BigJKO

The Nintendo Wii U is Great Thread

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My god. What is the point of building a beautiful world if you're going to obscure it for 50% with heinous interface and a dozen numbers popping up everywhere? Literally half the time you can't even see the enemy. Sorry to hate on this based on this single video, but come on.

(And that's before the continuous high-pitched yelping of characters that fills the audio.)

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I didn't think the UI was that bad. Not exactly elegant, but it seems to be very contextual, fading in and out as needed, and is actually quite a bit less obtrusive than the UI in Xenoblade. The most obfuscative thing in there, really, is the hit numbers. Which... I guess you could probably do in a more discreet way, but "beating the numbers out of something" has kind of become a visual motif a lot of people sorta dig.

 

Though the map and the player health bars should probably be in the bottom right and bottom left corners, with that camera perspective.

As for the character barks, yeeaaah. It just kind of comes with the territory, you know.

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Yep. There was a Nintendo Direct yesterday.


Wii U Highlights:

  • Mario Kart 8 out May 30th.
  • NES Remix 2 with Kirby, Zelda 2, etc.
  • GBA games on VC

 

Was there any other new info on the Wii U front?

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Ah. I must have missed it. My bad XD

 

NES Remix 2? Why isn't it just DLC?

 

I'm also a tad annoyed with the NES Remix. The challenges are fun, but there's not enough time spent with the game to really feel like I've played it. I just get to constantly dip my toe into the water of nostalgia instead of bathing in it. The actual remix stages are great fun though. I just wish I didn't have to sit through what felt like tutorialised classics in order to unlock the remix stages.

 

It kinda reminds me of that image thread (or maybe it was a video?) about what Mario on the NES would look like if it was remade for today.

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My god. What is the point of building a beautiful world if you're going to obscure it for 50% with heinous interface and a dozen numbers popping up everywhere? Literally half the time you can't even see the enemy. Sorry to hate on this based on this single video, but come on.

 

You could toggle most of the UI in Xenoblade off, so I imagine that's probably the case here too.

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That video looks great until they get into mechs.  I don't know why, but I have an irrational aversion to mechs.  Did Xenoblade have mechs?

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That video looks great until they get into mechs.  I don't know why, but I have an irrational aversion to mechs.  Did Xenoblade have mechs?

None controllable by the player, no.

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Can we also talk about what a poor choice Bayonetta 2 is as a "bought" exclusive? It seems like a huge mismatch for Nintendo's audience, and exactly the sort of game that does not need a GamePad to play.  It's also completely not the sort of mainstream, must-have game that sells systems to the not-we.  The only thing is gets Nintendo is another game to add to the end of those "Well here are some Wii U games" lists that Kotaku publishes seemingly every hour.  Did this come about because Nintendo is so desperate for an exclusive (and apparently thinks its still 2004) that is just started shopping around at 3rd party devs, and this was the best they could do?  No disrespect to Platinum Games - Bayonetta looks incredibly impressive and I'm aware it has a rabid fanbase - but this seems like an enormously oddball choice.

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It seems like it was a move that was more about Nintendo securing a strong relationship with a good developer. Bayonetta 2 had already been in development with Sega and was perilously close to being cancelled as a result of some deep financial woes Sega was experiencing at the time, so Nintendo stepped in and actually saved the game.

Since then, Platinum has also created Wonderful 101 for the Wii U. (Which, unfortunately, seems to have not done very well at all, despite by most accounts being quite excellent, if obtuse.)


Yes though, it is so weird. Bayonetta 2 is the kind of game i would have never, ever expected to see Nintendo publish. The sexual and crass tone is so very contrary to the Nintendo ethos. I'm glad the game is happening though, that first game is second only to DMC3 in my personal estimation, as far as that genre is concerned. Bayonetta was an amazingly fluid and technical brawler.

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The sexual and crass tone is so very contrary to the Nintendo ethos. 

 

It's weird that the publisher of Conker's Bad Fur Day still has this kind of thing floating around.

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Come on, Nintendo very clearly worries a lot about its public image and has consistently tried as hard as possible to appear family friendly.

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Anyone tried the new Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze? I'm practically willing to buy this just to experience the soundtrack along with the visuals, which happens to be composed by David Wise — co-composer of DKC1's music, and sole composer of DKC2's. To this day, some of DKC2's tunes regularly pop into my head.
 
