Aug 22, 2007

Looks like someone at Leipzig has had a little too much Hefeweizen during employee orientation. When visitors to publisher Rockstar's booth at the gigantic European gaming convention began pointing out how terribly the Wii version of Rockstar Games Presents Table Tennis controlled, the publisher set out to investigate. What it found was that the reporters were right - because the demoers were all wrong.

Apparently, the demoers were teaching all the visiting press to play the game using an ultra-simplified control method designed for casual players that uses only the nunchuk. A scheme that many writers, being hardcore gamers, felt gave the game an unpleasant, on-rails feeling. Which they immediately started bitching about, sometimes in official, game journalist capacity.

The thing is, there are also two other control schemes that incorporate both the remote and the nunchuk, giving more serious gamers more precision and command. It's just that the demoers, who apparently don't really want to keep working for Rockstar, didn't teach them to anyone.

Thus, the massive outcry of journalists shouting about how the game sucks has been replaced by an massive outcry of Rockstar defenders promising that everything will be better tomorrow - when the game will be demomed using the more sophisticated control options that gamers of our incredible intellect and discerning taste require.

We'll have our full impressions of Table Tennis tomorrow. In the meantime, if you read any negative reports about the game coming out of Leipzig, be sure to note whether the writer was playing with just the thing that looks like a TV remote or with both the remote and also the thing that looks like a kidney bean with a giant navel protrubance. It apparently makes a big difference.