Medal of Honor Vanguard announced for Wii, PS2
by James Ransom-Wiley 
{ Dec 19th 2006 at 12:25PM }
Just announced Medal of Honor Vanguard looks to replace Airborne in Wii and PlayStation 2's early 2007 lineups. Rest assured, Vanguard is not a poorly disguised rehash; that's not to say it will offer much beyond WWII shooter standards -- unless you're a sucker for motion controls (on Wii, not PS2).It appears that there will be some loose correlation between the Vanguard and Airborne plotlines, as both games focus on characters in the 82nd Airborne Division and share common mission locales, like Sicily. The "Vanguard" name implies players will be engaging in operations at the very front of the frontline (even behind enemy lines). It's unclear when EA decided to nix development of Airborne for Wii and PS2 and go for a wholly different tie-in -- perhaps it was the top-secret plan all along. In any event, it's for the best, as Wii and PS2 versions of Airborne wouldn't hold up against their Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and PC counterparts. Here's to hoping Vanguard gets the deserved attention it needs, earning its place as co-heir to the Medal of Honor franchise.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
SuperStupid @ Dec 19th 2006 12:43PM
F*cking Hell, what is this trend of publishers seeing the Wii as an extention of their X-Box, PS2 releases, tacking on some motion controlls, and not even bothering with the graphics ? Because alot of these games are gonna look and play pretty p*ss poor when Mario Galaxy and Metroid Prime come out.
Lazy, Godless Sons-of-a-B*tches.
John @ Dec 19th 2006 12:50PM
#1 the wii is, technically speaking, an overclocked gamecube and thats something nintendo arent denying:
http://www.gizmodo.com/gadgets/home-entertainment/miyamoto-says-the-wii-is-basically-a-gamecube-205275.php
therefore it makes sense to port the ps2 versions of games than the ps3 or 360 versions as the wii is much closer technically to these consoles
and I dont think they 'tack on' some motion controls as an afterthought as it were in the way you implied, I think they take the ps2 version and use the motion sensing of the wii to make it genuinely better
the wii isnt about graphics its about gameplay!
that said im sticking to my 360! lol!
Erwos @ Dec 19th 2006 12:50PM
Well, that's an unexpected problem of having PS2-era hardware - you start getting games "developed for the PS2 and Wii". This does _not_ bode well for Nintendo.
SuperStupid @ Dec 19th 2006 12:55PM
Developers aren't even trying tho, that's my point.
Effectively, this is calling out all the lazy-ass-developers, because there's no excuse for putting out sub-standard gameplay and hopeing the Wii mote will magically make up for it, and even less of an excuse for putting out games that look worse than RE4 on a system that could eat RE4's visuals for breakfast.
Fred T @ Dec 19th 2006 12:56PM
Actually, the exisitence of the Wii, means that developers have more reason to keep last-gen development going... whatever game assets they develop can be used for both PS2 and Wii.
Ecomonies of scale and the business environment predict that this will happen; this means a longer life for PS2.
crono141 @ Dec 19th 2006 1:14PM
I'm starting to agree with superstupid. The Wii is capable of all the eye candy 360 is (as far as shader and special effects) minus the poly count and resolution, but most devs are content to spit out less than RE4 level visuals on it.
And UBI wonders why farcry got a 4.0 on IGNWii. The reason why only Nintendo games succeed on a Nintendo platform is because they're the only ones putting forth the effort.
And seriously, after 5 years of GC developement, how hard is it to develop for a GC 2.0 architecture. As much as I tire of hearing "LOL WII IS JUST A OC GC", there is some truth to that, in that devs should find it easy to use.
I mean jeebus, the framerates in the later levels of elebits were atrocious. There is NO excuse for that.
Erwos @ Dec 19th 2006 1:16PM
"I'm starting to agree with superstupid. The Wii is capable of all the eye candy 360 is (as far as shader and special effects) minus the poly count and resolution, but most devs are content to spit out less than RE4 level visuals on it."
Um, when did the Wii get shaders? Do we have any information on the Hollywood GPU at all?
crono141 @ Dec 19th 2006 1:20PM
Umm, Red Steel uses bloom and/or HDR lighting up the wazoo. I was under the impression that these were shader effects.
Am I wrong?
