A New Console Approaches!

Wii U!

So despite how in love I am with the nostalgia of the earlier consoles, (as you can probably tell from what I've posted), even I eventually make the transition into modern consoles. Usually a few years later than the rest of the world but hey hoe.

After a week of agonising waiting and severely annoying my housemates - My Wii U Finally arrived on Tuesday! I had become that annoying that my housemate actually rang me to tell me that I can shut up about it and play it when I'm home. And seeing as the Switch has been announced, why not give my opinion on the Wii U, so today's post won't be the usual Friday short review!

The Wii U is a console that I believe was very poorly marketed - seeing as for many years I didn't even know what exactly it was, to me it just seemed like a new controller for the Wii. But when you get past that and find a game on it that you desperately need (Project Zero Maiden of Black Water in my case) It definitely ends up worth the buy. Unfortunately there aren't too many games on it, but the ones that are - are great. And the ones that fully utilise the dual system are marvellous pieces of work.

The game pad that the Wii U primarily uses is great. That's it just simple terms great. It feels less like a gimmick and actually has a function - being able to switch between the screens - using the dual screens not like the ds as a menu and an actual display, but merging the two together to make thrilling games and software. I'm actually taken aback by it. I never thought I'd actually like it this much.

Obviously as soon as I unwrapped it I had to give Mario Kart 8 a go with a friend, because despite people telling me it was the best one... I just couldn't imagine it beating double dash. Yet it does - the tracks are thrilling and fun, the multiple controller styles gives everyone a fair shot, and the difficulty makes it all the more intense to play. It truly does what Mario Kart is labelled to do. `Ruin friendships`.

Playing the game was great fun, and really brought me back to times when me and my friend back home would sit and play multiplayer together for hours. The Wii U really is doing great for me so far and recreating something I haven't really felt since the GameCube era. Nothing quite feels as good as red shelling someone right before they cross the finish line and screwing them over. Or shrinking everyone because you're bitter about being in last place. The new items are great, and it's a hell of a lot better than Mario Kart Wii (something I have an irrational hatred for).

My biggest issue however with the Wii U and it's game pad, is that it's hard to actually focus on both screens. For example - in Mario Kart 8 the map only appears on the game pad if you select it, meaning if I want to look at the map I have to completely look away from the screen and how I remember enough of the track to achieve whatever I was looking at the map for. In the case of project zero, every time a slight animation happens and the pad automatically switches from map to gameplay, I'm drawn more to the game pad screen because something has changed. But what can you expect from a dual screen system? And nothing's ever going to be perfect.

When it comes to the amount of games for it - it's really a let down. So far there are about 5 that would be great to play with friends, ones that you can get really competitive, and ones that you can work as a team. But other than Tokyo Sessions #FE and Project Zero... there really isn't anything else that I wouldn't rather get on PS3. And this is again where I think it's to do with bad marketing - and how badly Nintendo messed up with the Wii.

Nintendo will always be a family console - the kind that you gather around and have PG rated laughs. But that doesn't mean it can't have good horror's or more adult material for it. When it came to the Wii, Nintendo became too obsessed with making it a family friendly console that they pushed third parties that won't to experiment with the new controls of the time and focused on their own games. Clearly the Wii U tried to get away from that, and with the Switch it's looking like Nintendo have really learnt from that.