Right then chaps + chappettes,
I’ve had my WiiU for the day now and cutting right to the chase, would I recommend it? Not really, I can’t even see Nintendo selling bucketloads of these like the Wii either tbh (although to get the most from the WiiU will need to be a Wii owner to sue the wiimotes you have).
Anyway let’s start. They clearly didn’t spend a penny on design aesthetics, it’s a black (or white) box, there’s no real styling involved here, long black box, curved sides, an LED and some ports. That’s not a problem, means it’ll nicely hide away in your media shelf without anyone batting an eyelid. They even went a step further than other console manufacturers and included a HDMI cable, that was a nice touch. What was not a nice touch was realising that the gamepad needs a separate PSU to charge! Correct, there’s no cable to charge from USB or from the WiiU, you need a separate power supply for the gamepad. Now I’m steadily running out of power sockets as it is in my den so having to find another for this really grates me.
And let’s move on to that gamepad, the real big selling point of the WiiU (or so we’re told). The thing really does feel cheap, the plastic on the front is nice and glossy (so collects fingerprints easily), but the back feels really cheap, the whole thing feels light too, and there’s a rattle when you shake it. I googled around and it’s just how they are, some people think it’s the Gyro, I’ve no idea, but when you’re spending £300 on a console you expect it to ooze quality, and this isn’t the first impression you get. The screen also, not entirely sure what the resolution is, I’d take a guess as it being the same as the DS XL, but a big shocker is that’s it’s a resistive, not capacitive screen. Even cheap £50 knock-off tablets on eBay are capacitive these days so it irks me somewhat again that a £300 console doesn’t have a capacitive screen on it’s primary feature. You really do notice it too, as some of the games in Nintendoland need a stylus, and finger controls just aren’t sensitive enough on that screen.
The controllers on the pad feel comfortable enough, although does feel a touch big to use as a traditional input method. One other annoying thing was that in games which make no use of the gamepad (Mario world for example), there’s no way to switch the screen off and still use the controller! You can switch the screen off yes, but once you press a button it comes back on. This will be sucking battery on the controller for no reason, not to mention it’s actually a little distracting trying to play it in HD on your TV and having a big 6” screen showing it in your hands too. The sound on the controller can be adjusted with a slider, and some games put it to good use, but again, another problem is games which stream the audio to the controller as well as out of the console sound odd, more infuriating is when the tutorial voice only comes out of the pad whilst music out of both at the same time.
The OS will be familiar to any Wii owner, although it feels really really slow tbh. When you first open the console, expect to spend at least 5 minutes setting up the thing before you get to actually play anything. I’ve not applied the day1 update yet, I’ll hold off until there’s a reason to do so, so I’m unsure if that fixes the clunkyness of the OS yet.
On to some gaming. Nintendoland is a nice “tech demo”, a full game it is certainly not, 3 of the games you can’t even play unless you have a WiiMote and someone else around to play it with (I’ll drag the kids on to it later to try those out). The titles that I quite enjoyed were the pikmin one, and one where you gather fruit using the stylus. But that’s about it, the others tend to either use the controller as a motion controller or force you to play entirely on the gamepad, I mean really, £300 on a new HD console and you’re forcing me to play the DS again? I can’t really see me playing much else on nintendland apart from the pikmin game.
So Super Mario Bros, well, it’s the same as the 3DS, Wii, and DS versions in it’s gameplay, 2D with bits of 3D backgrounds and stuff happening, but I’m a huge fan of the series, so being able to play this in HD for the first time ever is a real buzz for me. But again, wish I could switch off the display on the gamepad whilst playing.
My ZombiU doesn’t arrive until tomorrow so can’t comment on that one, but I’ll update review when I’ve given it a go.
So overall, it’s a Wii, and a DS combo, I think they’ve priced it at least £100 too high and I can see there being a big price cut (or price war) for it soon as it’s a big ask for a HD Wii.
