Getting into the game
The runaway success of games like Activision's Skylanders and Disney Infinity should come as no surprise. Kids have been delighting in the pairing of physical and digital toys for years now, starting with the Tamagotchis and Neopets of the '90s.
Obviously Nintendo - the Disney of the video game world - wants to get on board this train, though it's equally unsurprising that they're caught sprinting down the station platform next to the already-moving caboose, shedding luggage in the hopes they don't miss this one too.
This is the company that launched an HD console a generation later than everyone else, and still hasn't proven it can do online multiplayer right (fingers crossed for Super Smash Bros. Wii U). Nintendo comes late to every trend that it itself doesn't start.
Granted, Nintendo has been experimenting with physical toy tie-ins for years, from the Pokéwalker to the Game Boy Advance's e-Reader. Not one of these has been used to its full potential, and Nintendo's newest me-too gimmick, the amiibo, is by default in danger of suffering the same fate, particularly since Nintendo hasn't committed to making amiibo a mandatory purchase for any games the way Disney and Activision do.
But TechRadar got to play around with Nintendo's new "toys-to-life" line at an office building in downtown Los Angeles this week, and we discovered that they have a lot of potential as well - potential that we'll glimpse when the new Super Smash Bros. is released in November.
Get it right: "amiibo"
Nintendo's amiibo - always lowercase, never an "s" on the end, a Nintendo publicist insisted - will launch November 21 alongside the Wii U version of the new Super Smash Bros. game (one version is already out on Nintendo 3DS, but it's not yet compatible with the amiibo).
Their name is a play on the Miis that populate Nintendo consoles. These player-created characters act as your avatar in various Wii U and 3DS games, and greet you when you turn on your console. You even select your Mii when you're signing in.
If you look at your Mii as an extension of you in Nintendo's virtual worlds, then amiibo may wind up being your virtual pets. That's a decent metaphor for describing what amiibo do, at least when it comes to their Super Smash Bros. functionality.
Like the figurines integral to Skylanders and Disney Infinity, amiibo are physical statuettes that can be purchased individually. But unlike those games, Super Smash Bros. doesn't require that you have amiibo to play it.
Imagine the outrage if Nintendo locked every Super Smash Bros. character (or even some characters) behind mandatory physical purchases. It wouldn't fly, which is why Nintendo had to make amiibo an ancillary part of the game.
As a result amiibo are in danger of being ignored, which they surely will be by many players. But others, especially collectors and fans of Nintendo games like Pokémon and Animal Crossing, may well become enamored with their little virtual characters.
Come play with us, Danny
The first wave of amiibo, launching alongside Super Smash Bros. for Wii U on November 21, will feature Samus, Donkey Kong, Link, Mario, Peach, Yoshi, Animal Crossing's "Villager," the female Wii Fit Trainer, Star Fox, Pikachu, Kirby, and Marth.
It's not a coincidence that these are all playable characters in Super Smash Bros., but thankfully buying the amiibo doesn't unlock the characters in the game. Instead the amiibo unlocks a computer-controlled version of that character who you will name, design, fight with, and train.
That bears repeating: you will never play as your amiibo characters, but you will play with them.
Let's say you choose the Mario amiibo. When you tap the figurine's base to the Wii U GamePad - the console has been out for two years, and amiibo will be the first widely available accessory to use the controller's built-in NFC - it recognizes the character right away.
You can name the character and choose a unique costume for him or her. In the demo Nintendo showed us, their Mario had a stars-and-stripes pattern on his overalls. His name was "Murica."
That character, Murica, was tied to that particular amiibo figure, not to the console's memory. That makes it easy to bring your amiibo characters to your friends' places, which you will probably only do if you want to watch them fight.
It might sound crazy that players will sit down and just watch two or more computer-controlled characters duke it out, but the reality is that's something Smash Bros. players have been doing for years anyway. It's not that unusual, and the amount of work that some players will put into their amiibo will raise the stakes significantly.
