The Wii U: Thoughts in Advance

At this point, saying I'm a bit excited about the impending (hurry up next month!) launch of Nintendo's next home console is a pretty big understatement, and anyone who knows me and my gaming habits will find that only slightly less surprising than the facts that, yes, I've pre-ordered one, and no, I haven't even started to plan out my big purchases in advance to make sure I'll have the money for it.  :P

Even so, I feel like I should try to put some of my thoughts regarding the system, its games and the ramifications of its existence down here for posterity, if nothing else to prove my fanboy credentials.

The Machine:  Based on the look of the games, the words of various developers and my utter refusal to learn any of the official tech specs for fear of boredom, I'm reasonably confident in saying that internally the Wii U is basically the same as a PS3, albeit one with backwards-compatibility that actually works (minor rimshot).  I know there are some gamers out there expressing doubt over that choice, believing that Sony and Microsoft's next consoles are already waiting in some top-secret lab somewhere, ready to pounce on the Wii U's launch and rain on its parade with some hypothetical level of super-photo-realism the human mind can barely perceive yet, but (if my tone isn't making clear) I don't agree with this logic.  For starters, though everyone and their mother has a hard time admitting it, the Wii was - and is - a financial success despite launching against 2 other consoles that outgunned it technically.  Just because it didn't play 'your' games or was targeted at someone other than a 'core' audience doesn't dilute that fact.  Secondly - more importantly - I don't believe the world is crying out for more advanced graphics in games right now.  Many developers are still finding ways to push current systems to hitherto-unknown levels of visual delight (even when they're wasting it on drab colour palettes and so on), and rarely do you hear of someone complaining that, "Yeah, this game is alright, but I wouldn't buy it unless it was sooo much better looking".

There's also the matter of cost-effectiveness on the part of developers.  This is another thing that tends to be overlooked, so I'm going to spell it out; just because a game appears on, say, PS3 does not automatically make it look 'PS3-quality'.  It takes work on the developers' part to make the models, backgrounds, textures, effects etc. match the system standards, and the more progressively powerful console tech has become, the more time and effort is needed from digital artists and programmers to keep up.  HD-compatible consoles might give these guys a wide canvas to draw on, but it doesn't give them better brushes.  That's one good reason for the increasing gulf between AAA titles (which can afford to employ the necessary size of team to take advantage of higher specs) and 'everybody else' (which can't).  This is only going to get worse for smaller teams when technology decides to make another big leap forward, so for now, I believe it's best for the industry as a whole to stick with what we've got.

Of course, it's the controller that's rightfully attracting most of the attention with the Wii U (well, the primary controller, since there are others and old Wiimotes are apparently compatible), and while the actual implementation of its features are in the hands of individual developers, I'm excited for what it could mean for the system as a whole.  An eye-opener for me was this video by Jim Sterling, which is well worth a watch even if you don't care for the man's personality.  Essentially, the Wii U gamepad, to a degree, removes the use of the TV set from the gaming experience, and with upcoming TVs muscling in on the 'media center' appeal Sony and Microsoft have been banking on in recent years, taking the TV out of the picture is actually a very shrewd move, possibly more so than Nintendo have yet noticed.

The Games:

Nintendo Land

It was inevitable, after the success of Wii Sports - and don't go laughing at me now; count up how many copies of that game were bundled with Wiis, and how many of those bundles were sold, THEN tell me it wasn't a success - that Nintendo would craft another default 'pack-in' game for the Wii U, likely in a similar format.  Well, Nintendo Land is similar, and yet it's also very different.  It's another grab bag of multiple minigames rather than a single cohesive experience, and involves the use of those pesky Mii things I can never get to look quite like me (I got my little brother-in-law just perfect one time, though - then he changed it because it looked too different from me).  On the other hand, the spartan presentation of the past game has been jettisoned in favour of something much more detailed and colourful, and rather than real-world sports the games take their cues from established Nintendo franchises.  I haven't seen enough of many of these modes to judge their quality; from memory, I can say that the ninja-shuriken-shooting-gallery mode seems far too threadbare to hold the attention, while the Luigi's Mansion-themed maze hunt looks like a lot of fun.  Personally, I have little doubt this will be a great work-out for the new gamepad; what interests me is how the expanded/casual audience of Wii users will treat it, as this could be step 1 in turning them from being only dimly familiar with gaming to full-fledged Nintendo die-hards.  We'll see.