Day 2
Having played a *lot* of Mario last night, and then some ZombiU this morning, has my opinion changed?
Slightly, yes, but you have to be a huge Mario fan (which I am), is it worth spending £300 on a new Mario game, in super lovely HD, that’s a decision only you can make really. I’m glad I have a WiiU to play Mario in HD put it that way J
I updated the firmware last night in the hope that it’d fix the sluggishness of the OS, alas, it does not. It does add a new eStore, WiiUChat, working youtube, lovefilm and Netflix and the miiverse (same as wii plaza on wii really), but otherwise, I’m not sure what else the huge (1GB) patch fixes (probably security holes).
So my points from yesterday I still stand by, so what’s new? ZombiU, it actually makes decent use of the gamepad, you use it for a radar, for inventory management and for aiming (still not convinced by having to move the controller around for this). And the way the guy in the game gives you orders through the audio on the gamepad actually adds to the atmosphere as it does sound like he’s talking through a walkie-talkie at you.
However, the novelty of ZombiU doesn’t quite carry on through the entire game. The graphics are “ok”, you’re not going to get too excited by them, the game itself makes no claim to be carrying a great storyline (which it doesn’t ) but it just feels a little, I don’t know, lost. I really like how when you die in the game and spawn as a new player, if you go back to where you die, your previous incarnation is there but as a zombie now, that’s a really nice touch. However I’m very disappointed that multiplayer is local only. I was looking forward to trying out the zombie king mode, but I can’t really get the kids running around whacking zombies with blood everywhere so no chance of me trying that one with them.
Is ZombiU a system seller? No, it’s a solid title, I’d say a 65% rating, Mario U is still the A+ title that’ll shift units.
Update
Well a few days later, and still loving super Mario, that's pretty much all i'm playing atm. I've also bought a pro controller which seems a really nice feeling piece of kit, good layout for buttons and feels nice and light, doesn't quite topple the PS3 pad for me but I much prefer the feel of it to the 360 controller. Now I said "seems really nice" because I can't actually use it. Typically, nintendo in their infinite wisdom seem to have released a lovely controller but forgot to actually add support for it into any games. I'd have expected all their first party launch games to support it, and the fact that Mario supports the wiimote for control but not the pro controller takes the biscuit.
Sonic Racing Transformed
Finally got my hands on this game. Clearly they’re gunning firmly for Mario kart with this one, nice fun graphics (although not as good as 360 i'd say one which I have already), good power-ups, but the feather in the cap of this game is the game, as per title, transforms during races. It goes from being a kart game, to a flying game, to a boat racing game at various points during the race. It adds a little more to the game instead of a pure out and out racing on the track which I really like.
There are some oddities though. Like the menu, when playing on the game controller, isnt’ touch-screen, so a bit of a lazy port I fear there. But it’s the first (and only) game I have that supports the pro controller which is nice, until I just realised the trigger buttons on the pro controller are digital, not analogue, no idea why they didn’t make them analogue like ps3/360, seems a wasted opportunity to me, especially since that’s what people are used to and expect from a controller like that.
Apparently you can use the gamepad as a rear-view mirror too, but am yet to find the option for that. The sounds are nice bold and cheerful, I like the course design, only raced on 4 courses so far but I'm liking them, especially the variety you get when you transform.
I did try some multi, but I guess either nobody’s playing or nintendo’s gaming network being in its infancy needs some work. Either way, tried a few times to play multi and gave up on that. It’s odd too that there’s a friends list feature on the multi menu, but all it does is show you which of your friends are online, one of my friends was actually playing the game but it gave me no option to join game or invite to game. I tried to host a game too but no joy, I checked my router logs to make sure it wasn't filtering anything out but no it wasn't a router issue so unsure as to what wasn't working online.
So anyway, it’s a fun karter game, a lot harder than Mario kart, but still one of the better contenders for it’s throne. I’ll try multi again later on.
Overall a thumbs-up, a really strong launch title that i'd thoroughly recommend.
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