I quite enjoyed Donkey Kong Country Returns, but after a while the fact that its music was just endless remixes of DKC1's soundtrack started to grate on me. It just seemed a bit cheap and robbed the game of its own identity. However, I had a very cursory flick through the new game's soundtrack and it's some largely excellent stuff. I'm delighted to hear that Wise has employed his full range of 'ridiculously upbeat to hauntingly melancholic'.

Despite what I said before, Wise's nods to a few of the old themes are nonetheless wonderful:

Reviews of the actual game seem very positive, so I think this will make a great incentive for me to finally get a Wii U. Along with the imminent Mario Kart, 3D World, Wind Waker HD, and Mario Bros I'd say that the collection of traditional Nintendo franchise games has finally reached the point of 'completely enticing'.

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I've been playing it, and I quite enjoy it. It's a fun game. The controls feel looser than I'd like, but it's a good game. I think I'm a bit fatigued by how many collectibles are in each level though. The five Yoshi coins of Mario World struck it pretty well. With 9 puzzle pieces and four KONG letters in each level, there is just too damn much here and it's exhausting to think about getting them all.

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Sounds good. DKC (and Rare in general) has always been a bit collectable-happy, I definitely recall DKC2 having way more things hidden in each level than DKC1. With that said, the game built some great mechanics around those things (hidden levels unlocked with tokens, gameshow questions, saved games) and it all worked pretty well. Does DKC:TR succumb to collecting for collecting's sake or is there actually an incentive?

 

I was watching this video and the vibe really has convinced me I want this game:

 

 

It exudes classic DKC for me. Maybe it's the music, maybe it's the dark visuals, maybe it's the enemies that all have those evil eyes. Whatever the case, I want it. Just please tell me that there's no 'shake to roll' shit this time.


As a side-note, Donkey Kong's noises sound like they're from some martial arts movie dub. :tup:

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No "shake to roll", but roll and grab are on the same button and contextual to whether or not you're moving, so I roll accidentally way too often. It's a bit of a bummer on that front. Part of why the controls feel a bit too "loose" to me. It's a good game, but I feel like I lose a life more often because the controls are wee bit janky than because I'm bad at it.

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GBA games hit Virtual Console today! I would totally buy them ASAP if I didn't already own all of them as physial cartridges.

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Do they hold up on the big screen? I assume there's no smoothing or whatever like you get with an emulator? That's my only problem with some of these Virtual Console releases: certain SNES games in particular look absolutely awesome with the special filters — Yoshi's Island jumps to mind as it's art style is particularly suited to the brush stroke-esque filtering.

I guess that a massive ace the Wii U has in this regard is the fact that handheld games could be played on the handheld controller. That is an option, right?

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Do they hold up on the big screen? I assume there's no smoothing or whatever like you get with an emulator? That's my only problem with some of these Virtual Console releases: certain SNES games in particular look absolutely awesome with the special filters — Yoshi's Island jumps to mind as it's art style is particularly suited to the brush stroke-esque filtering.

I guess that a massive ace the Wii U has in this regard is the fact that handheld games could be played on the handheld controller. That is an option, right?

This Nintendo Insider review of Metroid Fusion says that the smoothing filter works well on it while also having the option of using the standard output.  It also looks like playing with the gamepad is an option.

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For anyone like me who was worried about the GBA emulation on the Wii U having dim colours and a lack of features like the GBA Ambassador Program games on the 3DS did: Worry not! It turns out that GBA stuff is being handled by M2, who also do the Sega VC games on the 3DS. I just bought Advance Wars to try it out for myself. Everything looks great, there've been no changes to the colours, and in addition to the normal Wii U VC features (gamepad play, button remapping, and save states), there's an easy to toggle screen filter option, you can resize the image on the TV between fullscreen and a pixel-perfect version, and the manuals are actually scans of the original manuals that you can either browse on your own time or refer to on the gamepad while you play on the TV.

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If I remember, Advance Wars has a pass-and-play option. Does playing the game on a giant TV make this option silly? 

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You could turn the TV off and pass the gamepad around if you're worried about screenlooking.

 

EDIT: Just tested it. You can use both the Gamepad and Pro controller, so everyone could have their own controller (or you could just pass around one pro controller) if you wanted to.

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