Games and pulling through with handicaps

You've read it before. The Wii-litists (sorry...the joke won't ever go away it seems) favorite saying is: "Gameplay over graphics."

We have all the consoles now, and we've seen some good, bad, and ugly games. When it comes to the Wii, the above saying seems to be dead-on when it comes to Wii Sports. There are no graphics to speak of, but it is so fun it doesn't really matter.

When dipping into the rest of the available Wii titles, we come to find some duds that leave us questioning Nintendo's decision. Tiger Woods Wii '07 and Wii Sonic had me thinking about this. I like these games, but the controls don't respond as accurately as expected and leave for a lot of frustration. These games happen to be quite ugly compared to their console bretheren as well. Clumsy and inaccurate controls combined with eye-sore visuals doesn't net games cool points.

I think saying, "Gameplay over graphics" forgets how good a game must be to make the graphics negligible. The Wii has seen some 3rd party failures so far, so one has to wonder what the future will hold. Nintendo's first-party titles are doing expectedly well, however. Stepping back again though, Nintendo's first-party titles have never been graphics heavy either.

Any Wii owners think they are going to be left out down the road? I'd doubt it myself, but you'd never know.