Some simple shakes replaced button presses in Mario Strikers Charged, but the control scheme didn’t deviate from what Next Level Games established with their Gamecube title. Comparably, Konami is throwing the World Soccer Winning Eleven formula out the window with Winning Eleven Play Maker 2008. This is the first game in the Winning Eleven series for the Wii and it doesn’t play like an traditional soccer game where you snake through defenders with the analog stick.
If you want to make a player move you click on him with the A button and point to where you want to go with the remote. Passing uses a similar system where you point on who to receive the ball and press the B button. Interestingly, when you want to shoot the ball you shake the nunchuck. I suppose, pointing at the goal and pressing B wouldn’t be visceral enough. Where Winning Eleven Play Maker 2008 gets really interesting is how you control the other players. Usually in sports games the AI handles teammates until you specifically cycle to a player to control him. In Winning Eleven Play Maker 2008 you can drag and drop teammates into position the same way you would control the player running with the ball.
When the Wii was first announced plenty of discussion sparked about how the control scheme would revolutionize games. Many established franchises skirted evolution and tacked motion control on an established system. Winning Eleven Play Maker 2008 is an exception to the rule. It puts the play in more of a coach position while the Xbox 360/PlayStation 3 versions give gamers a perspective from a soccer player.
I know we don’t discuss sports games often on Siliconera, but Winning Eleven Play Maker 2008 brings an important question. Should Wii versions of multiplatform games attempt to adapt the PlayStation 3 / Xbox 360 counterpart or should they go in an entirely different direction like Winning Eleven Play Maker 2008?
