Watch Capcom's full Spyborgs pitch
by Justin McElroy 
{ May 5th 2009 at 1:15PM }
Now, we don't want to be Negative Nathaniels here, but we're still a little unsure there's an audience for a non-kiddie brawler on the Wii. That said, Spyborgs appears to be loads more focused than the last time we saw it, and that's got to be a step in the right direction.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
intro94 @ May 5th 2009 2:12PM
this is not exactly mortal kombat....Enough of the "omg this wont sell stuff"...seriously.Why the kind of people who bought brawl wont buy this?this will do just fine.Whats next?Wii sports has a black box one day and we will have news regarding it wont sell due to its mature content?
Feba @ May 5th 2009 3:36PM
Honestly, I'm getting really annoyed with the way the Wii's success as a platform is based on specific games. "Oh, MadWorld sold like crap"-- of course it did. It's a niche game, with some problems, and a lack of replayability. Same for Overkill, Conduit, No More Heroes, Okami, etc. to various levels. Wii gets good games, and Wii gets unique games, but it doesn't get games (at least, third party, gamer focused games) that sell millions at launch. I really don't get why people keep saying "oh, THIS is the game. If it's not good, I'm getting rid of my Wii, and if it doesn't sell millions the Wii is doomed". That's just asking for disappointment.
This, for example, looks like a mediocre beat 'em up with crappy waggle controls, and the only thing close to innovation-- the 'spyvision' thing-- was already done by Super Paper Mario. Not to mention that when it's not being used in a puzzle solving context, you're basically just making a matter of knowing where the hidden blocks are. I thought we had moved past that by the N64. I'm not discounting the possibility it could be good-- I'm hoping it is, as I do for nearly every game, because more good games help everyone. But it isn't looking that way, and I really don't think it's a matter of "is there a market for it" so much as "will the market care".
Just as I like Burnout, but dislike other racing games, people might like beat 'em ups, and not like this even if it is perfectly fine.
guttertalk @ May 5th 2009 4:59PM
I largely agree, Feba. I would probably be considered a "core" or "hardcore" gamer, but I'm past the excessively violent games. It took me some 8 months to pick up No More Heroes, but when I did, I saw that there was a bit more to it than the over-the-top violence. But Mad World has no interest for me. Neither did Call of Duty: World at War. Yet, I hardly call the Wii a failure and complain about it getting dusty (which the 360 and PS2 get, too). What games we have we play a lot on the Wii because of the high replay value.
On Spyborgs, I could see picking it up maybe for my son, daughter and friends because they're still into the beat'em up games. The problem is that they'd rather play the franchise characters, like Ben 10.
Yet, I got Deadly Creatures, which is more or less a beat'em up, but I thoroughly enjoyed it. So, am I interested in Spyborgs? I think there has to be something else--a novel setting, a story, something. With Marvel Ultmate Alliance 2 coming out with combination attacks, this looks like something to maybe keep our interest.
The graphics and style look good, enough to get my interest. But that's not enough to get me to buy the game. Maybe a generic name like Spyborgs will pull in some cruising the Wii game section. I'm not down on it, but I have to see more.
esposch @ May 6th 2009 6:07AM
It's funny how intelligent people can be when console wars don't come into it.
Feba, what you said was true. These games aren't perfect (except for maybe Okami) and probably sold about as well as they were intended to. However, The Conduit is DEFINITELY not a niche game and will sell probably close to 2 million copies in the first month alone. As for the Burnout thing, I totally agree with you. I loved it because it was about crashing and causing as much damage as you can, and takedowns to fill up overly huge NOS tanks. Need For Speed, on the other hand, is about driving around a track. The same applies for Z&W for adventure games, and TWEWY for JRPGs.
As for guttertalk, I agree completely with what you said about licensed games. Kids don't care about the quality of a game, toy or whatever. Just as long as it has their favorite characters on it. For example, my cousin Oliver, who's 5 has about 10 different Spiderman and Thomas the Tank Engine bingo, memory, snap and other shithouse games, and oddly he calls the games "Thomas," "Spiderman" or whatever, rather than Bingo, Memory, Snap etc. But I can tell you whenever I take him into EB Games or GAME, he always says "Look, Ben 10!" And I have to say to him "remember what I told you about games from TV shows or movies," and he replies "that they're really really bad." It's so cute.
Anyway, Spyborgs looks like one of those games you pick up when you see it 6 months down the track for AU$35 (~US$20) in a Target catalogue and have some money spare - A bit like Mushroom Men or Deadly Creatures.
Oh, and I must add, these posts made me actually smile (like in real life) just because they were so true - mainly Ben 10 and Burnout, the EXACT examples from my life. :)
Peter @ May 5th 2009 5:22PM
A brawler on the Wii from Capcom? I'm definitely interested.
And thanks to intro94, Feba (great avatar, btw), and guttertalk for talking actual sense when it comes to the Wii's software library. As a gamer in his late 20s, I'm also tired of people looking at poor sales from games like Madworld and House of the Dead Overkill and concluding that M-rated or "core" (whatever that means) titles won't sell on the Wii.
Shameless plug: I make mention of the topic in my article on Brainstorm Warning: http://www.brainstormwarning.org/2009/04/02/house-of-the-dead-overkill-and-madworld-developers-miss-the-point
bongoes @ May 5th 2009 6:08PM
Whatever happened to the commercial breaks? That was the one really interesting thing about this game.
BidoofAloof @ May 5th 2009 9:25PM
Eh, I'm not too excited for this. It looks kinda generic and repetitive, and the only possible draw for me would be the multiplayer. Not to mention the whole spy vision thing seems incredibly pointless. It looks like it involves basically moving your cursor around the whole screen checking for invisible boxes. That seems like an artificial way to add secrets into a game.