When we first arrived at the EA Studio Showcase event last month, my heart was instantly stolen away… by a GINORMOUS, fully-functional, belt-fed, air-powered, tripod-mounted Nerf machine gun sitting just outside the entrance to the game demos. (The young lady as left merely serves as sizing reference.) To make a long childhood tale short, I am a huge fan of flying foam, and even years after discovering the joys of electronic entertainment — where I can massacre zombies, Nazis and ninjas to my heart’s content — I still keep a small arsenal of plastic weaponry in my garage.
Though a set of watchful eyes and irksome barriers kept me from immediately commandeering the gun, I did spend a solid minute staring at it before disappointedly walking indoors… quickly rushing back out to take the above picture, and disappointedly walking indoors yet again. But said disappointment was short-lived, for just inside the door lay a game station equipped with Nerf N-Strike for the Nintendo Wii.
If you haven’t already seen the above document (leaked in analyst presentations back in February) then you might not be familiar with Nerf N-Strike’s claim to fame: it comes with an actual Nerf gun. Dubbed the Switch Shot EX-3, the blaster has a compact self-contained firing mechanism that is fully removable (you press an orange button on the left side to unlock the front retaining flap) to allow a Wiimote to take its place. While we weren’t particularly impressed with the Nerf gun’s power (more Scout than Nite Finder, for those in the know) a good gameplay session sold us on its viability as a top-notch Wii Zapper replacement.
Though the grip is obviously designed for smaller hands and the blaster is a little front-heavy, the samples we tried at the Studio Showcase had excellent heft and honest-to-god sights (imagine that!) built into a sturdy frame. Moreover, with the Nerf plunger out of the way, the Switch Shot has an extra space right behind the Wiimote — just large enough to fit your favorite dongle. Though creative director Dustin Hansen told us the Switch Shot’s companion Wii game wouldn’t make use of the Wii MotionPlus, he remarked that it will nest nicely in the blaster’s housing.
I wish I could say we were as impressed with the game.
Nerf N-Strike, developed by EA Salt Lake as one of the publisher’s many recent Hasbro-inspired titles – Operation and two versions of Monopoly were also present — unfortunately looks nothing like the excellent Nerf Arena Blast released in 1999. Billed as a family-friendly adventure for the 8-12 crowd, N-Strike is at its heart as simplistic and fixed a light-gun-style rail shooter as we’ve ever seen. The environments we saw were drab and largely non-interactive, the levels wide open, the progression slow and the optional targets glowing so as to be incredibly obvious.
Because the entire game relies on a single button, reloading is automatic (and thereby occurs at the most inopportune moments) and though the game features 25 different Nerf weapons, you cannot choose to select from them, but are apparently forced to use each in sequence when they appear in the approximately 7-12 hour story mode — wherein the stereotypical “cool kid” protagonist, recruited by a sentient floating metal orb, has to blast his way out of a hostile robot factory.
Multiplayer was a bit better, featuring 24 different minigames you can play with up to four individuals on the same Wii, but while some of these were rather clever (one in particular had players shooting spheres rolling around a shifting arena to toss them into score multipliers) others were more of the same mindless robot blasting action.
One interesting note for Nerf fans: Hansen told us that though only 12 out of the 25 Nerf weapons were licensed, the other 13 were approved by Hasbro designers — and some were actually prototyped in real life.
While the full Nerf N-Strike package is available November 4th for $59.99, and the first shipment of Switch Shot EX-3s will be dedicated solely to making sure every Wal-Mart in America has a full pallet in time for the holiday season, the blaster alone will be available soon after for approximately $15. At that price, I expect it to give even the Nyko Perfect Shot a run for its money.
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