LogFAQs > #975993717

darkknight109 posted...

you were *supposed* to help your friends with the gamepad, but my buddies and I had far more fun trying to screw each other over, as it gave the game some real challenge and was hilarious to boot

This is why I don't get the people that are unhappy that Wonder is only going to offer the full co-op experience for local play and not online. Co-op in platformers isn't a matter of genuinely co-operating, outside of the occasional "here, have a spare life" thing that Wonder's online features does include. It's a matter of making the game harder by actively trying to screw each other over in the most infuriating ways possible. That's something that's really only fun to do if you can punch each other as needed, which you can't with faceless strangers.

darkknight109 posted...

the controller was reduced to, as adjl put it, mostly just freeing up HUD space and/or providing easy menu access (which was sometimes cool, but kind of a waste of potential in my eyes)

It's not as glamourous as something like local asymmetrical multiplayer that would otherwise be all but impossible, but as a quality of life feature it shouldn't be understated. WWHD took WW from, in my eyes, being toward the bottom of the 3D Zelda pack and made it a serious contender for the best of them, and that's pretty much because the exploration around which the entire game is designed went from being a tedious chore to being actually fun. The speed sail and truncated Triforce hunt had a lot to do with that, but the gamepad map was also a huge component, given that it's necessary to consult the map so often to make course adjustments while sailing. Being able to do that on the fly was amazing. Xenoblade X similarly benefited in much of the same ways, given how strongly that game emphasized exploration and how intricate the terrain was (meaning having more than a minimap was very helpful).

It may not have been the most exciting, but it was very welcome.

darkknight109 posted...

It says something about the (lack of) innovation in developer ranks that all of the games that I thought made the best use of the Wii's motion controls and the Wii U's gamepad (Wii Sports, Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Games, and WarioWare: Smooth Moves for the former; Nintendo Land and NSMBU for the latter) all came out in the first year of their respective consoles' lives and were all either developed directly by Nintendo or had their heavy involvement.

To be fair, it's not like third parties didn't also put out dozens of motion control minigame compilations for the Wii. By and large, they weren't as polished as Nintendo's, but they were definitely there. The market for motion control minigame compilations is only so large, though, and ultimately the wiimote was a bit too limited to really take it beyond that (at least until WMP came along, but by that point third parties had mostly abandoned the idea of taking the Wii seriously enough to take full advantage of that).