If you squint your eyes, it sort of looks like an alien spacecraft — or, perhaps, a cleverly disguised Metroid. But what you’re looking at is the Logitech Speed Force Wireless Racing Wheel, available this November for the relatively low sum of $100. But what’s striking about this wheel is not its shape (which it shares with a sister PS3 wheel), not its price (ditto), and not its wireless functionality (you’re “wireless, but not cordless,” said a Logitech representative who affirmed that players would still need to plug in an AC adapter). What’s striking about the Logitech Speed Force Wireless is that it was designed for the Nintendo Wii; and moreover for a single, specific game which has neither the words Mario nor Kart in the title. Though Logitech’s product page may be exaggerating when it calls the wheel “exclusive,” the fact remains that when the $100 lap-mounted, paddle-shifter reliant peripheral launches this November, the only game it will support is Need for Speed: Undercover.

When we attended Need for Speed: Undercover’s gala unveiling last month, the Xbox 360 build was the only one available, and we thought little of it. We weren’t too worried about a next-gen port to PS3 and PC, we weren’t particularly interested in the stripped down experience likely to reside on PS2, DS and PSP, and while whispers of an Apple iPhone version somewhat intrigued, history suggested that the requisite port to the Nintendo Wii wouldn’t be worth our trouble.

So when we learned that Logitech was banking the entire success of a $100 racing wheel on the next Wii title in the series, we had to know what was up... and why Logitech felt this particular game would inspire Wii owners to drop the extra chunk of change. To answer the $100 question, we conducted an everything-but-the-kitchen-sink interview with the game’s producer, Tim Fields.

GameCyte: Can you please give us a brief overview of what we’re looking at for the Wii version?

Tim Fields: This year, the Wii version is fully built from the ground up for Wii; we wanted to make sure that we weren’t just building a port – that we were building something that really was a uniquely Wii experience, that it leveraged some of the unique characteristics of the Wii audience, and some of the different things you can do with some of the different types of controllers for the Wii – things that you can’t do on other platforms.

There are a bunch of unique features there, and things that we’re really excited about.

GameCyte: You mentioned “several” controllers; what might we possibly be looking at in terms of control schemes? I’ve heard about a new racing wheel, but what else do we have?

TF: The Logitech racing wheel is one that’s very exciting for sure; we’ve been partnered with those guys for years, and when they approached us early this year to talk about supporting the wheel it was obviously a perfect fit for Need for Speed. As you know, there is a pretty wide variety of controllers that you can use on a Wii (from classic Wiimote to Wiimote with Nunchuks, GameCube controller, Classic controller, and so on) and this year for the first time we’ve really made sure that the title is a lot of fun and drives great on all those different types of controllers.

Using the plastic wheel that Mario Kart made popular earlier this year, for example, is the way my wife and little brother love to play the game, and so on.

GameCyte: How’s NFS: Undercover going to control any differently with Wiimote and Nunchuk etc. than did ProStreet and Carbon on Wii? Are there any tweaks or changes?

TF: There are a lot… we’ve pretty significantly reengineered the control input mechanism, and there are two big angles there. First, we wanted to make sure that you got the right amount of control – that your steering was as responsive as it could be – and there I think we’ve made some vast strides forward compared to what Need for Speed and some other games have done in years past, in just the sensitivity of the Wiimote. Then the second thing that kind of ties into this is the Heroic Driving controls, which is a big thing for us this year.

GameCyte: So the Heroic Driving Engine we got to try out in our preview of the Xbox 360 version – that’s being added to the Wii version as well?

TF: Oh, absolutely. It’s an integral part of the game experience. So I can do all kinds of heroic driving maneuvers. I can pull off J-turns, I can pull off bootleg reverses, 180°s, things like this, and because of the nature of the game – because I’m running from the cops and interacting with the cops all the time – these sorts of moves are critically important. Unlike some driving games, I’m not just driving forward around the track all the time; this is an open-world game. When I get pinned in by two or three police cruisers, I need to quickly shift around, throw on my emergency brake and take off in the other direction.

