Wii U: Australian Hands-On


Last Christmas, you’d struggle to find a child’s Christmas list without a Wii on it. All that motion-activated, 480p-goodness was enough to send kids (and adults-alike to be fair) wild for it. As the Wii got a bit long in the tooth, we waited for Nintendo to blow our mindholes again with something new and amazing, and for our trouble, we were given the Wii U. Watch this video to see if it’s worth your time.

I’ll admit, the Wii U doesn’t wow me like the original Wii did. The Wii took motion gaming and made it sound sexy to everyone, from hardcore gamers right through to your 86-year old Nana. The Wii U builds on the Wii concept concept by introducing an enormous Gamepad (which Nintendo have asked us not to call a tablet), that boasts a second screen allowing you to — among other things — game independently of your television. Surely that’s what we’ve all been buying Nintendo DS consoles for all these years though, isn’t it?

Mark went along to the EB Expo to check out the Wii U, and he said he was pleasantly surprised, and to be honest from the looks of things, so am I. I was worried that the Gamepad was going to just be a gimmick you could only use for one or two things. Instead it looks like it has deep integration into every one of the Wii U’s launch titles. Whether that integration continues as more titles are released will be something of intense interest for us.

One of the best things about the Wii U — and you’ll hear Mark hit it pretty early — is the fact that it’s high-definition now, making it it a much better experience than playing in standard definition like we used to with the original Wii.

We can also see from the video that the Wii U is still a pretty convincing party machine. Towards the end of my Wii’s life, it was only used sparingly for games like Wii Sports and Just Dance. At least now it still has that great appeal at parties.

I’m still not 100 per cent sold on the Wii U, but I am more hopeful for it now than I have been previously.

Do you want a Wii U? [Kotaku Australia]


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