17

random_qr4

Update – 2015/06/26

random_qr5

… and don’t forget the REAL Reggie Mii

Serious Gamers – PS3 at E3 2006

I’m not interested in writing retrospectives, so I’ll just revisit the facts.

NOA REGGIE 3D

This is the real deal.

Don’t be fooled by imposters like this:

Nintendo WFC knows only one champion:

Accept no imitations.

Scan more ass and names here:
Random bunch of 3DS Mii QR Codes

Wii Sniper Rifle Video – Gameplay Montage

(DivX video link at end of post; watch the new video here)

A follow-up to my previous The House of the Dead: Overkill videos, this time focusing on the two affordable current-generation last-generation games that handle aiming calibration properly: Ghost Squad and The House of the Dead 2&3 Return. The video is a series of quick gameplay cuts trying to get the point across: with the appropriate gun+game combo, everything works “great”, not perfectly, but sometimes better than I expect. The footage says a lot, but there’s more I want to add.

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BILLY COEN, I FOUND YOU

Now we know everything that happened after Resident Evil Zero.

You’re playing it wrong – The Crystal Bearers (with videos)

I was supposed to add some Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles: The Crystal Bearers videos to my collection a year ago, but didn’t get around to it until this month. Whoops. Ever since finishing the game, I wanted to share some footage to help address a certain aspect of the gameplay. In the link you’ll find some videos demonstrating the primary mechanics as I mess around with NPCs and give monsters “the business”.

(DivX video link at end of post)

Let’s make this clear: the manual camera is a huuuge part of the gameplay.

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Speed, FlatOut Videos

I get the feeling low-budget (that “b” word! please don’t panic) titles like Speed and FlatOut are genuine curiosities for a small number of people (all 5 of them?). They’re probably cautiously fascinated by a couple other Zoo Games titles or ANYTHING new under $20-25. They’re interested in “experiencing animals”, but only while the beasts are locked up in a cage; that sort of thing. At the same time, the regular gaming press tends to avoid budget games, leaving any [honest] coverage in the hands of YouTube users and Amazon customer reviews – brave, regular people.

Inspired by their courage, I’ve captured a few gameplay videos (60fps) of Speed and FlatOut to provide a more detailed look than what the Flash videos typically allow. Despite being “cheap” games, their core aspects are surprisingly solid, and hopefully some of it shows. Consider it a late follow-up to our Speed/FlatOut write-ups.

(video link at end of post)

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Wii Sniper Rifle Videos – HotD: Overkill

Live gameplay footage of The House of the Dead: Overkill using my “CTA Digital Sniper Rifle Gun for Wii” with calibrated aim. I checked a “popular” internet video site to sample other players using the accessory, and came back underwhelmed. I didn’t find any legitimate gameplay videos. Gamers, industry, you all suck. No wonder most rail shooters and accessories are designed for “dumb” customers – there’s no motivation/demand to advance the software or hardware, just an endless cycle of publishers assuming everyone is lazy while gamers REALLY ARE too lazy to aim a casual non-gun and instead complain about 12-digit codes. Even Sony’s Move is a broken, lag-plagued alternative with even dumber-looking accessories exclusively designed for gullible customers (has it been used in “regular” games yet?), and they’re willing to charge more for all of it.

(HotD: Overkill video link at end of post)

Gameplay from “Ghost Squad” and “HotD 2/3”. See Wii Sniper Rifle Gameplay

I’ll save my serious “review” of the accessory for later, but I will say it’s the best Wii rifle I’ve tried so far – the printed crosshairs on the fake scope do a good job of sighting targets, and the main trigger works great like some of the better handgun shells (the awesome part is it’s a RIFLE); on the downside, the main grip SUCKS (it’s not really shaped for a grip), but the trigger is still reachable with some improvisation (oh crap, I started reviewing it). Actually, these videos were made to address the shortcomings of Overkill’s gunplay. Please excuse the audio quality: it was late at night and I didn’t have the game volume up very high and my camcorder was literally inches away from my hands so the clackity noise of the trigger seems way louder than it really is.

