Rant: Wario Land Wii Truly Takes The Cake (Dimension)

Oct 01 2008

Rant: Wario Land Wii Truly Takes The Cake (Dimension)

Wario Land: The Shake Dimension is the latest entry in the ever popular Wario Land series. It began on the original Game Boy as a fun 2d game with an original twist on the traditional platformer, requiring the player to manipulate Wario’s physical form in order to pass puzzles.

It’s great that the gameplay from the previous titles remains fully intact in the latest iteration. It’s not so great, however, that the graphics and production values have remained the same, despite the series’ big break into the current generation of home consoles.

What really makes me angry is the amount of praise this game is getting. While it may be a fairly decent game, it wouldn’t be out of place on the Nintendo DS or even the GBA (with the addition of the Wario Ware: Twisted peripheral of course) and yet they have the nerve to charge consumers thirty pounds for the pleasure of playing it, making it a full priced title retailing for the same as, say, Super Mario Galaxy…

Even despite these negative factors plus the hefty price tag, critics have been dishing out large portions of praise for the game. They must be losing their edge. That, or they’re swayed by the fact that they receive all of their games for free, leading them not to take price into account while reviewing a game - something which greatly places them out of touch with the average consumer, especially with the current predicament the world’s economy lies in at the moment.

It strikes me as peculiar that, even while the Wii gets criticised for it’s graphics and to a greater extent the graphical, technological and general quality of third party releases on the console, Nintendo produce a 2D game and slap a 3D triple-A price-tag onto it and the game goes on to receive highly positive reviews (many completely brushing over these issues). It seems like some kind of twisted joke on Nintendo’s behalf, but no. This is for real.

I wouldn’t have anything against this game were it released on Wii-Ware at a much lower price point, as that would be perfectly reasonable for a game such as Wario Land: The Shake Dimension. The truth is that if this game were released on one of the other current-gen formats at £30 (or even released as an Xbox Live Arcade title at half the price) then the industry would be up in arms about it or stage some kind of boycott depending on what kind of mood the Internet is in on that particular day.

I am extremely confused about how a situation such as this arises and I’m the only person to say anything about it. The game has been receiving very favourable reviews across the board and yet it is an expensive 2D platformer with the gameplay of a title twice it’s age. I’d like to see what you have to say about this matter as it’s really been getting on my nerves so post your two-pence in the comments section while you’re here.

EDIT: I’ve been recieving a bit of flak over this article around the interwebs and there is a certain point I didn’t make clear in the article. I am not ranting solely over the graphics offered by this title but rather over a variety of issues I have with it, mainly length. I still stand strongly by the point I am making here, this I particularly want to make clear.

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industry, nintendo, opinion, wii | Daniel Mitchell

14 Comments

By Dave Barlow, 1 October, 2008 @ 8:31 pm

The animations look pretty smooth - close to that of a well-made cartoon.

A 3D game would still be way more expensive to make I reckon, but it’s also supposed to be pretty short which adds to the argument that it’s too expensively priced.
By Josh S, 2 October, 2008 @ 5:05 am

You’re wrong about reviewers not criticizing the game. However, they are still right to praise it. Wario Land is apparently a very fun, enjoyable game. What frosts you as a hardcore gamer is that people ought not to enjoy such a game as much as something that has enormous 3D landscapes and lengthy, drawn-out cutscenes, certainly not enough to pay $50 for it.

Of course, sales numbers aren’t out yet, so maybe it is overpriced after all.
By abodi, 2 October, 2008 @ 5:28 am

who cares how old the gameplay is, if it’s fun it’s fun right? is the game is short however that is cause for a price drop.
By Daniel Mitchell, 2 October, 2008 @ 9:25 am

I have nothing against 2d graphics in a game (especially hand-drawn). The issue I have (as well as length) is that the game wouldn’t cost anything close to, say Boom Blox to produce and this, unfortunately, isn’t reflected in the pricetag. I would understand a little more if it weren’t a first party title but Nintendo are supposed to be setting the bar here, and I don’t want this to be the example they set to the third party developers who are already lazy enough for the most part on the Wii right now.
By WTF, 2 October, 2008 @ 9:32 am

“wouldn’t cost anything close to, say Boom Blox to produce and this”
HOW THE HELL DO YOU KNOW?
AS far as i know i only see physic system with basic gameplay and ultra low poly characters…
so how do you know it costs more?

You either by it or you don’t, whining about it is basically pointless
By kPod, 2 October, 2008 @ 10:17 am

I hope ‘WTF’ realises that just because he doesn’t put a link to his name up there, or register as a commenter, or even think that by not using a screen name or real first name, that we can’t block his ass.

WTF, use proper grammar, punctuation, and avoid caps, for the love of /god/.
By Dave Barlow, 2 October, 2008 @ 11:17 am

kPod = Anal biatch.

It’s all about opinions, folks. And at least Dan has the guts to stand by his.

I guarantee that licensing a 3D engine (although in fairness, Nintendo probably have several of their own), and designing all of these characters in 3D, along with the levels, would’ve been more expensive.

The argument here is that Nintendo are treating what could have been a portable (sans some animation frames and a few pixels in resolution) or downloadable game as a fully-fledged home console release, at full price.

The team for this game will have been nowhere near the size of the team for, say, Smash Bros, Galaxy or Metroid, and at a time when price is becoming a more prominent factor in gaming, why not treat the game as what it is; a cheap, fun platformer.
By GDSage, 2 October, 2008 @ 8:22 pm

No, creating this game with polygons would have been much cheaper. People here need a reality check when it comes to game development. High-end, hand-drawn art as featured in Wario (not the easy as pie Flash art or cut-out art, or even prerendered art) is incredibly expensive to produce.

