So, I got a Wii U. I was able to reserve it and pick it up in store the next day, on a nice Spring-like day on a Saturday morning. Beats waiting in line outside in the cold of the night for a slim chance of getting one. But then, demand for the Wii U isn't as insane as when the Wii was first released.
Trying to transfer my Wii data to the Wii U was a mournful experience. One of the saved game file on the Wii was broken, and attempting to delete it caused the entire internal flash storage to break, making it impossible to transfer my electronic purchases. I'm not the only one to whom this happened. Oh well, at least my most important saved games were backed up (and were successfully transferred to the Wii U, manually). The only downloadable games of value are now available on PC or as a stand-alone Wii disk (the Strong Bad game and Bit.Trip Complete, respectively), but I'm still annoyed to have lost those games. Also, the Wii can still be used to play old GameCube games, so it's worth keeping around. Still, the whole experience made me wary of fully trusting the built-in storage of the new Wii U console, especially if things start breaking down after 6 years of normal use.
The first day of use simply triggered downloaded updates for the console, the channels, and now even some games. It felt like setting up a PC for the first time, since the time between getting it out of the box and actually playing a game was roughly 2 hours.
After all those downloads, I was surprised at how polished the experience was. Configuration is all easily done on the second screen using touch or the stylus. The TVii feature worked surprisingly well as a TV guide, the controller acting as a universal controller with a touch screen. Being able to listen to the game's sound using headphones on the controller's port was a very nice surprise. The social features, called "Miiverse", is actually well implemented and it far better than tacking in Twitter and calling it "social". Being able to post screenshots to online friends or launch the web browser on the second screen while the game is paused was an amazingly smooth experience. Even in-game social features with Miiverse were respectful of privacy and isn't spammy, meaning not like Farmville on Facebook.
Speaking of built-in software, the YouTube and Netflix apps are pretty good. For YouTube, it was made by Google, and it shows since it may be the best full-screen YouTube TV experience I have ever seen. The Netflix app worked well in my tests, and even has an option to move the video to the second screen, effectively mimicking the tablet experience.
The bundled game, Nintendo Land, is really worthy of being sold separately. Though it may be described as a collection of tech demos, most of those mini games are deep and well polished. There is a staggering amount of unlockables to be found, most by spending in-game coins in a variation of Pachinko. The visuals are quite polished, and some of the music is almost on par with Mario Galaxy 2. Oh, and it's a great multipayer party game. Overall, it really shows the possible innovative and fun games that can be done on the console.
I also got New Super Mario Bros. U. While blasé gamers expect it to be just another uninspired sequel, it isn't. The first sequel on the Wii was indeed somewhat not too great and not as good as the original game, but this one for the Wii U is far better. The level design is flawless, the visuals are great, and the music is pretty good. Put simply, this may be the best 2D platformer ever made.
Overall, yes, the second screen, plus its microphone, headphone jack, camera, infrared blaster and accelerometer could be the focus of the device, like the Wiimote was for the Wii, but actually isn't and is content to be just a good "current-gen" HD game console. Many games for it will be ports of PS3 or Xbox 360 games that barely use the second screen for anything, and that's fine. The experience didn't feel like Nintendo was insisting too much on the second screen, but rather on the games themselves. That humility may hurt them a bit though, since the marketting of the Wii U wasn't too great, and the second screen didn't capture much of the general public's attention. If they refine the TVii functionality, they may have a killer feature that places them ahead of everybody trying to do a "second screen experience" on the TV using tablets. Or the simple reality that you can play the game on the second screen, freeing up the TV for other people in the house, makes it act like an overpowered tablet. That, and combined with the ability to buy full games over an Internet connection, gives me the impression that they actually nailed the future of video gaming perfectly, far more than just offering "the same but faster" that Microsoft and Sony will attempt to do in the following year. I wasn't surprised at all by the Razer Edge Pro plus its controller, and I suspect that such kind of tablet and controller hybrid isn't a compromise, but rather a stronger long-term trend unlike all those motion control inputs for games.
OK, enough gaming for a weekend. With in addition books to read, movies to watch and TV shows to see, my spare time has been booked for the rest of the year.
Published on January 13, 2013 at 19:09 EST
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