Connecting with TEH KIDDIES

By Plagiarize

I’ve spent a few weeks now playing around on Nintendo Wi-Fi connection and have picked up all the games so far available that work with the system, and as such here are my thoughts on the service that come based on real world experiences.

Mario Kart is kind of a thing of mine. I was one of those crazy people that jumped through hoops to race online with other people with Double Dash on the GameCube through the use of the broadband adapter, tunneling software on the PC, and a separate utility that would tell me if anyone else was looking for a game.

Obviously compared to that, Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection is a charm, but there are certain problems with it.

I’ve had problems with various aspects of the service at peak times, which is to be expected as Nintendo find their footing, but don’t be surprised if the web portal or matchmaking services are intermittent around launch of a big game. Anyone who doesn’t track global release dates isn’t going to understand that they can’t play against random people on WFC because the game just came out in the UK.

Fortunately, it seems like servers for each game are separate, so apart from accessing the web portal (more on that later) it’s likely there’ll never be more than one game suffering at a time. Also if the web portal is working, it’ll give you status on each of the games separately, a nice feature.

Set up is something I want to talk about. Whether you just buy the USB dongle and hit connect on your PC and DS, or whether you’re entering in a WEP key (or like me entering in a MAC address to my router) it’s something you need only do once at home. You can save three different connection settings too, so if you often go visit friends and bring your DS with, or have a local coffee shop you want to kick back at, 3 seems a good number.

It’s a breeze to connect to an unencrypted router that’s broadcasting itself, as it should be, but then again if that’s your router you don’t want it to be doing such risky things. I don’t see many kids setting up the connection by themselves, and I can see it being a problem for the less tech savvy. It’s harder than just plugging your X-Box into your router, but by my estimation easier than getting that big black thing online wirelessly.

The nice part is this though, you only need do it once, and not even once per game. Since the WFC service has come about a year after the DS launched, and since the configuration software seems to be on the cartridge of the game and not hidden away in the DS somewhere, I was surprised on getting my second WFC game to see all my network settings ready to go before I even got it home. Nintendo obviously had the foresight to leave a section of internal memory aside for such a thing, and I congratulate them for it.

The same is true of ‘linking’ your DS to your Nintendo.com sign in. It’s a similar idea to linking your live account to your .net passport, though not quite as easy and not quite as featured. You have to log into the wifi connection website on a PC, sign in, enter in your DS id which you have to look up in the WiFi Connection settings and then choose to link. It’ll give you a randomly generated name that you’ll need to enter into the configuration of your DS. You’ll then need to log onto WFC within an hour of that. It’s not difficult just a bit clunky, though I admit given that the service is free, I don’t see how else you’d verify it. Once that’s done though, it’s done… and again further games you get for WFC will show up on your Nintendo.com profile as being games you’ve played online. It’s neat, but it doesn’t really fulfill my desire for stats just yet. Hopefully it’s something they’re going to expand.

It helps make the service feel much more consistent for one, and ensures that however painful your initial set up maybe, you won’t have to go through it again save for trading in your DS for a new one.

Consistency is one of the bigger problems so far actually. As someone who very much appreciates the X-Box Live model, I wish Nintendo at the very least had set certain requirements for every game. For example, in Mario Kart, I can see when a friend is looking for a game, but not who that friend is, or how many of my friends are looking for a game. If I get that notification mid race with someone else, it’s basically useless. My only hope of getting into a game with that friend once I’ve joined a circuit is to switch off my DS, turn it back on, reconnect to the service and hop in the friends lobby and hope that friend didn’t already find enough people to play against.

It’s better with Animal Crossing: Wild World, though still not perfect. If I go to open the gate to my town, it’ll tell me if any of my friends already have their gate open. If I want to go out, I’ll be able to see which towns are open and who lives there, as well as how many people are visiting that town. However, I can’t see who the visitors are.

Tony Hawk’s American Sk8land is really the shining star of WFC currently. It isn’t the most fun game to play on line, but it’s the one that has best implemented WFC. The amount of stuff you can do online is great. If you want to set high scores for all the world to see, you can play arcade mode while connected to WFC. Best of all, if you do do that, not only will your high score be uploaded, but a replay of it for anyone else with the game to download. You can design custom decks, and upload them to the American-Sk8land website (and have them removed for being offensive if you forget that just because previous Tony Hawk games had blood in them, that this one doesn’t, and decks showing little smiley faces spraying blood everywhere will get you told off). You can see a list of all your friends and choose which one you want to play with in a variety of game modes. You can download new challenges. It’s really well done, and it shows up Nintendo’s two games and slack requirements for WFC support.

It’s interesting though to see Nintendo’s vision of internet gameplay. In games where you can play against random people… you can’t talk to them. You’ll have to play a game like animal crossing where you can only play against people you’ve exchanged friend codes with if you want to talk to people. Sure it’s a big feature to cut like that, but anyone who knows what it’s like playing Halo 2 with half a dozen ten year olds calling you a ‘faggot’ will understand the move.

The signs at least are promising. It’s not been a perfect start, and the two Nintendo games do little more than fill the promise of being the same game online, but hopefully they’re looking at what Vicarious Visions (the BEST goddamn porters ever) did with Sk8land and taking notes. They’re still learning too, and I’m sure that each wave of games will see better and better support, as well as more interesting and detailed information showing up about that game on the Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection portal.

Here’s hoping anyways, that when Nintendo announce some more WFC enabled games (and here’s hoping they do soon) we’ll be looking forwards to improvements not in the service but in the functionality of the games. At the very least the thing they have gotten right out of the gate is that all three games released so far play wonderfully. It’s the one thing that you’d want to be perfect if only one thing could be. How the service will handle something much more fast paced and lag sensitive like Hunters will really be the test of it.

Oh and Nintendo are you thinking what I’m thinking? Four Swords DS WFC. Both versions of Four Swords are awesome slices of multiplayer gaming with nothing like them existing anywhere else, but both have stringent hardware requirements. Fours Swords DS would let a much bigger section of the world see the genius that is Four Swords, and it’d be one hell of a killer app for the service.