Wii wish U a merry Zmas

The Wii U was released about a week ago, with a lot of curiosity surrounding its release, and I had the chance, last Friday, to actually play it! A trip to the Gadget Show Live, with very plain press passes, allowed me to not only jump all the cues, but actually get a look and feel of the Wii U and its weird controller. I only managed to play a relatively short time, as well as only two games, but that was enough to get a good impression of what was going on.

So here’s a quick overview of what the Wii U entails. The controller is quite a complex piece of equipment and is a step removed from the remotes and nunchuks of the Wii. It’s a screen surrounded by various buttons, kinda like thebottom half of a DS, but larger. What Nintendo is trying to do is integrate a tablet into your gaming experience, so that the second screen enhances your playing capabilities, i.e. by being the platform for mini-games. Also if your brother, sister, girlfriend, boyfriend etc. want to interrupt your game time by using the TV screen for another purpose, the Wii U controller’s screen can serve as your game screen. While, in theory, this concept sounds relatively simple, in real life it’s a bit more difficult to understand.

Back to my experience of the Wii U. So, I stumbled into the Nintendo area, and was surrounded by various stations portraying a multitude of games. At this point, I was overcome with choice so I just picked the first station which was free. The game I had chosen was Skylanders. Skylanders was released quite recently, and has beaten all expectations to become one of the most popular games for young teens in 2012. It incorporates the use of actual physical toys, which are placed into the game using a portal and then are playable in-game. The Nintendo employee who had been playing the game solo at that point, invited me to play with him, placing a figure onto the portal. Sadly I can’t remember at all what this figure looked like, as, at that moment, I was still in a daze due to the copious amounts of people and games, and as such, unaware of all the little details. Then the controller was pushed into my hand and I commenced playing. The controller itself was a tad bit heavy, and unwieldy but it wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. However when I started playing, the actual complexity of the controller struck me. I had no clue what to do. That was the first time ever that I had picked up a game, and had no clue how to play. Not even the Nintendo guy seemed to know what was going on. The game seemed to be a rail shooter, which are notoriously simple to use, and yet neither me nor the actual employee had an inkling of how to play. The graphics of the game seemed quite nice, but I could not really enjoy the game as I was trying to figure out how to actually play. Perhaps a tutorial would have helped, but the fact that you need to have a tutorial for the console, which is supposed to speak to the casual gamer, it worries me how many actual casual gamers will pick this up. Also the game itself didn’t actually seem to use the touch screen that the controller had to offer, or maybe I just hadn’t figured it out. After dying about 6 times, I decided I would go to the game I had actually wanted to see, and allow some other person to figure out how to actually play. The game I am talking about is ZombiU.

ZombiU has been in the works as long as the Wii U has, and it’s Nintendo’s attempt to reach the hardcore audience of gamers. Ever since I saw some trailers and explanatory videos of it on YouTube, I had been excited to have a go at it. I was quite sure that since Nintendo was making this game just for the Wii U, that the full promise of its controller would be on full display. I am quite the zombie fan, having played DayZ, Resident Evil and many other games concerning this subject. Thus when I finally got to play, after seeing the previous player brutally mauled, I was raring to go! The guy in charge of this station actually seemed to know what to do, and explained the mechanics of the game quite well. So when I picked up the controller I felt ready to kick some rotting zombie’s butt. Quite eerily, the game started with me waking up in a kindergarten (wonder how I got there...). I had a bloody cricket bat and a handgun with a few bullets to spare. The setting and the feel of the game reminded me a lot of DayZ, and to be honest I actually was quite tense during the game. My objective was to find a way out of the kindergarten and survive. The screen of the controller had a kind of map on it, which slightly confused me, as I wasn’t sure at which screen I should be looking, in the end deciding to glance down at the map every so often. This did irritate me somewhat, as I prefer all my game info to be within one concentrated area. So I made my way through the kindergarten with the occasional bloody handprint on the walls. When the first zombie lunged out from behind a corner, not only I jumped, but the little audience that had formed around me did as well. I did manage to kill the annoying bugger by smashing his head in (very graphic and bloody), but I must say that the tablet-controller did not seem anything special at that point, and I would have perhaps preferred something smaller in my hand. Also the looting of items was very confusing, because you had to look down onto the screen of the tablet, and swipe from the loot to your bag, confusing and, I thought, unnecessarily complicated. Even though ZombiU was turning out to be a great game, the messiness and difficulty of using the controller was starting to grate at my nerves. Then came a locked door. Apparently my character was an expert lock-picker, and thus a little mini-game came about where I had to pick the lock of the door using the controller. The mini-game was quite simple, however I did take a peak at the big screen, and was pleasantly surprised to see my character in 3rd person perspective actually trying to pick the lock. This is a very nice touch I think, because once you have zombies coming up to you and you see them out of the corner of your eye, the tension mounts and opening that door may not be that easy. Although this involves you dividing your attention between two different screens, it just makes the game experience much more realistic. In real life you would be freaking out! When I did finally die (killed by an annoying, special, disappearing zombie) accompanied by groans by the multitude of people now ogling my game, I was sad and relieved at the same time. Sad, because my character, who I had grown to like in my 15 minutes of playing, was dead, and relieved because the game was so goddam scary that I was glad it was over.

The Wii U has a LOT of potential. ZombiU is a class game that really did manage to make me flinch (and everyone around me) at some points. Its realism is great (as much as you can be realistic in a zombie game), and I enjoyed mutilating any zombie I came across. ZombiU was perfectly optimised for the Wii U, using all the features that the unique controller had to offer. Skylanders, on the other hand, and probably the majority of games, are created by game studios that do not understand all you can do with the Wii U. This is one of the biggest problems that Nintendo faces, for if they do not get the right support from the game makers i.e. games made with the Wii U in mind, nobody will buy this console, which would be a big shame.

Another big stumbling block that faces the Wii U is the complicated nature of the tablet-controller. The casual gamer, the original audience of the Wii, will face great difficulties to really get the most out of their games without using the tutorial or manual. Even me, a relatively experienced gamer had a few problems, which sometimes caused frustration more than enjoyment. All in all, I really hope that the Wii U persists and actually achieves success. Nintendo is trying to push a whole new way of playing games, which I think could be the next big thing. I thoroughly enjoyed ZombiU, however with a price of £350 for game and console, I am a bit worried that not enough people will buy it, since for that amount of money, I know I wouldn’t.