Ever since the Wii Remote was revealed, many gamers have held the belief that it could drastically improve on the dual-analog control scheme of the typical console first-person shooter. Now, with games like the highly customizable The Conduit and the incredibly well-balanced Metroid Prime Trilogy, those beliefs have pretty much been confirmed. Since that's been accomplished, though, I have to sit and wonder exactly why the next most obvious genre in line, the third-person shooter, is being completely ignored.
The genre is so sparse on the console, in fact, that the only examples I can think of Stateside are Battalion Wars 2 and Resident Evil 4. Dead Rising: Chop 'Til You Drop doesn't exist to me, so that's it. In Europe, a modified port of the last-gen game Rogue Trooper exists, but even so, that's a port of a three-year-old game, not exactly what I'd call "ideal". So, what's the deal? It can't be reluctance with the controls; two of the games that do exist all have control schemes that improve on their predecessors. And in Rogue Trooper's case, there just simply aren't enough buttons on the Wii Remote + Nunchuk combo to house all the commands, but even so, the developer was able to work the extra commands in by using motions to activate them.
Even more perplexing to me, is the success the genre continues to enjoy on the HD consoles despite having what I feel like is just a "good enough" control scheme. Gears of War, Dead Space, Uncharted, Resident Evil 5, all of these are parts of huge blockbuster franchises, so there's clearly no lack of a desire to play them. Is the fact these titles are considered "mature, hardcore" franchises a deterrent to put them on the more "casual" Wii? Possibly, but that type of closed-mindedness will hopefully come to an end when the next generation of consoles takes a more "casual" approach and isn't the quantum leap in processing power we've seen in generations past. (An entirely different subject, obviously, but the gaming press is going to be sorely disappointed if its current way of thinking continues.)
Even with the ridiculous "hardcore vs. casual" way of thinking, though, Resident Evil 4 sold well over a million copies on the Wii, all but shattering the stereotype that "mature" games don't sell on the system, but even that has been explained away as being a fluke because "there are just a lot of Resident Evil fans on Nintendo's system thanks to the series being on the GameCube". Right, and all those 5 million-plus Resident Evil 5 owners are people that had never experienced the series before. How about the fact that Resident Evil 4 on the Wii was the 3rd console release of the game, and the fact that it was released more than 2 years after the initial GameCube title? guess that's all unimportant, though, so there's really no need to mention it.
Look, I could sit here and speculate on why there aren't more third-person shooters on the Wii all day, but it doesn't matter. The Wii needs more of them, plain and simple, and developers are really doing themselves a disservice by not at least exploring the possibilities a new control scheme could provide for. The groundwork has already been laid by both small, and lesser known development teams, so just imagine if an established developer got their hands on the genre. Heck, they just might be able to do the one thing that makes being in the entertainment industry so worth it in the first place...surprise themselves.
