A week with the Wii U

Six years have passed since the Nintendo released the Wii. I bought one because I knew they were rare, and because an EB Games employee I knew pretty well let me know one was available at his store. I bought it and enjoyed it at first, but pretty much took a 3 year break from paying it any attention until the end of 2010. I hadn't been paying attention, and it was hard to notice, but the Wii got some of the best first party support from Nintendo since the days of the Super NES. With that in mind, I became extremely excited last summer when Nintendo unveiled their new Wii U. I had lost trust in Nintendo with the Wii, but late in the game, they earned it back.

The best feature of the Wii U is that it suits my living arrangement. This would not have been at all beneficial to me two years ago. Today, I share a television with two others. I've noticed that I'm playing games less because of this. Last winter, when Kyla was hard into playing Skyrim, racking up more than 300 hours played, I had my laptop out with my Wii piped into it playing Skyward Sword right beside her. This required me to have a mess of wires in the living room. It wasn't pretty, but it worked. Today, we have two PS3s in the house connected to different TVs in different rooms. We could play our separate games apart from each other. I imagine someone got her Lego Lord of the Rings for Christmas, and I'm hoping for Assassin's Creed 3, and if we had both those games, we could both play, but we'd be rooms apart.

This weekend, Kyla started watching television, and I was able to sit next to her playing Call of Duty. It didn't require a nasty hardware setup with a mess of wires like last year. I had my volume turned down to an inoffensive level, and we were able to talk and interact in the same room. We were doing separate things, but we were still spending time with each other. I also fared pretty well on the small screen. I'm certainly not the most skilled Call of Duty player, but my score was pretty impressive.

Another fair point to make about games like Call of Duty and Assassin's Creed is that Kyla hates watching me play them. For the last year, if I popped in Modern Warfare 2 to play some multiplayer, it was on a Sunday morning, quietly, before Kyla was out of bed. I could go play in the other room, but I'd rather be spending time with her. I played XCOM most when I was home alone, or when Kyla was taking a nap. While I'm sure we'll get the next PlayStation or XBox to complement our entertainment setup, as long as Nintendo keeps supporting this new machine, it'll have a place in our routine.

Another huge advantage this system has is that it can control the TV. I don't have to pause my game to lower the volume. If Kyla wants to do something else with the TV, I can set that up in an instant, without a word. She'll say she'd like to watch something on Netflix, and all of a sudden, the TV's input is set to Apple TV. I don't have to put the controlled down to relinquish control. I like being able to make that gesture.

The system interface resembles that of the 3DS. It's very smooth an beautiful looking, but, unfortunately, everything takes forever to load. The wait times between menus are unbearably long. It's unacceptable, considering we know the menus alone run on half the system's RAM. I really hope they patch that up soon.

The games I've tried are great. Kyla's been playing Scribblenauts Unlimited, and before I called in sick on Thursday and managed some game time between naps, she had used the system more than I had. Scribblenauts' visuals translate beautifully to an HD TV, and the game can be played completely from the GamePad, which is great, too. My only concern is that she's had it a week and is almost done with it. We have seen the credit roll. I can see making interactive greeting cards within this game, and that idea excites me.

We've barely scratched the surface of Nintendo Land. It's fun and cute. I loved the Balloon Trip game and found it very easy to control with the stylus. The F-Zero game left me pining for a new full-fledged F-Zero. Luigi's Ghost Mansion is the standout multiplayer game. We've only played 4 player so far, and had a blast with it. The Octopus Dance game was boring and stupid, and we'll probably never touch it again. Hopefully there are no secrets in this game that require us to do well in that. Everything in this game tugs at my nostalgia centre. The music is catchy, especially when it shifts to 8-Bit in certain menus. My big complaint is the way the GamePad is used to steer your Mii character around to different attractions. The picture on the television twists to match the way you're holding the gamepad, which is very disorienting.

Call of Duty is Call of Duty. It looks better than Black Ops did on my XBox, but I'm told this version doesn't look any better than the XBox 360 version, which is unfortunate. I only had one noticeable framerate drop while playing, and it was not during combat. The framerate seemed to drop during the story sequences between missions whenever there was a conversation with Woods that took place outside. Multiplayer suffers from not having the 500,000 players of the 360 community. Last weekend, there were about 500 players playing. That number has climbed over 1000. I've only once had trouble connecting to a game, but I've never seen anyone playing the party games, which are fun. It wasn't the best platform to buy this on, but as I said earlier, I can play this on the GamePad, and that offers a huge advantage, offering me more times during the day in which I can play this game.