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Conduit/GoldenEye Wiimote Controls

Note: These control settings were personalized for my bloated widescreen (16:9) TV that I sit fairly close to. You may get undesirable results if you use these settings on a fullscreen (4:3) TV setup, or if your Wii’s cursor behavior is already unstable due to poor sensor bar visibility, specific lighting conditions in your room, and/or your seating distance and position. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare – Reflex Edition is not a significant part of this discussion becuz the shoehorned FPS mechanics and single-player campaign are nonsense; it wasn’t worth the effort to customize the controls nor play past the tutorial stage. Call of what? Modern what? (Update: Conduit 2 controls here)

I’ve seen some player comments declaring the Wii “Pointer” controls in The Conduit and GoldenEye 007 are great or crap, or never getting them to feel “right” – ALL without adequately explaining why nor sharing their settings in detail as if it’s only a futile, individual effort they’re doomed to suffer (curse you, game! curse you, non-Nintendo developer!). What was the purpose of their interweb comments, their “discussion”? To WHINE? Yeah. To exchange ideas/info and support each other’s gaming experiences? HAH! Hell no.

So I have some info that’s useful to me and could be useful to others… =o

– The Conduit
(click to enlarge)

Handgun gameplay clips using the above settings – headshots preferred. Conduit handles it well; GoldenEye is just a trainwreck.

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Unboxing Complete

Pie Staff had been casually restoring content from the old flat and other odd bits, and today we should be totally moved-in now.

Here’s a recap of the crayon drawings and baby photos that Mike almost left behind:

FlatOut Wii – Impressions

Initial Play Time: About a half-hour
Game type: Semi-realistic arcade street driving

FlatOut is a budget Wii racer developed by Team6 Game Studios and published by Zoo Games in the USA. Sporting a debut price of $20, FlatOut can be summed up as a Budget Burnout or Casual Burnout – and in some ways this is a good thing, cuz you could’ve done worse by getting $50 of debut-disappointment on any of the FOUR Need for Speed titles on Wii. There are obvious limits on the scope and features of the game, but I could immediately tell Team6 was very serious about this project based on one of the very first screens the game loads: a note on the detectable range of Wii Remote tilting angles.

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Merry Fistmas

NOA REGGIE is busy tonight, flying thru the skies, proudly thrusting his Nintendo DS to light the way (DQ9 is paused for the moment). Reindeer don’t pull his sleigh; Reggie pulls them. He’s visiting homes, crashing thru rooftops (“I don’t need your weak chimney – if you don’t have one, you’ll get one“), making a list, taking names. If you’re not on his list…

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The 3rd Party Wall of Shame

Editor’s note: This project was initially presented on January 27, 2010 and finalized on April 4, 2010 somewhere in Former Nintendo Fan Report Planet (FNFRP). FNFRP staff said its community was being too “positive” about Wii and Nintendo in general, so we decided to deliver some fresh, steaming negativity. “Why do you hate 3rd Parties so much?” they asked. “Did you not read the damn post at all?” I pondered.

Visitors making the pilgrimage for the first time: Read The Text, or you will miss the context – this difference easily exposes the internet morons in your community. The specific order of the box arts and items in the text don’t match 100%; it was meant to read casually and maybe quickly, so the idea is what counts. This WAS just an overblown forum post on some fansite, after all. Caution: contains language most foul and intense 3rd Party imagery; some graphics are known to cause birth defects, depending on the laws in your country/state/community. Kids, ask your government’s permission before buying 3rd Party software.

You might be thinking of the Vietnam Memorial, or the stars of the World War II memorial, or the wall of fallen operatives at CIA headquarters — THIS IS NOT THAT KIND OF WALL. This wall has its own significance, and its name below is exactly what it recognizes.

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Donkey Kong Control Rectology

The game is fine. Many “vocal” gamers are simply ape-shit awful players who’ve lost their quick-learning intellectual gamer edge over years of “soft” action games holding their hands thru non-challenges and waterfalls of rewards that celebrate their mediocrity. You have the displeasure of identifying them cuz they still go to the forums and blogs you go to and whine about “moving the controller” being something inexplicably difficult. “I just don’t get it,” one might say right before his 2,000 word essay (a waggle complaint; rather, his failure to waggle) used to exert the might of his lifelong gamer cred, the same cred that crumbled with his preceding statement.

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