Console Impressions: Nintendo Wii U

And now for the standard farce that comes up on these kinds of blogs of reviewing stuff. Actually, reviewing may be the wrong word as some of these will be based on my impressions of the device or game after a few days.

Anyway, let’s get cracking though first I'll just say I'm a bit of a Nintendo fan boy  Out of all three major console manufacturers, Nintendo remains the only one willing to forge a totally new path and go their own direction, usually followed by their fellow Japanese rivals. You could debate that the Wii U, which is a ridiculous name if you ask me, isn't really treading new ground as it’s basically the same concept as the Nintendo DS, but it’s how they use the concept that gives me plenty of hope for the system.

Looking at the system, you’d be forgiven for thinking it’s just a HD Wii, with the system itself being about a third longer then the original Wii with rounded edges. Unless you buy the Premium pack or a separate stand, you’ll have to lay the system horizontally. Speaking of ‘packs’, there are three available in the UK, the first being white with 8 GB of internal storage, the others being 32 GB with several items packed in such as stands, a Wii sensor bar, a charging cradle for the Gamepad and different pack in games (Nintendo Land or ZombiU). I’d suggest one of the 32 GB for reasons I’ll get into shortly.

The much talked about Gamepad is at first glance a fairly intimidating beast. It sports a 6.2 inch touch screen, sadly without the ability to do ‘multi touch’ stuff like the iPad, as well as gyroscopes, accelerometers, dual analogue sticks, D-pad and face buttons and shoulder buttons, though curiously a lack of analogue triggers as the Xbox 360 and PS3 controllers have. Despite all this, it’s not actually very heavy and is quite comfortable to hold and use, but it is a bit bigger than the iPad Mini by some distance. Whenever the system’s on, the Gamepad is also on and that will drain it’s batteries within a fairly alarming 3 hours. The Gamepad can’t be charged directly by the system like Xbox 360 and PS3 controllers, instead needing to be plugged into the wall with its own power supply. One of the rather nifty little features of the system is that you can move game play from the TV screen onto the Gamepad screen almost instantly and continue playing in a number of titles if someone absolutely insists on watching something on the TV you’re using.

Moving onto the system’s main menus, when you turn the system on you’ll be greeted by the Miiverse Plaza, showing about 10 different game icons with Mii characters from all over the world grouped underneath them, dropping remarks and pictures the players have made on the various communities set up on the Miiverse social platform attached to the system. The idea’s nice and simple, allowing players of games to share hints, advice and some pretty impressive artwork with each other. Depending on the title, Miiverse can be fully integrated so you can get remarks from others as you play, such as in Nintendo Land when you finish or fail a game you’re given some comments from players who have been playing the same thing (Not Nelson from the Simpsons pointing and laughing at you, just general remarks about the game and occasionally advise).

Sadly, in order to get those features to work on a launch model you have to sit through a lengthy download which takes up a whopping 6 GB of the available space, which is the main reason I suggest you get a 32 GB model.

The Wii U does have it's own fairly simple eShop, which isn't integrated into the system as well as something like Xbox Live’s but that could actually be a blessing in disguise. Available are demos, download only titles, a new Virtual Console in the near future and even full priced games available for download, though prices for retail games are set at the highest end of the potential price range (Ubisoft’s ZombiU was £54.99 when the system launched for example). Downloads are reasonably quick but you do then have to ‘install’ anything you download in much the same way as the PS3 which can be a minor annoyance.

By now you’re probably wondering how on earth you navigate all this stuff, or at least I hope you are or I’m writing this paragraph for no reason whatsoever. The Gamepad is used for all this navigating, displaying all the icons for downloaded software, Miiverse access, options and all the other features. You can swap the Miiverse plaza onto the gamepad if you want to interact with it for a bit, but there’s not an enormous amount to see.

Now, moving onto the thing that Nintendo always does best: Games. As I have the Premium pack, I’ll just discuss the pack in title Nintendo Land for now. Nintendo Land has 12 different mini games, ranging in complexities and based on different Nintendo properties such as Metroid, Yoshi, Animal Crossing and (squee!) F-Zero. Each use the Gamepad in some way, such as drawing a path for Yoshi to follow to eat fruit and find the level exit and tilting the pad to steer and move in F-Zero and Donkey Kong, but the best examples come from Metroid, Mario and Zelda.

The Mario Chase game is very simple but enormous fun. Using Wii Remotes (You can use any Wii Remote with the Wii U, though motion plus ones are more ideal or in some cases required) four players take on the rolls of four Toads (the little mushroom men) as they for some reason hunt down Mario, played by whoever has the Gamepad. Mario has full view of the arena on the Gamepad screen while the Toads can only see directly in front of them, making for an insane game as the Toads work together to corner and tackle Mario.

 Metroid Blast, by far the most ‘feature rich’ of all the mini games in Nintendo Land, makeing use of a similar concept for Mario Chase for one of its game modes. Each player is effectively Samas Aran, but either the ground based, Wii Remote and Nunchuk using players (has to be Motion Plus enabled Wii Remotes for some reason) have to battle the Gamepad user who is flying a ship around attempting to take out the other players (using the gyroscope to aim and the sticks to manoeuvre) or, alternatively, all five players can work together to battle hordes of computer controlled enemies. While not as simple as Mario Chase, it’s every bit as fun.

Finally, Zelda: Battle Quest has five players again working together to defeat waves of enemies, four Wii Remote (Motion Plus again) using players swinging swords and the Gamepad user firing arrows using the gyro to aim. Players automatically walk but the combat and teamwork play well together.

After experiencing Nintendo Land, I have plenty of confidence in Nintendo’s ability to deliver. As for the other big third party companies, I have about as much faith in them as I’ve always had (practically none), though with game development likely getting FAR more expensive on the next Xbox and Playstation 4, I can see it likely that there may be a few more decent third party exclusives on the Wii U, which system power wise is pretty much in line with the Xbox 360 and PS3.

So, now to the bit most people would probably scroll down to without reading a word I've said. It’s ok, I'm guilty of that too, but I can’t be bothered to think of a 0-100 score, so I’ll rate these things differently. I’ll simply say if you should buy it or not, and here’s my answer:

Verdict: Buy!

That’s not a bad rating at all. In case you’re wondering, I’ll be rating these with remarks like BUY NOW!, Rent and Avoid Like The Plague. Nice and simple and slightly open to interpretation as well. In full truth, I’d say you should buy a Wii U, but not necessarily at this exact moment. There are plenty of games available, but many are ports with additional functionality. Of course, if you don’t buy one then that’s likely all you’ll get in future so I’ll leave it up to you.

Until next time, chaps and chapettes!

Random Note: Images sourced from Gamasutra, Paste Magazine, Nintento, Wikipedia, Baby Soft Murder Hands or Technologies Cutting Edge