GameCyte: So using the limited motion-sensing functionality of, say, the Wiimote and Nunchuk or Wii Wheel, how are we going to pull that off?

TF: Well, the key – and I could go into vast amounts of detail here, it’s a topic I’m pretty excited about – the key here is the emergency brake. The E-brake – the handbrake – is an indicator to the game that you’re trying to do something that’s a little bit outside the norm of simply steering straight forward. You know, in real life you would very seldom, when going into a turn, throw on the E-brake and drift around…

GameCyte (chuckling) I try not to.

TF: At the very least, your car thanks you for that, and I suspect the police and bystanders would too. (laughs)

So whenever you use that E-brake, and the E-brake with combinations of different types of turns, and then the accelerator and the regular brake as well, these allow you to pull off a variety of different maneuvers. But the way to think about them is not so much like… don’t think about them like you would, say, combos in a fighting game…

GameCyte: I was just about to ask you if they were like combos in a fighting game. You read my mind.

TF: Not so much like that, where you have to memorize a sequence of button presses, but that as you become used to different cars you drive and the type of controller that you’re a fan of, you’re going to find that there’s an intuitive element of combining these different things (acceleration and braking and E-braking and turns) to achieve these. As a simple example, to pull off a drift:

As I’m approaching a curve, I’m going to keep my hand on the accelerator until later than I typically would, I’m going to let go of the accelerator; I’m going to tap that E-brake and cut my wheel hard in one direction; I’m going to let go of that E-brake at the same time; and I’m going to hit my accelerator again once my tires start to skid.

GameCyte: That sounds fairly common to most of these types of racing games. What about one of these more… over-the-top maneuvers?

TF: Sure, let’s take a bootleg reverse as an example. Let’s say I’m going into a drift like I just described to you, but I want to go ahead and pull off a full 180° turn so I can head back the other direction. Now, I’m going to use those same ingredients, if you will, that I would use for the drift, but I’m going to hold my E-brake a little bit longer; at the end of that, I’m typically going to pull in my regular brake as well, because I want to quit spinning (I don’t want to do a full 360°, for example); and then once my car’s angling back towards the camera, I’m going to punch my accelerator, I’m going to punch my nitrous if I have it, and then boom – all of a sudden I’m taking off in the opposite direction.

GameCyte: How are these maneuvers any different on Wii than they would be on PS3 or Xbox 360 or PC etc?

TF: Because I’m sensing where your controller is, and how you’re turning it, the feel of the deal is entirely different. [speaking of the Wii Wheel] The mechanics of what you’re doing with your hands are completely different on the Wii. I’m throwing that outer elbow way up and turning the wheel hard to the side, and at the same time I’m pulling the trigger – and when you watch people playing it, they’re typically tilting the wheel up a bit to try and arrest their momentum and so on – you get into it more.

GameCyte: So we’re hearing a lot about a new Logitech steering wheel specifically designed for Wii, and which we hear Need for Speed: Undercover was specifically designed to support. When did the development team first encounter the Logitech wheel, and how does it change the driving experience?

TF: Back in February or March of this year, we got together with Logitech – as we do every year for Need for Speed – and they let us know that they were working on this new wheel for the Wii. We talked a bit about the game we were building, we all agreed that they would be a perfect fit, and so as soon as they had prototypes they put them in our hands and we’ve been playing with them ever since.

If you are a dedicated, hardcore player, if you love racing games, if you love Need for Speed, then this wheel is a hell of a lot of fun for you.

GameCyte: What is it going to bring to the experience that you aren’t going to get with your Wii Wheel and Nunchuk and so on?

TF: I would say the feel of having a full-sized, proper steering wheel in your hands adds a lot of… “realism” is slightly the wrong word, because obviously we’re very much a game that’s about fun, fast-paced arcade-type physics and the like, but there’s just something incomparable to having a physical steering wheel in your hands, with the weight and force feedback and all those sorts of things very carefully tuned by our engineers and Logitech’s engineers to make sure that it’s a lot of fun.