ChrisL @ Dec 19th 2006 1:27PM
Nintendo's genius just hit me. The PS3 doesn't have a prayer of selling as many units as the PS2 did until the price comes way, way, way down. There are over 100 million PS2s out in the wild so developers will keep pushing titles for it for years to come.
The Wii is an acceptable platform to port to because everybody knows its behind the cutting edge (cutting both technology and budgets) for graphics in comparison to the 360 and PS3. They can do a port with some minor upgrades to the Wii which critics will see as acceptable, where as if they tried to do a port to the 360 or PS3 critics would grill them for it looking 'last generation'.
John @ Dec 19th 2006 1:29PM
I think we should be more pissed off at Nintendo here than the 3rd party developers
I mean look at what windows pc's can do with a pentium 4 processor gameswise along with a decent graphics card, my pc has a 3ghz pentium 4 processor and an ati x600 graphics card, not exactly top of the range but at 1024 x 768 games dont look half bad on it. espicially men of valor and battlefield 2 among others, and play pretty well!
without having windows etc running in the background, games could easily look as good as 360 or ps3 games at 720P if a dedicated games console were to have a similar cpu and graphics card eg the wii
therefore i think nintendo got greedy and are substituting graphics for profits, and so we should be pissed of at them and not the third parties.
on the other hand, the wii as about fun and not graphics anyways so mellow out dude lol
:)
Erwos @ Dec 19th 2006 1:33PM
"Umm, Red Steel uses bloom and/or HDR lighting up the wazoo. I was under the impression that these were shader effects."
You can simulate some shader effects, like HDR/bloom, in software to an extent. Right now, though, there's absolutely no evidence that it has any more features than the Gamecube GPU.
Number One @ Dec 19th 2006 1:33PM
Although there is no excuse for the likes of the Wii version of Farcry, I think publishers, namely Ubisoft, want to cash in on wii enthousiasm without shelling out big bucks on decent look products. The first SC4: DB screen shots I saw from Ubisoft had me so hyped about the game that I began to foam at the mouth. Once I saw it was a lightless, shadowless PS2 rehash I picked up all that foam, swallowed it whole and puked on the nearest stolen Ubisoft product I could find. They have so many studios doing different things its a wonder they dont communicate more. How can Farcry have such an intelligent control scheme that would then not be found in Red Steel? How could they shit out Farcry when Raving Rabbits looks the way it does?!
Darkness @ Dec 19th 2006 1:49PM
I think Nintendo stated that the Wii has shaders. Even the Cube has shaders, but I think the issue with the Cube was that those effects needed to be manually done. Not sure why Nintendo didn't include the functionality in their dev environment. The Wii supposedly has better shaders than the Cube, but the real question is whether or not they included that support in their Dev tools this time around.
Considering that Twilight Princess uses bloom and all kinds of other effects, I would say it fall on the devs to add that functionality if they want to use it.
Bennyishere @ Dec 20th 2006 3:31AM
Where did they say that they'll just port the PS2 version to the Wii? We might see a MoH game that really pushes the Wii, and totally surpasses the PS2 version. It's just that they didn't want to call it the same as on the other two powerhouses.
Inspired @ Dec 19th 2006 2:18PM
Interesting. I'd say all PS2 developers who are wary of switching over to the PS3 would see the huge benefit in being able to port PS2 games to the "New-gen" and just tweak the controls and graphics a bit. Bodes well for Nintendo, since the PS2 will be Sony's cash cow from now until sometime in 08. The PS2 has plenty of life left in her, and she'll be breathing life into the Wii ... how ironic.
el Chino @ Dec 19th 2006 2:32PM
Answer me this!?!? So Vanguard is similar to Airborne in that both are about an airborne division however not the same game but just a different story?
Sunny @ Dec 19th 2006 5:14PM
@ #1:
Nintendo has done this themselves with Zelda. They are the ones setting the example!
v1cious @ Dec 20th 2006 12:14AM
"1. F*cking Hell, what is this trend of publishers seeing the Wii as an extention of their X-Box, PS2 releases, tacking on some motion controlls, and not even bothering with the graphics?"
oh... but i thought graphics didn't matter as long as you could swing around the Wiimote.
you asked for this guys, deal with it.
generaldane @ Dec 20th 2006 12:51PM
after seeing resident evil 4 for the gc i am wondering what the hell these developers are doing the wii is capable of a lot more yet it seems they are not trying oh well at least there can be faith in seeing mario galaxy