With a 3D model one merely needs to assign a skeletal rig to it and from the off one can start manipulating that same model in real-time, creating and recording all the animation for it with relative ease. Changing the look of the model as well as its animations is also simple as it merely requires editing.

With hand-drawn art, each frame has to be drawn from scratch, and when it’s hi-res art such as in Wario it takes even longer to produce each frame. When changes need to be done, the frames have to be redrawn, not edited, but redrawn. There’s no easy back key or real-time manipulation like one can do in the 3D art packages.

So lets get into details…
http://nintendo.co.uk/NOE/en_GB/news/2008/drawing_wario_the_animation_of_wario_land_9515.html

The character Wario has 2000 individual hand-drawn frames in this new game. The enemies and bosses have 6000 frames in total, then all of the background art in each level never repeats. Usually in every 2D game the backgrounds and assets are tiled, not so here. You then complete all of this with high quality hand-drawn animated cutscenes.

Now, this is not an overstatement when it is said that this is a monumental achievement for hand-drawn art in videogames and the cost would not have come cheap at all, especially when the art was outsourced to an external (and famed) animation studio.
By GDSage, 2 October, 2008 @ 8:36 pm

Also,

“…what could have been a portable (sans some animation frames and a few pixels in resolution)”

Excuse me? Sans some animation frames, just some? Just a few pixels as well?

How about sacrificing thousands of animation frames, and reducing resolution by around 300-500 pixels.

Wario runs at hi-res (640×480), you’re going to sacrifice a hell of a lot more than “a few pixels” if you translate that to a portable (DS) that has a resolution of just 256×192. Now, those thousands of animated frames in the game (around 30+ frames for every individual action) would also have been far too much for the paltry 4MB of RAM in the DS. You’d be pushing it to squeeze in 4 animated frames for every indivudal action. Any more, and you’d have to cut down on the amount of animated characters within any one scene.

I really cannot believe what I am reading here, treating one of the most impressive hand-drawn videogames ever created as some cheap and easy thing to make. In future, I suggest you actually have an understanding of the process behind the thing you’re about to comment on.
By Daniel Mitchell, 2 October, 2008 @ 8:59 pm

@GDSage;

You seem to be forgetting to take into account that most premium 3D game developers make motion capture their animations, not to mention the process involved in motion capturing speech. It costs a lot of money to hire these people to do this, not to mention the costs of the technology involved and the cost of renting/creating a studio in which you can record this motion capture.

Hiring a desperate-for-work post-graduate artist simply doesn’t cost the same. Or, more likely an animation studio - a number of which are outsourced to countries where the content can be aquired cheaply.

Wheras, for an action game, you would need to hire qualified stunt-men to recreate the movements needed in a studio, taped down to their balls in expensive motion-recording equipment performing a large variety of actions.
By Dave Barlow, 2 October, 2008 @ 11:00 pm

The game’s still short.

*chortle*

In all seriousness, it’s a good argument well made GDSage. I still think that the game could have been condensed on to DS and still been very beautiful.

I’m personally all for hand-drawn art and think Nintendo have done a top-class job on this one. Shame they decided to pour their efforts into a game that won’t receive as much attention as one of their top franchises would have.

Plus, it’s old-school AI (patterns and not much else) and the game itself is pretty damn short. I think the point Daniel’s making is that we’re being asked to pay pretty much top dosh for a game that will’ve nowhere near reached the production cost of Mario Galaxy or Metroid Prime. While it’s pretty and does provide good fun, it’s not long enough and the savings made at production level *should* be passed on to the consumer.

I understand market forces will determine whether it was an ill-advised price point, and perhaps it is unfair to single out this game as if it’s the only offender in a world of shafting gamers, but I think with the number of big-budget titles coming out soon, cheaper games will have to sell cheaper to even get off the shelves.

Let’s not even get started on the credit crunch. Nintendo might just be in a for a long winter if things keep going downhill (on both sides of the pond).
By GDSage, 3 October, 2008 @ 6:22 pm

“You seem to be forgetting to take into account that most premium 3D game developers make motion capture their animations, not to mention the process involved in motion capturing speech.”

I’m not forgetting any of that considering I’m speaking about that this game itself (Wario) would cost less in polygons, not that every polygonal game would cost less.

You really think a platformer would require motion capture of any kind? No, all the animation is done by hand, manipulating a polygonal model with ease within a 3D program. This is done in SMG, this is so in Little Big Planet, this is so in any 3D platformer unless the developers intend to create something with a more realistic tone.

“Hiring a desperate-for-work post-graduate artist simply doesn’t cost the same. Or, more likely an animation studio - a number of which are outsourced to countries where the content can be aquired cheaply.”

Not when that animation studio is Production IG. That studio does not come cheap. Again, don’t comment unless you know full well what you are about to comment on.

Just this comment alone shows you really have no idea as to the amount of work hand-drawn, 2D art truly requires. There is a reason why hand-drawn 2D art isn’t done by the majority of videogame studios any more, even in Japan. That’s because the expense is far too much, especially when you move that art into high resolution or HD.

Sprite artists are becoming a dying breed, because the amount of resources and time required to create a game in that style is far more than if the same production is done in polygons and 3D programs.

It is why Street Fighter IV is using polygons, because if they were to create the same game with hand-drawn HD art, with the same quality of animation, the return of investment figure would be so much higher it would probably make the whole project unfeasible as the game would need to sell far more than it is ever likely to sell.

It is a shame when many consumers nowadays consider high-quality 2D art to be old or archaic… but it is even more of a shame when a person considers high-quality 2D art to be of inexpense, to be cheap.
By Dave Barlow, 3 October, 2008 @ 11:07 pm

And the winner is…

Sorry, Dan!