GameCyte: Would you say that the wheel is any more precise than the motion control schemes?

TF: I would say that it’s different, that the Logitech hardware is a very sophisticated piece of hardware, that it does calculate things to a great deal of precision – and that an expert driver with that wheel is going to find themselves at the top of their game. It’s a very different type of controller than the others, so the experience is just sort of inherently different.

GameCyte: You say “top of their game.” We’re curious – are there any online modes in NFS: Undercover on Wii?

TF: The game is focused on multiplayer, same-couch play. It’s clear to us that the Wii is a very social gaming platform — you sit around with your friends and play this — and that’s the experience that we really wanted to give folks this time around. We’ve got split-screen modes, with all your classic races and chases, highway battles and so forth, and then we’ve got split and quad-screen modes that will let players do some pretty cool stuff. Cops and Robbers, a mode called The Heist that we’re really excited about, and that we’ll be revealing more about and so on…

GameCyte: I wouldn’t mind asking you about that now, but if you can’t tell me more about that…

TF: I can tell you that it’s all about playing the role of a criminal, zooming around town picking up bags of loot and trying to get them back to your safehouse before other criminals steal it from you. And if you think about the fiction of the game, that ties in very nicely to the sort of thing that we’re doing there.

GameCyte: So back to the $100 question: is the Logitech Speed Force steering wheel going to be worth it? Logitech has said that your game – Undercover – is the only game that’s going to work with the wheel out the door, and we’re wondering what the value proposition is there. Is there anything about the game that really sells this wheel?

TF: So, the wheel is a huge amount of fun, and if you are the type of player who wants to be great; who wants to squeeze out every last ounce of control and performance, then I would highly recommend you pick this wheel up. I myself enjoy driving with it a lot, and as you might imagine I play the game quite a bit. That said, you don’t need the Logitech wheel to have a great time – but if you are having a great time with the game, you’re going to find the Logitech wheel enhances that.

GameCyte: I’m curious: is there any kind of pressure on the development team to build a top-notch game because of this partnership with Logitech, because Undercover is the flagship title for the wheel?

TF: The amount of pressure on the development team to generate a phenomenal game is due to the huge number of fans that are excited about the title, and our desire to give them a great experience. We certainly want to support the Wii wheel, and we’ve worked hard with Logitech to make sure that’s great, and Logitech is a phenomenal partner, but in all seriousness the pressure here on the dev team isn’t because of supporting an additional peripheral, it’s because we want to make sure that this is a phenomenal driving game on the Wii, that it does everything that all our Need for Speed fans who have been with us for so many years and all the new folks to the franchise – that it does everything they would want, and that’s a hell of a role to take on, right? It’s a real responsibility, and it’s a fun one, but it’s something that we take very seriously.

GameCyte: Though we’re here drilling you about whether the Logitech wheel is worth it, to be honest it was actually the wheel that tipped us off that there was something to this game. If Logitech figured Undercover was a good enough game that they were going to trust a $100 peripheral to its sole performance…

Can you tell us how things have changed? What will Undercover bring to those who liked previous Wii games in the series, and to those who were disappointed by previous Wii games in the series?

TF: If you like what Need for Speed is, if you like the heart and soul of the Need for Speed brand, then this game is very much for you. You’re going to love it. We’ve listened very, very carefully to our user feedback, we’ve studied what people loved about everything from Hot Pursuit to Most Wanted, through Carbon and ProStreet. We’ve brought back and focused on elements of previous games that people say they’ve loved, but at the same time we’ve listened very carefully to user comments about places where they think we could have improved, and we’ve tried to do that. Controls are a huge example.

