SB Recommends Wii U Games

Nintendo's kinda-awkward followup to the Wii. Their first HD console and the first entrant into the eighth-generation console wars, its default controller is a large, strange combination between tablet device and traditional gamepad - a hi-res 16:9 touchscreen with traditional grips, buttons and analogue sticks on either side, plus built-in peripherals like a camera and microphone. Some games and apps can be streamed directly onto the controller, eliminating the need for the TV altogether, while others use it as a supplementary second screen, much like a DS. It is also backwards-compatible with most Wii games, controllers and peripherals.

The combination of odd hardware, a small but intriguing software selection, and a dismal market performance is already earning the system comparisons to the Sega Dreamcast, though Nintendo shows no signs of backing out of the console race just yet.

• Bayonetta (also on: 360, PS3)

• Bayonetta 2

• Deus Ex: Human Revolution Director's Cut (also on: 360, PC, PS3)
  • Ni Go Zero Ichi: Out of all the seventh-gen games haphazardly ported to the system by third parties, this is the only one apart from Bayonetta that's generally accepted as actually being superior on the Wii U - mostly due to smart integration of the Gamepad for complex map and menu navigation, plus a few other imaginative interface quirks. No amount of rebalancing and UI improvements will fix that godawful swindle of an ending, though.
  • Felix: Others that are at least acceptable, by the way (on top of being great games to begin with, which cost almost no money on Wii U because no one bought them), include FIFA 2013 and Mass Effect 3.

• The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker HD
  • Ni Go Zero Ichi: Allegedly smoothes over some of The Wind Waker's problems with pacing, fetch-questing and lax difficulty, at the bizarre cost of actually looking aesthetically worse, by a significant margin, than the original version of the game released over a decade prior. Considering that the visuals are nigh-universally agreed to be Wind Waker's strongest point, your mileage may vary on whether this constitutes a dealbreaker.

• The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (also on: Switch)

• Mario Kart 8 (also on: Switch)
  • Ni Go Zero Ichi: I'm no MK maven, but this is definitely head and shoulders above the Wii version. Cheap items are nerfed and/or marginalized, and the prominence of items and luck-based shit in general is diminished; the visuals, music and SFX are far less obnoxious; and customization options are even deeper. A lot of the new courses are a little… funky for my tastes, but there are an equal number of “classic” courses so whatever. Online play is really… functional.

• Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate (also on: 3DS)

• Ninja Gaiden III: Razor's Edge (also on: 360, PS3)
  • Ni Go Zero Ichi: Really hard to recommend, especially if you haven't played the previous two vastly superior games. Team Ninja's apology for the trainwreck that was Ninja Gaiden III vanilla basically makes the standard combat play more like Ninja Gaiden II, and even makes a few positive tweaks to the engine, but ultimately it just isn't nearly enough to compensate for the game's fundamentally broken health system, lobotomized level design and disgraceful boss fights.

• Pikmin 3
  • Felix: My wife played this up until the first or second boss when it actually got tense and immediately lost interest and I couldn't really blame her. It's good at being facile and is visually interesting, but it had no excuse for actually being challenging.

• Splatoon

• Super Mario 3D World
  • Felix: Actually as fantastic as everyone says. My biggest complaint is that it feels like a shame to “waste” the easy early levels on single-player if you don't have three friends around right when you start the game, since it starts out very accessible and gets very challenging toward the end.

• Super Mario Maker

• Super Smash Bros. for Wii U (also on: 3DS)
  • Ni Go Zero Ichi: Unimaginative title aside, this is a huge step up over Brawl in pretty much every respect, while remaining different enough from Melee to be its own thing. The 3DS version is a glorified demo.

• The Wonderful 101
  • Felix: I really don't think this is very good – there are a lot of dual-screen gimmicks, more stuff to do in the menus than I wanted to look at, and most of the combat seems to take an artificially long time. Only played the demo, though. It's definitely aesthetically well-realized, but to be honest, so are all of Platinum's games.

• Xenoblade X
  • Ni Go Zero Ichi: This game is a fucking mess but I played over 150 hours of it and don't immediately wince at the thought of playing it some more so it must be doing something right.

• ZombiU
  • Ni Go Zero Ichi: A survival-horror roguelike, which is about as interesting as it sounds. The difficulty is refreshingly unforgiving and the design is mercifully light on latter-day Ubisoft bullshit.

• SB Recommends Wii Games - Playable via backwards compatibility.
• SB Recommends Virtual Console Games - Certain NES, SNES and GBA games are available on the eShop, with N64 and DS games to come (supposedly). The rest can still be purchased and played in Wii Mode.
• Forum thread