The Nintendo Wii U is Great Thread

[N1njaSquirrel]

Are you meant to level up Personas? It feels incredibly slow compared to just fusing more, that are already higher level. Also, is there any point in me keeping Izanagi? He doesn't seem to learn anything, but I get a feeling he'll become strong at some point. Unfortunately, he's now massively under leveled. 

 

You are meant to fuse personas over levelling them up, however I do find that I level up my persona until they have learnt all their moves, and then fuse them. Don't forget about the compendium, where you can save personas and their abilities. Be careful though, because you can only save one move set per persona, and clicking 'register all' will over-write them, meaning you could potentially over write a persona's sweet move set if you pick up the same persona in a dungeon.

 

Also as your social ranks level up, you get more bonus XP for your persona the higher the social rank. As for Izanagi, there is no point keeping him once he's under leveled. He does become strong, but I believe you can fuse him when you get there. You know if a persona still has abilities left by the ? blocks above his abilities.

 

I hope that helps!

[undermind9]

You've just gotten to the best past of 3DW. I'm not great at platformers, so I really enjoyed the early levels too, but the rush I got from beating those later levels was akin to killing a boss in Dark Souls.

 

I hope you beat it solo, it'll give me hope to try again. 

 

After a short hiatus I returned to SMB3DW last night and beat Champion Road. It was roughly 60 lives through all nights of trying and experimenting with best character & execution, the annoying part was going out to 3-1 every time to get a new Tanooki suit (i dont suspect i'll ever beat it without the float move, rarely make it past the football guys w/o item)

 

I've gotta finish the marathon house next, and am probably going to go back and beat each level with each character - but this may wait for a competent partner to do 2-at-a-time

[SecretAsianMan]

Finally got through to Club Nintendo and got Super Metroid.  Still have 300 coins I need to spend.

[Dewar]

They should send out little Mario commemorative coins to even up the balance when they finally close the site.

[eRonin]

I just impulse bought a Wii U + Mario Kart 8 bundle for AU$320 (US$250) \o/

 

My life is spiraling out of control.

 

This should push me over to get something good from Club Nintendo, perhaps!

[Griddlelol]

Woo! I think you made a great choice

[Merus]

This should push me over to get something good from Club Nintendo, perhaps!

 

Have you looked at the Australian Club Nintendo recently though

 

it's sliiiiim pickin's

[kaputt]

I just impulse bought a Wii U + Mario Kart 8 bundle for AU$320 (US$250) \o/

My life is spiraling out of control.

This should push me over to get something good from Club Nintendo, perhaps!

It was a great deal, damn. The Wii U is great indeed.

Talking about great things, I've been playing Zelda Wind Waker HD the last couple of weeks. The game is pretty good, it's crazy how the graphics looks so good with so few polygons, I guess the arrstyle makes it age much better. However, I've had some annoyances with the game itself. It's a great game, but some of the puzzles and the exploration are weird sometimes. For example, I couldn't possible realize that you need to talk with fishes to discover how to enter the dungeons. When the dragon boat told me that I needed to talk with the ones that lived in the sea nearby, it never came to me that he was talking about fish. I mean, I never spoke to a fish before. But I never spoke to a boat before as well, so maybe I'm the one who's wrong.

But the game surprises me with intuitive some of the puzzles are, but I couldn't realize the solution on my own just because video games usually have some weird logic. For example, there's a place that you access by cutting a rope. It's so simple and logic, but in other games I usually need a special item, a specially fragile looking rope or something that indicates that I can do this.

This is my first 3D Zelda Game, so there's a lot of new stuff to me. I can see now why Zelda is so big, it inspires a lot of other games, like God of War, which was always one of my favorites.

Overall, you can clearly see that the game is old by some mechanics, but it still is pretty good.