If you remember with Carbon, the Wii had just come out and Carbon supported one control scheme – Wiimote plus Nunchuk. That’s it. We support seven this year. And beyond just being more, it’s better. This Heroic Driving stuff is deeply integrated into how you play the game, because we know users want a lot more depth in how they control their vehicles. We let you pull off these moves we described to you, but not only do we let you do them, we give you points for them, and the points increase the overall type of bounty that you get from winning races and so forth. So the more you drive with style, the more points you get, the faster you advance through the game, the higher top speed you get and so on.

The back half of your question was for fans who haven’t loved the series as much as they could. What’s new? This is a game built for the Wii from the ground up. This is not a port. In years past, we weren’t able to devote as many resources to making a Wii-specific game as we have this year. Also, the Wii’s still fairly young. We’ve all learned a ton over the last couple years. When Carbon came out, none of us had ever played a retail Wii the day that thing was on store shelves. Couldn’t buy it, right? By now, we’ve all lived with this Wii for a couple of years. We all play a lot of Mario Kart. We’ve all played Boom Blox. We’ve played a lot of the great Wii games out there, and we’ve watched those demographics change and grow. I think there’s no one on the dev team who doesn’t have a Wii at home and play it with their friends and family regularly. And that leads us to the types of things that I’ve mentioned like the same-couch play, where four of you can sit down and have a great time, because to us, that’s the heart of the Wii experience.

GameCyte: Mmmm…

TF: You say “Mmmm…” like you’re not buying it.

GameCyte: No no no, I…

TF: (laughs)

GameCyte: It’s a great argument, but the thing is, any Wii developer can make that argument; we’ve all had time to live with the system. And I’m wondering, is there anything in particular you can tell me about, anything in particular that’s been improved on?

TF: The controls. Single biggest one. We’ve found that the Wiimote controller and the sensitivity that you got from it and the way you could steer, whipping in and out of traffic, that there was room for improvement there. We’ve done that. We’ve improved upon the visuals…

GameCyte: With the Wiimote, there was this specific issue – not just in Need for Speed, but most all Wii driving games – where if you turn the “wheel” too far, you completely lose control and veer into the wall. Have you found any way to get around this particular issue?

TF: Yes, some… there are some ways around it. It’s a complicated problem that you describe. There are ways I can sort of detect – the solutions are technical enough that they’ll probably bore your readers, but…

GameCyte: Some of them. Others would be very interested, actually… (chuckles)

TF: …it involves trying to determine what the user wants to do, right? So the first obvious way to do that is to ask them, and that’s where the E-brake comes in. If you slam on the E-brake and throw your wheel to the side, it’s safe to assume that you don’t mind turning off at a greater-than-60°-angle, for example, else you wouldn’t have pressed that. Given the context of the situation, how fast you’re going and so on, there are other things I can sort of deduce.

The question at its heart is — and all games deal with this one way or another — “how can I make sure that what you’re telling me you want to do is the thing I interpret and make happen?” This is something we’ve thought a lot about, and we’ve worked on tuning it for different speeds. If I’m whipping through traffic in one of these highway battles, and I turn the wheel hard, and I’m going forward and I’ve been going forward for a long time, odds are good that if I didn’t use the E-brake, and if I’m trying to catch up to the guy in front of me, I didn’t want to perform a 90° turn and smash into the wall.

GameCyte: (laughs) Probably not.

TF: Probably not, and it turns out that you can detect that with a little bit more accuracy and you can sort of thing about some of those solutions in a way that it does give the user a much better experience.

GameCyte: With NFS: Undercover we’ve been told there’s a much greater emphasis on story; how does that translate to the Wii? Are we going to see the same approximately 30 minutes of cutscenes in the Wii version, for example?

TF: Yes, you are. The narrative is very much built into the Wii version in the same way. The narrative has some subtle differences, that tie into some differences in the Wii version, so there are a couple of cases where you would — if you were to play through both versions — find some slight differences in the way the narrative unfolds. But you’ve got the same actors, beautiful Maggie Q showing up and doing her thing and helping guide you through, and the same tale of adventure and betrayal and so forth.

