Wii U: A Comprehensive Review

So I spent 5 entire minutes playing the upcoming Wii U at a Best Buy. I think that's enough time to make a definitive judgement on the device's merits.

Graphically, the system looked great. I played Rayman Origins, which has a cartoony style which lends itself perfectly to Nintendo's sensibilities. It definitely looked better than anything on the Wii, but wasn't mind-blowing. Speculation points to the graphical capabilities being slightly above the XBox 360 and PS3. That'll be fine this Christmas, but those systems are due for upgrades next year, which will most definitely blow the Wii U out of the water. This feels like a half-step, albeit, a welcomed one.

The controller is super wide, it has to be to house the new touch screen. But it feels good. It's a little strange to have so many buttons after the last Wii controller had so few. The problem I ran into was with the interaction between the two screens. When I started playing Rayman Origins, I controlled a character on the TV, that was all very familiar. Then, the characters swapped, and I was controlling a flying insect via touch gestures on the Wii U controller. I had to interact with parts of the environment to help escort Rayman through the level. I kept wanting to look at the big TV, because the visuals looked better, but I would then miss all the prompts on the screen. A little annoying, but this was the only game I got to try, so I can't really judge the gimmick, yet.

But, it didn't hook me. Not like the Wii did. With the Wii, it was like, "Hell yeah, this is a lot of fun!" This time, it's more like, "I guess this is kind of neat."

The real sticking point is the $300 starting price point. That being said, because it is backwards compatible with the Wii, including some great games I never got around to playing, I could see myself upgrading. Unfortunately, I can't justify it at this price. Perhaps in a year, when it gets closer to $200.