[undermind9]

The regular sail is a good reminder to how artificially long that game became on initial release

 

There is a lot of information to gather from the fishes in addition to filling out your map.  I didnt want to use a walk through, but made a spread sheet i filled in from my phone as i got new info & whether i had cleared the mini-treasure on the tiertiary islands

 

As a recommendation get the speed sail as soon as you can, makes the traversal system so much better.  Double sailing speed & the wind is always at your back so do not need to do the tune every time or tack back and forth

 

Will need a few hundred rupees and get win from the evening auction house on Windfall Island (its the 4th or 5th item that comes up)

[kaputt]

The regular sail is a good reminder to how artificially long that game became on initial release

There is a lot of information to gather from the fishes in addition to filling out your map. I didnt want to use a walk through, but made a spread sheet i filled in from my phone as i got new info & whether i had cleared the mini-treasure on the tiertiary islands

As a recommendation get the speed sail as soon as you can, makes the traversal system so much better. Double sailing speed & the wind is always at your back so do not need to do the tune every time or tack back and forth

Will need a few hundred rupees and get win from the evening auction house on Windfall Island (its the 4th or 5th item that comes up)

Thanks for the info, I did get the sail, but it was almost at the time that I needed to learn the Gales/Ciclone song, so the fast sail kinda became obsolete shortly. But it was still valuable, if I ever play this game again I'll sure get it in the first opportunity.

I played the game a bit more, sometimes I love it, sometimes I hate it, but there's mostly love for it in my heart right now. The combat improved a lot with the Master Sword. My main complain about the second part of the game is the companion mechanic, it's a bit clunky, even if the puzzles related to to are nice.

Don't know exactly why, but I loved the Wind Temple Boss Fight, it ressembles one of Shadow of the Colossus Boss Fights, but this one was way prettier. This game looks fantastic at times, it's unbelievable that it was a game cube release. I really enjoyed both Wind and Earth Temples.

[Griddlelol]

My main complain about the second part of the game is the companion mechanic, it's a bit clunky, even if the puzzles related to to are nice.

 

What exactly do you mean by the companion mechanic? If I remember correctly, you occasionally play as the sage of a particular temple, but it's not throughout the game. It's a bit weird, I agree, but I remember thinking it was kinda cool to have a different set of abilities (although barely). 

 

Just remember it's an HD version of the game! The original doesn't look anywhere near as nice (although it's still real pretty).

[tegan]

What exactly do you mean by the companion mechanic? If I remember correctly, you occasionally play as the sage of a particular temple, but it's not throughout the game. It's a bit weird, I agree, but I remember thinking it was kinda cool to have a different set of abilities (although barely).

 

You have to accompany Makar and Medli through their respective temples. You can switch control to them or call them toward you, but they're otherwise objects to be escorted.

[kaputt]

What exactly do you mean by the companion mechanic? If I remember correctly, you occasionally play as the sage of a particular temple, but it's not throughout the game. It's a bit weird, I agree, but I remember thinking it was kinda cool to have a different set of abilities (although barely).

Just remember it's an HD version of the game! The original doesn't look anywhere near as nice (although it's still real pretty).

As Reagan said, I don't enjoy that they are escort objects. I think newer games, like Enslaved Odyssey to the West, handled companions better, with enough AI to make them more independent. However I totally understand that Wind Waker is old, this wasn't something very common or easy to do back then.

But I do enjoy the puzzles with them, it's definitely very nice, they are my favorite parts of the game so far.

[Vorlonesque]

Thanks for the responses guys! The TV is about 26", I believe. Off-TV play is definitely an option in the meantime, but I was hoping to be able to play games like Mario Kart 8, Nintendoland and Smash Bros with friends, and I don't think that'd work out too well.

 

But for games like Windwaker HD and Mario 3D World, I think the gamepad will do quite nicely for me.

Is it an SD or HD set?  A good CRT HDTV will have a great picture (I used to have one).  Either way it should work fine (I imagine if its SD that most games will display in 480i...I don't think that the Wii U supports 240p for VC games like the Wii did, but it will work fine either way).

 

Nintendo fixed the overscan issues they originally had with the Wii U that affected my old CRT...but I didn't wait long enough and replaced it.  I still kind of regret doing that in a way.  My eventual goal is to get an old 15khz CRT (SD...15khz is mostly 480i and 240p) broadcast monitor (or medical monitor); probably a Sony PVM or a GVM if I can't find a PVM...but right now I lack room for one.  My PC's CRT (which mostly gets run at 1920x1440 and doesn't do 15khz at all), and my XRGB mini hooked to my TV are good enough for now.  I'm almost tempted to order one and store it somewhere (the problem is find a place to store it), as finding new old stock high quality 15khz CRTs is getting more and more difficult (I just got a new old stock GDM 5411 that I'm using on my PC and it looks amazing, but they're getting hard as hell to find...I probably would have gone with an even nicer slightly used C520K that was professionally calibrated, but it would need to be de-cased to get to the WinDAS port for servicing and I'm scared of de-casing a CRT so I stuck with the 5411 that has easy access to the port and was unused).

