The Wii U has officially been out for a week now. As such, I thought today would be a good day for me to give some of my thoughts on this fledgling console.
To give a bit of background - I am one of those people who has been (mostly) disappointed in the creative direction of Nintendo lately. I remember my fervor back when the Nintendo 64 was new and exciting. I was around ten years old. They set up a display at my local Toys R’ Us two months before launch, allowing people to play Mario 64. Back then, that was all Nintendo needed to blow everyone’s mind.
Even before that, I was an avid Super Nintendo fan. That was my first gaming system and I feel a tremendous amount of nostalgia for it. I cannot tell you how many days were spent jumping over Goombas and obsessing over how adorable Yoshi was (his cameo in Mario 64 was enough to make me go through the gauntlet and get every single Star).
But then came the Gamecube. It looked weird, the controller was utterly baffling, and it used a disc format that was literally inferior. This last part felt like a red flag, in particular. Hadn’t Nintendo learned their lesson with the cartridges of the Nintendo 64? Why did they deliver a machine incapable of doing everything that the competition boasted (most importantly, playing DVDs)?
I was one of the few who felt cautiously optimistic upon the announcement of the Wii. What harm could there be in letting Nintendo try and redefine gaming controls? At the time it felt like a cool idea. I saw the dangers of the gimmick and chose to believe that Nintendo knew what they were doing.
The only reason I didn’t get a Wii at launch, despite the stumble of the Gamecube, was because I couldn’t afford it at that point in my life. However when I began reading reviews (and started thinking back as early as the Nintendo 64) I began to notice a disturbing trend…
To put it simply, Nintendo is absolutely terrible at keep their systems relevant. The cartridges of the Nintendo 64, the discs of the Gamecube, and then the general hardware power of the Wii - all these things pointed towards the fact that Nintendo lives only for the “now”.
Don’t get me wrong, such a philosophy can be a lot of fun to apply in the real world. But when you’re buying a computer you want to know that your computer will be capable of running all the programs you want for as long as possible. If you pick up a vacuum at the store you wouldn’t want it to be incapable of cleaning certain kinds of messes, either. Nintendo has a great beat on the pulse of the current and the casual fans. They know what we want, plain and simple. That said, they are terrible at looking towards the future.
Does the Wii U buck this trend?
In short, it doesn’t look like it. No Blu-Ray format, a very small (initial) set of hard drives for memory, and the system specs are only a little (if even that much) ahead of current consoles. When the next wave of Playstation and Xbox are released, the Wii U is very likely to become obsolete.
Now do I regret my decision to buy a Wii U?
Absolutely not.
For starters, I didn’t own a Wii. Which meant I missed out on a number of exclusive gems such as Mario Galaxy, The Last Story, and all those ever-so-sexy Zelda games (just to name a few). I have told people that if you didn’t buy a Wii then the Wii U is absolutely worth the price of admission. I stand by this statement resolutely.
I’ve spent the majority of my time on the Wii U playing The Last Story (a charming and wonderful game, which will likely receive a dedicated post all for itself in the future), but I did take a moment or two in order to glance over my Wii U games (Scribblenauts Unlimited and Nintendo Land) and see what the system is capable of.
Scribblenauts Unlimited really brought home the idea that the Wii U is basically a giant Nintendo DS. The use of a second screen and a stylus makes the gameplay seamlessly identical to the previous games in the series. I am a big fan of the Scribblenauts franchise and I didn’t miss a step launching into Scribblenauts Unlimited.
I find the idea of a giant DS novel. However, it is hardly the breakout revolution that the original Wii made for controller design (whether you agree with this or not, it is a fact that Microsoft and Sony rushed to imitate what the Wii did for controls, with the Kinect and Move platforms).
Nintendo Land is where I found the things which make the Wii U special. This makes sense, as that was the entire design purpose behind the game.
Nintendo Land is little more than a minigame collection with a theme park wallpaper coated over it. The game allows you to explore and customize a theme park as you play games to earn coins. It’s through the various games that I learned what the Wii U could really do.
Whether I was rotating the gamepad manually to steer a car, pointing it at the screen to “aim” arrows, or navigating my way through invisible obstacles using the touch screen, I was thoroughly having fun the entire time. In particular I love the idea of the gamepad screen and the television screen displaying different images of the same scene - this could be used to heighten the cinematic feel of some games to great effect, if ever taken advantage of.
My one major complaint is that when using the gyroscope in the gamepad to control the camera, I frequently found myself disoriented. This never improved and I sincerely hope that Nintendo abandons the idea altogether before releasing an attempt at a AAA title with this control mechanic.
Overall, I am happy to have a Wii U. Playing classic Wii games has been worth it, but I’m also excited to see what Nintendo has in store for the future. The gamepad could create some wholly unique gaming experiences - something I’m plenty excited to explore. Will the Wii U keep me from buying the next Playstation or Xbox? Probably not. But I still think it’s a worthy investment.
