Wii U - The Potential

[Something Amyss]

I bought the Wii and DS on potential. One let me down and the other took several years to be a worthwhile investment.

I agree there's potential, but it's meaningless.

 

[Veldt Falsetto]

Rayman Legends
Pikmin 3
Bayonetta 2
New Super Mario Bros U (I just love the artstyle, a cross between Yoshi's Isle and Super Mario World).

Those of us who aren't 11 are unimpressed.

Bayonetta is for ten year olds? Yeah ok

 

[Yopaz]

I see potential in the Wii U too, but I don't think it will be for everyone. I like motion controls because it reminds me of using a mouse, it's not quite as good, but for things like aiming it's better than a gamepad. I like using the touch screen on the DS, but that isn't for everyone either. I like not having numbers and maps that may obscure some details on the screen, but I hate going into a menu to check on it.

I also see great potential for a Tales game as stated in the OP. However I still don't think it's world changing. It's a neat peripheral which I think I might like and I know others will hate. Just give me some decent games and I am satisfied.

 

[Atmos Duality]

The "pointing at the screen to aim" thing fell flat on it's face IMO. If you point it too far in any direction (as humans tend to do) then the Wii-mote would go off the screen and the game would start having spasms and somehow it turned out to be even less accurate than aiming with analog sticks, let alone mouse accuracy. Even for navigating menus it was painful for someone who's been used to zipping around menus using a regular controller.

I found the Wii controls (I call them "pointers") more innately accurate than any analog stick, but less accurate than a mouse. Makes sense, since the pointer is between the two in terms of physical operation.

No, the only strength of all the Wii-mote flailing were games which made it a core part of the gameplay and expressly required the player to hold a straight object at specific angles (yes, a SWORD) as demonstrated in Red Steel 2. I can't really think of any other game which genuinely proved how the Wii-mote could be benefitial over a traditional controller.

I'm not sold on that.
In my experience, the gyros regularly freaked the fuck out on me. I don't have the hands of a surgeon, but I'm pretty steady when I want to be, and just holding a Wii-mote sideways in Skyward Sword caused it to fritz between "at rest" and "sideways"...sometimes spazzing upward for no real reason.
("Wii Motion Plus" my ass)

The theory was sound; the execution was not.

Now regarding the topic of 3rd party support for the new controller - the thing with Wii games was that by translating button pushing to wii-mote waggling, atleast developers could somewhat traslate games from the Xbox/PS over to the Wii and we saw a decent number of games come out for it.

The only two games that managed to benefit from that at all IMO, were Okami and Resident Evil 4. Metroid Prime 1 and 2 got lumped into the Trilogy package, and while they were obviously still great games, they also had to be graphically downgraded slightly to fit the more intense control processing cycles in.

But how will devs make games which use the 2nd screen without giving Wii U games some sort of entirely new/awkward gimmick which doesn't exist on PS4/720/PC due to the lack of a screen on the controller? I have no idea. Having to code such a thing seperately would be horrible.

Coding isn't so bad now. Output coding for wonky peripherals has been around since the 80s, and even the Kinect was hacked and re-purposed within a very short time of its release.

It's content creation and design that's truly brutal; not just coding it.

I also saw a demo of some zombie game being played, and whenever the player aimed with their gun they would have to switch to their Wii-u screen to aim via sights, and then look back up to the TV to continue gameplay. If that doesn't fully define "breaking flow" I don't know what does.

It's a goofy gimmick to be sure, though I still don't see why people are slinging shit at it for managing your inventory or setting up destinations/maintaining a map, etc.
Those are tasks that are always better suited for touch controls or a mouse.

Granted, this *alone* may not justify the tablet's inclusion, but it is a moderately faster and better way to design menu interfaces without having to go with the minimalist approach, which itself is something I have problems with in current game design.
(Compare Skyrim to Morrowind.)

For the record, I am not at all sold on the WiiU. I consider the Wii mostly a waste of time and effort, though I also recognize their attempts to do new things with it.

 

[Guffe]

I, like with every new console, see a lot of possibilities with the WiiU.
I saw it with the Wii and the motion controlls, I saw it with the PS2 and Xbox who started by making their consoles DVD players and not only gaming devices, later good internet connection and etc to the new consoles are a must nowadays.
Every new console brings something new (hopefully), it's just up to the game developers to use it!

 

[SquidVicious]

If there was something like this in the works I would definitely consider buying a Wii-U. I have so many people who know about pen and paper RPG's but don't want to play them because they don't want to learn the rules, or think that it's still "too nerdy". This could easily be a good way to bridge the gap between video games and the endless choices you can do in a pen and paper RPG.

 

[Aiddon_v1legacy]

If there was something like this in the works I would definitely consider buying a Wii-U. I have so many people who know about pen and paper RPG's but don't want to play them because they don't want to learn the rules, or think that it's still "too nerdy". This could easily be a good way to bridge the gap between video games and the endless choices you can do in a pen and paper RPG.

Yeah, this would be a GREAT idea for Western RPG devs. Heck, even get a license for Pathfinder, Shadowrun, World of Darkness, Dungeons and Dragons, etc. Another possibility is adding modding ability so the DM could make their own campaigns, characters, weapons, spells, races, dungeons, ANYTHING and upload it to servers to share among other players. It'd be like LittleBigPlanet: RPG Edition. Get Obsidian or Bioware on it and add expansions for new content.