 

Damn I got way off-topic, but (as other's suggested) the CRT will work fine with the Wii U you ordered!

[kaputt]

I love that in Wind Waker

I just traded 20 joy pendants that didn't have any use for me for a beautiful Island. I own a Island now, and it's so beautiful. This game is amazing.

I also enjoyed how they kinda force you the explore the seas later in the game. I never wanted to do that without any reason, the fact that you have to navigate through the sea to explore the map never really appealed to me, mostly because you only see water most of the time, but the game now demands that I do it to complete some objectives, and then some really neat stuff is happening. Like

A gigantic, gargantuan octopus just came out of nowhere and was ready to completely tear my boat and bones, but fortunately I was able to defeat it.

Anyway, Wind Waker is an amazing game, even if it is a bit annoying at times.

[syntheticgerbil]

I have been having major problems with my WiiU in terms of the gamepad and it really doesn't make any sense. I've read an update might have broken it and that Nintendo needs to patch it again, but I have no idea when that will be.

 

So if I try to start the WiiU with my Gamepad, I will get a message about how the Gamepad cannot connect and to please move closer. Well that's idiotic because I'm like 4 feet away and I am turning the console on with the Gamepad so it knows. Also it routinely receives the news updates from the Quickstart menu. Anyway I can still get it to work if I power down the WiiU and then power it back up that way. Then everything is fine. But I've also noticed if I power up the WiiU directly first, I still get the same message on the gamepad first time around. This is always after booting it like once a day (for Rayman Legends). The second boot always works, but boy is this obnoxious. There's never any interrupts while playing.

 

I tried resyncing it, no dice. I read I should disable the Quick Start menu, but I quite liked that menu. I guess I will try that next but it's really shitty I have to forfeit a feature. It does seem like a software issue if the gamepad is still obviously communicating with the system.

[eRonin]

So I got my Wii U yesterday, but I can't seem to connect to the internet here in my uni apartment, either via wifi or lan adapter. It could be that the uni is blocking access to the internet for game consoles, but then I tried to tether my phone to my Wii U and it was giving me errors even for that. BUT THEN while I was trying to start up the MK8 that came preinstalled, it asked for an update and since I thought I wasn't connected to the Internet, I would just allow it to update and see what happens. To my surprise, it started downloading a HUGE system update and I had to cancel it since otherwise it'd eat up all my mobile data. So now every time I start MK8, it'll prompt me to update, which I cancel every time. I'll have to move my Wii U to a friend's place to steal their WiFi to do that big update. Then I can just tether anytime I want to do some light Internet usage. 

 

I think there is way too much wifi interference in my apartment to be able to use the gamepad in the lounge room though (with my Wii U in my room). At least I can play on my bed :3 thinking of just getting a HD second monitor rather than a TV.

[N1njaSquirrel]

I got the new Shantae last night (as it was finally released in the UK like 2 weeks ago), and it's all right. I don't have much to say on it, but I remember now what annoyed me about Risky's Revenge was all the back tracking, and that level with the pumpkin guards annoyed the fuck out of me it's a boring level design with frustrating enemy placement and you have to go through it like 10 times. I did get to the second island though, which I enjoyed, but then died and was whisked back to my last save, which was a good 10 mins before. No auto save on the level select? why? Or even the option to save at the beginning of an island/in the boat? I put it down out of frustration after that.

 

I know I've barely touched the game, but it's not clicking for me like Shovel Knight did (which I only bring up because it was discussed alongside Shantae). I loved how in shovel knight you could complete the whole game with just your shovel, and how you discover a multitude of uses for it as the game progressed. With Shantae in the second Island there's some fishes that pop out of a waterfall that I can't kill, and annoying jumping fishes that takes too many hits to die and have annoying attack patterns. And then the stun animation after I've got hit is infuriating. The number of times I've lost progress because I got hit and then watched a stunned Shantae miss every platform on the way down is too many for me to think it's just a coincidence. I feel very underpowered, but not in a satisfying dark souls way, just in a way that makes me want to stop playing.