GameCyte: Speaking of those changes, is there any consideration for the Wii’s younger crowd here? I don’t know, honestly, how mature the story is, since we didn’t get to see too much of it so far… but is the game going to be any lighter on the Wii than it would be on the other systems?

TF: From a narrative standpoint, the game is very similar. We’re respectful of the notion that the Wii is a bit less mature of a crowd as a rule. I can’t speak exactly to the level of maturity on the 360 and Wii or the PC product, but I can say that on the Wii we’re targeting a Teen rating, and it’s the sort of content that by its nature (you’re running from cops, you’re an undercover agent dealing with beautiful women and hot stolen cars etc.) is edgy. But this is also very much a family-friendly title. There’s nothing here that you’re not going to encounter in Gone in 60 Seconds or a PG-movie.

GameCyte: Are we going to see the full damage models on cars in the Wii version?

TF: There is a damage model. It’s not the same, as it doesn’t have the same level of fidelity as the PS3 and 360. This is a wholly different engine, and obviously the Wii’s characteristics with regards to poly processing and so forth are significantly different. All the user vehicles and the cop cars and so forth definitely do sustain damage, but it is not the same damage model as on PS3 and 360.

GameCyte: We’re going to be getting more than scratches and broken glass though… are there going to be parts coming off, for instance?

TF: Parts will come off, that’s right. We don’t do too much in the way of deforming geometry. It turns out you can do that on the Wii, but as a game designer, as for me I’d rather let you have another five cops in the scene chasing you.

Rather than just sheer eye candy, it’s “how do I make sure your experience is high adrenaline?” In this case, that’s where we elected to go.

GameCyte: Can you tell me what sort of scale we’re looking at? We’re still getting an open world, correct?

TF: Absolutely.

GameCyte: And in that open world, what kind of a chase could we have without running into framerate issues?

TF: There are lots and lots of open-world chases with a significant number of cops, and we studied very carefully what the Most Wanted chase experience was, and all the great movies we love featuring police chases, and we’ve amp’d that experience up considerably. That’s one reason these heroic driving moves and all the rest are so critical. I spend a lot of time in this game engaging the cops – and I won’t just say running from, either, because your unique role — because there are some dirty cops that you have to take down and so forth – there are times when you pull that bootleg reverse and you floor your accelerator, and head off, not away from the cops, but right dead into a pack of them, because you’ve got to make right some things that are wrong here in the world.

I’d just mentioned one of the trade offs we’d made very consciously was to have lots of cops chasing you. I need you to be able to smash into cop cars, send them flying, do damage to them, those sorts of things. In ProStreet, there was a very cool damage model that worked very well for that type of racing game, but if I have a significant number of opponent vehicles, I need to make sure they can all be damaged, that they can all be kicked around and that we keep our framerate very high.

Does that answer your question?

GameCyte: (chuckles) No, because I was looking for a numerical answer.

TF: A numerical answer to number of cops? (humorously reluctant tone of voice) I’m not going to tell you that, because then I might have to change it, and end up being wrong. I can tell you we’ve got a pretty good number, and I’ve been in some chase sequences in some of the driver jobs — and you can ask me about this later — where you end up going right down into the heart of the police station and uh, doing some things, and there are a pretty good number of cops on screen at once.

GameCyte: Can we say… more than 10?

TF: Less than a thousand.

GameCyte: Less than a thousand?

TF: Less than a thousand, and more than three. How about that?

GameCyte: (sarcasm) Our readers are going to love that.

How about AutoSculpt and customization? Are we going to see the same amount of customization that’s available in the next-gen version here on Wii?

TF: It’s pretty similar in scope, I believe, to what was done on next-gen. Not all the vehicles, and not all the parts are identical. It’s a different parts list, and a different car list, but you definitely can AutoSculpt, and it’s the same level of customization that you would have enjoyed in, say, Need for Speed: Carbon or similar. You can still performance tune your car, you can tune visuals, there are tons of different vinyls, you can lower your ride height, you can AutoSculpt hoods and scoops and all the rest.

