Metareview - Mario Super Sluggers (Wii)

They can. Thing is, they don't have to.

Yeah, but the market has proven that they don't need to.

rats, beat me to it. Stupid iPhone keyboard!

... ummm the fuck were you expecting? It's a fucking baseball game.

@Vegeta

Something more than a Gamecube title with motion controls obviously. Unfortunately this seems to be the norm with Nintendo this generation.

Thats what GM said in the seventies - we could make cars with better quality or smaller cars, but our market share proves thaat we dont need to. And we know how that ended, right? I think Nintendo may find that the "hardcore" isnt just a small minority of gamers, most gamers want decent graphics, online a wide variety of games and are unlikely to be weaned back once they drift over en masse to PS or XBOX - while the housewives and non-gamers willing to buy a $250 toy to play simple arcade stuff or simply show off to friends might not be there in a year or two.

No, Vegeta's right. It's a god damn baseball game. Why not instead tell us what YOU would do differently to a damn baseball game instead of just 'tacking motion controls on'?

The supposed "benefit" of not making it a baseball sim is so they can do off the wall shit. This isn't Madden, MLB 08 the show or NBA 2k. Only they have the excuse of not being able to do much each year.

It just proves how little nintendo cares about their games.

@shogan

It's a fucking baseball game. It's what I expect them to do. At motion control so that I can swing the bat with my wiimote. It's what is expected.

"The supposed "benefit" of not making it a baseball sim is so they can do off the wall shit."

And they did just that.
Are you going to be attempting to make any valid points today, or should I just leave now?

They did just that years ago on the gamecube. Why do you accept such lazy copy and paste jobs?

At this point these games belong in the same pile as games with animated movie tie-ins. They're cheap kids games and, honestly, I'm not really sure there's anything wrong with that. Anyone looking for something more serious in terms of sports games shouldn't be playing anything with Mario in the title in the first place.

Vegeta's right...the game was built to be bad. No wait, what is he arguing again?

Oh that's right, he isn't making any point. It's not the sports fault nintendo doesn't even try anymore. There's been plenty of clever, fun baseball games before.

...that didn't rely on being a remake with waggle

You mean like all the other baseball games innovated by incrementing the number at the end of their name?

Frankly I think baseball is the dullest sport ever invented, but it seems to me that Baseball + Waggle is a much bigger step that baseball + improved graphics in a genre that is based on motion.

There are dozens of Wii Baseball games out here in japan, haven't any of them made it over to the US yet?

When we have not one, but two "kiddy" baseball games this year both doing more than just adding waggle controls, I think the arguement for advancement is valid. I mean even Mario Soccer had online. Where is THAT?

At the risk of being flamed... your not exactly spoilt for choice are you? :|

since your giving away money can I have some?

Your gonna burn now! Seriously tho, i never intended to get this game. I hated the Baseball on the Wii Sports and thought it was the most broken of the 5 Sports. Every since that was crap, i've always said i wouldnt buy this. Not that i need to.

I'm a picky hardcore gamer who refuses to buy mini-game compilations or crappy shovel-ware titles and i've found 12 Wii games to own. And i dont even own most of the A+ titles like Mario Galaxy, Mario Kart, Smash Bros Brawl, Battalion Wars, Geometry Wars or No More Heroes. If i can find that many games worth owning without owning the best games (Well, i still own Zelda, Metroid, RE4 etc) on top of my 12 GC games and 16 downloaded games, anyone can.

I do own a 360 yes, but it just never gets played. Gears is great, online is fairly good. Halo 3 is Halo 1 and 2 with HD, still busted-ass dual-analog controls which have ruined every console FPS experiance. I'll be getting FFXIII, Gears 2, Fable 2 and a bunch of other games when they come out, but there is more on the Wii i am looking forward to like Tales of Symphonia 2, Mad World, Pikmin 3, Day of Disaster, Wii Sports Resort, The Conduit, Sadness, Fatal Frame 4, FFCC: The Crystal Bearers, Spore etc etc. Core Gamers aren't hard up for decent Wii games, they're just too lazy to sift through the 5 million metric tons of crap shovelware minigames to get to the good games.

Thats just the thing, it isn't like all the other Mario Sports series, Golf, Tennis, and especially Strikers were all excellent. This just feels like they're phoning it in

And it felt that way with the GC version, too

The Wii has a lot of potential when you look at the really GOOD titles that have been made for the system. Unfortunately, those are the exception rather than the rule.