ZombiU

What is unmistakably the silliest-named game of the known Wii U line-up (even beating out Namco's Tank! Tank! Tank!) could also turn out to be its best, though I think there's still a lot of people who don't quite grasp what kind of game ZombiU is playing.  Yes, it's viewed from the first-person perspective, and yes, there is shooting involved, at least when you're forced to do without your trusty cricket bat.  But it's not an FPS, no more so than the Metroid Prime games were.  No, here we've got scarce weapons and ammo, enemies that may well resist what bullets you can afford to aim their way, and the guarantee that a single clean hit will kill you and dump you back at the stage's start.  This is true survival horror, the kind I haven't seen from the usual suspects for years now, and hoo boy do I welcome it.  Another thing people don't seem to grasp about the game is its use of the gamepad and how smart it is - no, forcing you to use the second screen for sniper scopes, your inventory, picking locks etc. isn't more convenient than putting it on the TV screen, but that's the whole reason they're doing it.  The developers know you can't keep focused on both screens at once, and are using that against you by forcing you to try and split your attention at times when a zombie or three could be sneaking up on you.  This serves the same purpose as the clunky controls and weird camera angles used to do for Resident Evil - it makes you all too aware of your vulnerabilities, which keeps the tension high.  Or it should, at least - obviously, I haven't played it yet, but from what I've seen and heard it's doing a lot right.

Aliens: Colonial Marines

And the winner for Most Obvious Gamepad Use To Date goes to...okay, I'm being snarky when I don't need to.  Yes, Aliens: CM turns the gamepad into the traditional movie-style motion tracker.  Yes, that is pretty frickin' cool even if it is something that would normally be on the TV screen.  I'm thinking that, aside from reducing on-screen HUD clutter, the pad-as-tracker should also heighten player terror during campaign mode, for much the same reasons as ZombiU's various tricks will do so.  However, I am wondering if there's anything more unique about the Wii U version of this multi-format title we just don't know yet.  You can play as the Xenomorphs in some multiplayer modes - what would the gamepad do for them?

Batman Arkham City: Armoured Edition

Batman Arkham City is most definitely a great game, and for the sake of Nintendo die-hards who simply refuse to try other consoles, its arrival on Wii U is very welcome.  However, I've been less than thrilled by its attempts at incorporating the gamepad into its world - and from the reaction to the on-stage playtest at E3 2012, I'm not the only one.  The sole new trick in Batman's arsenal is, essentially, a rage meter that lets him build up to delivering super-powered punches, something which could be bolted onto the existing other-formats version of the game without any need for tricksy controllers.  Beyond that, the pad becomes a visor to look around during crime-scene interludes (smart enough but rarely seen), a selective-detonator for explosive gel (admittedly more convenient than sequence detonation was before, but the number of times I ever needed that option in past playthroughs of the game was somewhere between bugger and all), and...well, that's it, unless you count tilt-to-steer remote control batarangs (which were already an option with Sixaxis pads and didn't work).  I do feel sorry for the developers here; Arkham City is a very tightly-constructed game that doesn't really have the room for any further expansions on its mechanics or content, and yet their bosses are forcing them to try and fill in gaps that aren't there.  Nonetheless, this is kind of a non-starter for me.

Tekken Tag Tournament 2: Wii U Edition

Now this is something I can get behind.  I don't really need to be sold on a new Tekken game - just the name on the box is enough to make me pay up, even for things I know I won't like (Hybrid).  Nevertheless, Namco were nice enough not to get lazy with the Wii U version, and instead have used the extra months between its release on other formats and the Wii U launch to pack in even more fun content to what was already a full-to-burst fighting game.  The Nintendo tribute costumes are a nice boost to TTT2's occasionally-lacking customisation range (especially given how many different looks are now supported - Link, Zelda, Ganon, Samus, Mario, Luigi, Peach, Toad, Fox, Bowser, Captain Falcon...), and both the size-shifting antics of Mushroom Battle and the returning Tekken Ball offer tangibly different modes from the vanilla fighting, not to mention look like the sort of thing that'll go down really well at parties.  My only concern at this point is that the special features highlighted by Harada and co. when helping to demo the Wii U in its early reveal phase - like using the gamepad to stencil on characters' bodies or assemble your own basic stages from menus of pre-set backgrounds and items - have not been mentioned in any of the trailers for the game proper, making me wonder if they're actually going to make the cut.  I'll lament their absence - even if it does spare me the sight of some online smarty-pants scribbling a penis on my Nina's forehead - but even without them, TTT2 is a shining example of how a belated port should be handled.

All will be revealed in November...