Can't you easily see amiibo battles becoming the subject of schoolyard wagers around the world? If schools have to start banning something you know it's hit the big times.
Amiibo and NFC
Problems and imperfections
Players who get really into their amiibo will feel a sense of ownership over them, not least because of the degree to which you can customize your virtual characters. Super Smash Bros. for Wii U has a swathe of RPG elements that are brand new for the series, and they apply to amiibo characters as well as to the fighters you actually control.
When your amiibo enters battle it's marked by the letters "FP" - Figure Player - floating over its head. You can clearly see its level, from 0 to 50, at all times. Murica wasn't the only FP the company showed off during this demo - we also got to play with a Link amiibo named "Tough Link" and a Yoshi figurine they'd named "Agile Yoshi" - and they all fought differently.
But equally interesting is the way the statuettes themselves interact with the console's NFC receptor. Unlike the figures used with other toys-to-life games, amiibo don't need to constantly be connected to a physical base. You just tap them on the Wii U's GamePad controller, the game recognizes them within a couple of seconds, and you can toss them aside while you actually play.
But when you want to write data back to the figure - like if your pet Figure Player character levels up, or you give it some new equipment that you want to try out at your friend's place - you need to tap the amiibo on the GamePad again.
That's great for players who don't want to have to plug in an extra peripheral and make space in their set-ups for bulky bases, but on the other hand you might run into trouble if your game crashes or the power goes out before you have a chance to save your Figure Player's latest development, or if something happens during the two seconds it takes to write data to the statuette.
It's a potential problem area, and only hard use will elucidate just how serious it is, if at all. A more immediately tangible issue, though, is how the quality of the amiibo themselves seems to have degraded since Nintendo began showing them off earlier this year.
The figurines are of decently solid quality, and they have plenty of details, but the ones we saw this week pale in comparison with what Nintendo has showed off in promotional materials - including on its own website, where pre-order buttons sit beneath images of amiibo that are far more detailed and attractive than what Nintendo has actually produced.
In the long run that may not matter, especially where amiibo's functionality within game worlds comes in - and to many people that will turn out to be more important. But collectors in particular will likely feel ripped off when the figures they receive look significantly crappier than the ones they ordered.
Like sand between your fingers
Amiibo won't be compatible with the 3DS when they launch, but they will be when the new 3DS models with built-in NFC and an NFC peripheral for existing systems arrive next year. And a second wave of figurines, arriving in December, will add Diddy Kong, Princess Zelda, Luigi, Captain Falcon, Pit, and Little Mac to the mix, with more waves to follow that as time progresses.
The new Super Smash Bros. for Wii U has a lot of advantages that fans of the series are really going to dig. For example a new "Smash Tour" mode is like a virtual board game - hopefully at least somewhat similar to Mario Party - that has players battle each other when they land on the same square.
We also got to test the game's level creation suite, which is much more advanced than we've previously seen in the series. Smash Bros. for Wii U even has an exciting new 8-player multiplayer mode, made possible by an adapter Nintendo is releasing that will let you hook GameCube controllers up to the Wii U.
But the amiibo might turn out to be a huge draw on their own, especially for players who will itch to collect them.
And like the many Nintendo accessories that have come before them, amiibo have a lot of potential. Super Smash Bros. is not the only game that will utilize them; just the first. Amiibo support is also promised for games including Mario Kart 8, Hyrule Warriors, Mario Party 10, and Yoshi's Woolly World, not to mention Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker, another upcoming game we had a good time trying out this week.
These games will only utilize the amiibo that are relevant to them, and it remains unclear how they'll use them in the first place. Therein lies the danger of investing early in any Nintendo gimmick, no matter how enticing it seems at first: some, like the Wii's motion controller and the DS's dual screens, stand the test of time, while others falter and disintegrate like sand between your fingers once they've been released into the wild.
Which will amiibo be? Even Nintendo probably doesn't know the answer to that question.
http://ift.tt/1obXmGs
No comments:
Post a Comment