 

Idk, there are some things I really like about the game, but other small things annoy the heck out of me. Like the art design is lovely and bright and colorful, with lovely SNES-era graphics, but it's annoyingly inconsistent. The character art that pops up in dialogue I like, but the smoke plumes that occur feel too high-def that they feel really out of place.

 

I guess I'll reserve any more reservations for when I actually complete the game, because it looks like a very long game, and I'm only complaining after the first hour of gameplay, but it does feel like a lot of my gripes comes down to bad design over me being rubbish. Like, in that ammo baron bit, which whilst was ace, the reticule over the jumping platforms would appear when you're over the platform, and not on the platform, meaning that when I jump too high, the platform then gets destroyed before I can touch it, and then I'm sent to the beginning of that screen again. Argh!

[Griddlelol]

I know I've barely touched the game, but it's not clicking for me like Shovel Knight did (which I only bring up because it was discussed alongside Shantae). 

 

I recently posted in the completed games thread about Shantae, and had pretty much the exact opposite experience: It clicked instantly for me, while Shovel Knight felt like a slog I was forcing myself through because of the critical praise (hence why I quit). 

 

I also found the Shovel Knight platforming to be ridiculously difficult and timing based while Shantae's was pretty simple and intuitive. In fact there was only one platforming challenge I got frustrated with - it involved statues which only remained up for a set time. 

 

Horses for courses I guess.

[RubixsQube]

N1njaSquirrel, I definitely agree about Shantae. I had really high hopes going in, and the game ends up feeling like a third party SNES game, where the same attention to detail that I really responded to in Shovel Knight was lacking. I guess that, unlike Griddle, I'm more into the jumping/platforming aspect of these games, which is not where Shantae's focus is. 

[eRonin]

So I read around on other places that the Wii U could output to a monitor via HDMI --> DVI, so I bought myself an adapter. Unfortunately my Wii U doesn't seem to like that. It just says "unable to apply setting" when I try. Has anybody here successfully used such a set-up? Could it just be a faulty adapter? 

[JonCole]

Is it DVI-D? There might be an issue with HDCP encoding if you do an analog conversion (aka, HDMI -> DVI-A/DVI-I)

[N1njaSquirrel]

... and the game ends up feeling like a third party SNES game... 

 

This perfectly sums up how I feel about all Wayforward games. They all seem to miss that final piece of polish that changes it from a good game to a great game, and Shantae is no exception to this rule. 

 

Saying that, I have now gotten to the final dungeon, So I guess something's drawing me in. It took a while to get used to the controls, but it is better than my initial impressions led me to believe. I did get annoyed at the 4th wall breaking 'gaming' jokes that that squid does, as they're really trite and overdone. What's more annoying is that some of the other jokes that the exact same character has are genuinely funny. The stuff about his holiday genuinely made me laugh. 

 

Quick question:

do I have to collect all the dark magic? I'm like 7 away and I really don't want to get to the boss only to be turned around at the door.

[eRonin]

Is it DVI-D? There might be an issue with HDCP encoding if you do an analog conversion (aka, HDMI -> DVI-A/DVI-I)

 

The adapter I bought was listed as DVI-D and I am fairly certain the port on my monitor is labelled as DVI-D. I tried hooking it up to my laptop (Windows 7) via HDMI and it was kinda working... It was a bit spotty. I'm not sure how to explain it. I could duplicate my display and have it be recognised as digital, and I could extend my desktop, but only after first going through "duplicate". If I try to go straight to extend after hooking it up, nothing would display. I'm not sure if this is because of a faulty adapter or if this behaviour is normal. It doesn't seem normal, I suppose.

 

Maybe I'll just wait until I inherit my parents' TV when they move away in a few months.

 

For the record this is what I bought: http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/321015060820

[Griddlelol]

Quick question:

do I have to collect all the dark magic? I'm like 7 away and I really don't want to get to the boss only to be turned around at the door.

 

Yup, you do. They're pretty easy to find, I only had to look one up. Most of them I got by accident, just by traversing the islands with my new tools.