You know why the wii is selling so much? Well take me for instance.
Loved the gamecube so much that I refused to play RE4 on PS2, despite the extra content. Loved the N64 as well.
I am totally dissapointed by the wii. BUT I will still buy the wii - just to show it to my non-gaming parents or friends - oh, check out the waggle controls. I will wait for the first price cut to say 200$ which
should follow MS' price cut on the arcade. Then adter one month after I am done with Metroid Prime 3 it will lie in one corner and gather dust. In the meantime, my PS3 schedule is packed - SOCOM in October, then Motorstorm, R2, KZ2, LBP, etc. I would hopefully have a bunch of friends on SOCOM (first time playing that game), maybe even join a clan.
Bottomline - Nintendo will have me as customer for the wii. But its also the last Nintendo console I will ever be buying.

I could copy paste georgel, but if you scroll up slightly and look at my response to ApolloIV, you'll see what people are buying Wii games.

i love the use of "frequent" in that context, bravo!

I've seen a few ads on tv for it so far, what's more impressive is seeing Joystiq get quoted on tv commercials.

If it's as good as the Wii Sports Golf, or even better, perhaps with 36 holes total and Mii Character integration (and of course, online mode, which would rock for a decent golf game) then i would be preordering that straight up no doubt.

As good as Wii Sports Golf? WSG is pretty lame. It's absurdly simplistic. I would hope that any attempt to expand on that would be greatly fleshed out. The potential is there though. Someone should be able to make a good golf game if the WiiMotion Plus is included.

Apparently the new Tiger Woods game is pretty great, though, even without WMP.

If Camelot made it and not the farmed-out Namco team that does the Baseball games, I would buy Mario Golf: Waggle Putt Tour in a heatbeat.

A slut that is paid... wouldnt that be considered a whore?

The whore's usually the one that gets screwed.

So wouldn't that title go to the Wii Fanbois?

At least most of them aren't direct copy and pastes. As much as I hate halo 3, not even they did that.

@Vegeta

Way to go! You missed the point......again.

Vegeta, you really missed the point by miles...

Surprisingly, most people here are no complaining at the fact that it is another Mario game, but that this is simple an enhanced port of the GameCube Mario baseball...

Hopefully they do more than just that for Mario Tennis (IMO their best Mario Sport series, with Mario Golf right behind it)

But when you look at Mario, as I said above, he's a slut. If Wikipedia is to be believed, he's in over 200 games which stomps any other whored characters that I know of. With Mario's gang consisting of ego's, brothers, counterparts, nemeses, doppelgangers and baby variants and the aforementioned 200++ games, it doesn't take too much thought when Nintendo gets targeted for whoring their franchises.

But as said by the others, not that he's being targeted for it at the moment (except by me =3)

Fine I see your point. But it's for people who like the series. If people like the games on the gamecube,then they'll like this one.

I'm with Vegeta in the "what were they supposed to do?" category, as really that's the case with, oh, every sports game ever. The reason no one complains (as much) about it in sim titles is that the lineup "needs" to be updated. At the same time, this begs the question: why release another game in the series? And now we're just on the topic of sequelitis, which is probably getting off-topic (though I'd love to rant, I'm probably pretty well hated for my verbose posts at this point, and therefore will abstain).

(directed at Noshino but really whatever)
This stagnancy would apply just the same to Mario Tennis or Mario Golf, and I'm curious what you would look for when you say you hope they do more. What can be done, barring obviously online?

@Yourself

Well I've never played the game but I hear fielding was done terribly in it. So did they improve on that? Did they offer more game modes? Is the act of hitting the ball more involved now that the devs have access to motion controls and for that matter how good are the pitching mechanics? Can I throw specific pitches based on the way I mock throw the wiimote?

Reading the game informer review it seems the wii picks which base your outfielders throw the ball to and shifts them for you as well. There isn't even an ounce of real strategy involved. The computer handles everything that takes thought in the game and you're left with using powerups or performing a fucking mini game to hit the ball. I would have loved this game when I was 7 but I was also a kid who never played sports. I expect this game wouldn't pass for even the least discerning little leaguer. Why people are buying this is beyond me.

Right, it sounds like you just don't like the idea of the game. "Hearing fielding was done terribly" isn't a complaint worthy of address, and the rest are... really subjective things that seem to have been there on purpose, so why would they change them? Adding more game modes is also rather idiotic, as most sports games do this on a yearly cycle, then dispose of the modes the next year because - guess what - no one bought Madden so they could manage T.O.'s apartment.

Furthermore, your disgust with the game seems rather petty, as you have admittedly not played it, and most reviews, while not raving, have been in the "thoroughly decent" camp. Though I'm not horrifically surprised that you chose to read and cite the far and away lowest of the bunch.

Remember, I'm on the "this game probably shouldn't have been made" side, so don't be yelling at me.