Long time Wii owners may have developed a preference for their motion-controlled mini-games. Do you like pointing? Or do you like shaking? Would you just like whatever you're being asked to do to be simpler?
The creators of "Cooking Mama: World Kitchen," have learned from their first "Cooking Mama" Wii game, representatives from the games' North American publisher, Majesco, told Multiplayer today. And the lesson they've learned is that shaking is preferable to pointing. The new game will have more shake-based cooking activities and fewer that involve aiming the Wii remote at the TV screen.
The "Cooking Mama" team's shift to more streamlined controls shouldn't surprise avid and sometimes-frustrated Wii players. Motion controls have been tricky for developers and gamers to handle.
The Wii remote uses different technologies for sensing motion. An accelerometer detects gestural tilt and swinging. This is good for Wii activities like bowling, tennis and shaking Super Mario into a spin. The sensors at the front of the remote and a TV-mounted sensor bar, when pointed at each other, determine just where, if at all, the remote is pointing on the TV screen it is in front of. The sensors also help determine how far the Wii remote is away from the TV at which it is pointing. This is good for aiming a gun in a first-person shooter, using a scalpel on a surgery patient in "Trauma Center" or, in theory, pulling a door open.
It's no surprise to hear that Wii developers are currently re-considering just how many different kinds of motions ... they want to ask of their players.
For all the praise Wii controls have received from mainstream gamers, some first-round Wii developers appeared to struggle to find a balance between asking players to commit specific, sometimes complex motions and getting the Wii to recognize those moves.
At E3 in July, Nintendo appeared to acknowledge room for improvement in the Wii remote's ability to accurately detect motion by introducing Wii Motion Plus. The improved motion-sensing of that Wii Remote add-on allowed for accurate sword-swinging and Frisbee-throwing and possibly diminishes the need for commands that would require the sensor-bar add-on. The add-on, however, won't be arriving until spring 2009.
Given all that, it's no surprise to hear that Wii developers are currently re-considering just how many different kinds of motions, using both types of Wii remote motion sensors, they want to ask of their players. At today's "Cooking Mama: World Kitchen" demo, the variety of inputs may still have been there: there was chopping of food and tilting of pans; flipping of burgers and shaking to run after a dog that was racing away with the ingredients (that last action is part of the new "Happy Accident" moments that occur when one's cooking goes awry). What there didn't seem to be, however, was an overly complex array of motions that might confuse the gamer and the console alike. Most motions involved shaking or twirling the remote. Nothing too fancy, and not much pointing.
As the second-generation of Wii games hits store shelves, the real promise and limits of motion control ... should become increasingly evident
Controls aside, the most noticeable difference with the new "Cooking Mama" game is that it's all in 3D, as opposed to the 2D-based graphics taken from the quasi-DS-port of the first Wii title. The visual improvement is clearly a step up, a sign that the team -- so dedicated to their franchise that they've changed their studio name from Office Create to Cooking Mama, Ltd -- is committed to putting work into the latest "Cooking Mama" effort.
Will the "Cooking Mama" developers' new philosophy regarding Wii controls pan out?
Whatever lessons they've learned from their first try on the Wii will be evident when the Wii sequel ships this holiday.
As the second-generation of Wii games hits store shelves, the real promise and limits of motion control -- so often just wildly swung at during Nintendo console's launch -- should become increasingly evident.
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