New Super Mario Bros. U gets a bad rap for being the second New Super Mario game released this year. The level design is far smarter in this one that NSMB2 on the 3DS, and the world itself is reminiscent of Super Mario World. Last night I found a secret entrance in a level that took from a midway castle to the final castle of a world through a rear entrance that took me right to the boss. This is the coolest secret I've found in a videogame in a long time. The Miiverse integration is great. It allows you to caution when you're doing bad, or brag when you're doing well. I see games with Miiverse integration being a more social parallel to achievements and trophies. There are some real artists on Miiverse, and it's always cool to check what other people are doing and saying about the part of the game you're in. So far, I have only seen 1 penis.

I'm really excited for Miiverse to make it's jump to the web. In time, it'll be accessible on computers and smartphones. This is great because when you access Miiverse from inside a game, you can post a screenshot of the game you're playing. Being able to bring my screenshots to the computer to post on Facebook will be great. Unfortunately, Call of Duty doesn't let you access this from inside multiplayer. When I'm able, I'll be sharing a picture of a soldier in Black Ops 2 running around with an invisible gun that I posted to Miiverse this weekend.

The way they handled Wii backward compatibility is unfortunate. The Wii is fully emulated and broken off into it's own menu. This means all Virtual Console games and Wiiware exist only in this broken off space. If you want to launch a Wii disc, you'll have to load up this separate menu first.

I really expected I'd be able to play the Virtual Console games I bought on my Wii straight from the Wii U menu. Their solution of running those games in Wii mode is upsetting. Given the precedent they set with the 3DS and DSiware, it was a reasonable expectation.

I was a fan of the idea of the Virtual Console when the Wii launched, but it just took forever for the service to add the games I wanted. By the time it did, well... I found another way to run those games on the Wii that limited my access to the Shop Channel. Now that I've got a Wii U, I've got a list of future purchases I intend to make. Unfortunately, 3 of those games were removed last week; the Donkey Kong Country games are gone, with no reason given for removal. I want Nintendo to know I'm still interested in the Virtual Console.

I hope they're able to patch my existing games to run on the Wii U. I hope they don't expect me to buy Super Metroid again. I hope they don't split my Virtual Console library by games I can play from the Wii U's menu, and games that can only be booted in Wii mode. I also hope they can patch the 3DS's GameBoy Virtual Console to allow either Super GameBoy colouring or GameBoy Color colouring, because that's just lazy.

It's great that on day 1, we have 5 controllers that work with this new system. I still want one of the new Pro Controllers for guests, but it's nice to have a full assortment of accessories that don't need to be upgraded. That's always the big hidden cost of buying a new console. The PS2 let me use my old Dual Shock controller, and that was such a big deal. Since then, other than the Wii using GameCube controllers for some stuff, no one has really allowed you to use your old stuff. And even though the Wii allowed me to use those old controllers, I still had to go out and buy an extra controller, two nunchuks, and the classic controller to play the games I wanted to play. Later, we had to buy Wii Motion Plus attachments if we didn't want to replace our old Wii remotes. There was a high cost to setting up the Wii for 4 player sessions. I do really miss using the Gamecube controller, and playing those games. Most of my GameCube games are either Nintendo franchises that have been iterated on the Wii and are sure to find their way on the Wii U, as well as 8-16-32 bit game collections on disc. It would sure be nice to be able to play the latter on there. I suppose I understand why GameCube support has been cut, but it would still be nice. The Wavebird is still my preferred controller for Smash Bros. and Mario Kart.

Overall, I'm impressed with the games, but there's so much they need to fix about the user interface. I hope they care enough to try. I hope they let me download my Virtual Console games on from the Wii U eShop instead of the Wii's Shop Channel in Wii mode one day, but I'm not holding my breath. It's too bad. We'll see what happens. The firmware update that gave us access to the SD card for launching games changed the way I interacted with the Wii. Hopefully the Wii U sees some massive UI improvements as well.