PAX 07 hands-on: Wii Table Tennis controls are insane

The first thing I ran into today in the PAX exhibition hall was Rockstar's just-revealed Table Tennis port for the Wii. The graphics, while obviously better than a photo taken of a TV screen would portray, are high-end PS2. That's a pretty familiar statement for a Wii game.

Here's something that's a little uncommon for a Wii game: the controls are way too complicated. There are three different control schemes (full control scheme explanations straight from the game after the break), and they varied in complexity, from Wii Sports-esque to dubbayou-tee-eff. At no point during my short time with the game did I ever feel like I had control over my character.

The standard control scheme requires players to hit A and then motion to serve, with subsequent swings done via familiar Wiimote motions. Spin, indicated by ball color, is done by holding a direction on the D-pad. The complexity comes from what felt like a significant lag between input and action. That's fine for NES Castlevania, but not for something that feigns 1-to-1 motion.

The other two control schemes assign either player movement or ball positioning to the Nunchuk's joystick, and to make a long story short, I didn't know what was going on, and the game made no indication that it knew what I was doing. Maybe with time, I could pick up the nuanced controls, but at this point I can't tell if they're nuanced or nonresponsive.