GameCyte: You say a different car list… will this be a smaller car list, or are we actually going to see cars on Wii that we might not see in the other versions?

EA Publicist: We’re not talking about car lists just yet. I’m going to cut Tim off on that one.

GameCyte: I wasn’t going to ask about specific cars, just how the list compares, but if that’s a question you can’t field at this point…

EA Publicist: Essentially… you won’t be disappointed, and we’re just going to leave it at that. We’ll talk about the car list a bit later.

GameCyte: So, you’d mentioned driver jobs earlier, and it sounded like there was something you wanted to tell me, so I’ll just let you go ahead.

TF: (choosing words carefully) I can tell you that… there are unique… driver jobs in which you play the role of a wheelman and do various illicit activities in order to get in good with various people in the world… and I can tell you that these are unique and cool for the Wii… and I can tell you that they are in many cases the sort of thing that has not been seen in a Need for Speed before.

GameCyte: On Wii, you say.

You heard it here first: on Wii, the driver jobs are something that has not been seen on Need for Speed before.

GameCyte: Can you tell me anything about how the controls, or something else unique to the Wii, might factor into these driver jobs, without going into specifics?

TF: I tell ya, it’s all in the wheelhouse of the sorts of things we’ve discussed so far. The controls for the Wii are unique, we support all the controller types and feel like it’s a very very good experience, and you’ll need all of those skills, including any additional skills you might pick up using the Logitech wheel, in order to conquer all these driver jobs… because some of them are pretty fiendishly challenging. Turns out being a fun-lovin’ criminal isn’t as easy as it looks on TV.

You heard the man -- GameCyte exclusive, right there. Huzzah!

Thanks to Tim and Dana for the interview, and Logitech’s Pamela and Tate for an informative Q&A about the Speed Force wheel, which I’ve paraphrased/added (see quotes) immediately below. We look forward to getting hands-on with both Need for Speed: Undercover and the Logitech Speed Force wheel as soon as possible.

********************

*Is the Wii Speed Force wheel truly wireless?

It is “wireless, but not cordless.” The wheel uses a 2.4GHz USB dongle to interface with the console, which can be stored in a compartment underneath the wheel, but must plug into an included AC adapter.

*How do you mount the Wii Speed Force wheel for use?

The wheel does not mount, but has an expandable lap rest consisting of wings on the left and right.

*Does the Wii Speed Force wheel have an accelerometer?

No. Logitech representatives wished to emphasize that the wheel was not designed for Mario Kart and other accelerometer-controlled driving games.

*Does the Wii Speed Force wheel have pedals?

No. It’s designed as a one-piece unit for portability. Instead of pedals, it has paddle-shifters for gas and brake.

*How does the force feedback compare to other Logitech wheels, like the Driving Force Pro?

The feedback has been somewhat toned down compared to those units, partially because the wheel is designed to rest on the lap.

*How many degrees of rotation do these wheels have?

“The Driving Force Wireless wheel and Speed Force Wireless wheel have 200 degree rotations. The Driving Force GT and G25 racing wheels both have 900-degree steering.”

*Can you use the Wireless Wii and/or Wireless PS3 wheels on the PC using the USB dongle?

“The Speed Force Wireless wheel for Wii is designed specifically for use with the Wii console. However, if you plugged in the Driving Force GT wheel into the PC, basic functions should work with the PC, but the overall design of the wheel is meant to work with the PS3 platform so we don’t offer technical/customer support for users who choose to plug in the system with platforms that aren’t compatible or designed for each specified wheel.”

*Can you use other Logitech USB wheels on the Wii or PS3?

“The Logitech G25 racing wheel, Driving Force Wireless wheel and Driving Force GT wheel can be used on the PS3. The Speed Force Wireless wheel is Logitech’s only wheel compatible with the Wii console.”

*Can you use the wireless PS3 wheel on the Wii?

“No, the Driving Force Wireless wheel is designed for the PS3 system and the Speed Force Wireless wheel is designed for the Wii console.”

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