Wii Controller Showdown!

As I may have stated before Project Outlet Wii is not my first experience with the Nintendo Wii, but it has reinforced how much I dislike the Wii remote. The only game that I can say the Wii remote has accentuated the experience for is Kirby's Epic Yarn; perhaps only because the controller is held in a more traditional fashion and doesn't require being waggled around, or a cable connected accessory, which is another issue. The need to add a directional pad, ala the nunchuk, always feels gimmicky, which itself is reinforced by Nintendo forcing developers to replace perfectly good controls to work with that gimmick. To me, the Wii remote just feels like a terrible joke that went too far.

Although my Wii library is small I still feel as though I've ran most of the gambit in controller gimmicks that the system has to offer. By far the most fun games I've played for the Wii are the ones that allow me to plug a Gamecube controller directly into the ports on the side. My only complaint there is that I've always felt that the Gamecube controller's button placement could have been designed better, but instead good enough won out. In addition to having all the controls on one unit I'm a large fan of not having to replace batteries in the middle of playing a game, which has happened more times than necessary with the Wii remote, so mark that as another win for the Gamecube controller.

When I finally got my hands on the Wii Classic Controller Pro I felt all my dreams had come true. I had all my controls together in one unit and the buttons were all arranged in a way that I easily knew exactly what buttons I was pressing at any given time, but there was one massive issue that I had overlooked. As soon as I plugged the controller into the Wii remote I realized that I was still dealing with a wireless, battery hungry beast. The controller felt amazing and it allowed me to navigate the main Wii menu screen withing having to point the remote at the screen, but it was still very dependent upon the batteries in the remote, which were now being drained even quicker because I had attached an accessory that drew power of it's own.

For my personal tastes the Nintendo Wii doesn't truly have a perfect controller, they all have their pros and cons. The Wii remote is a gimmick that oftentimes is more cumbersome than functional for casual gaming. The Gamecube controller is quite functional, yet the button layout was seemingly the brainchild of a brain dead child. And the Wii Classic Controller Pro (and by extension the Wii Classic Controller) relies heavily on the power of the Wii remote and drain it slightly quicker. I would like to get my hands on a Wii Motion Plus add-on or the Wii remote with it already integrated, just to see how much better it really is compared to the original.