I bought a WiiU recently. Nintendo released a console bundle that came with a copy of Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker HD. Wind Waker is probably my favorite Zelda game, so it was a no brainer for me to buy the console that came bundled with it. There aren’t any games I want for it right now, but I’m sure I would have gotten one for the new Super Mario 3D World. Anyways, enough of why I bought it; Let’s get into what I think about it.
Setting up the console went pretty fast. It comes with an HDMI cable, so that was cool of Nintendo to do. It uses the same sensor bar as the original Wii, so I just plugged that sensor bar into the WiiU (it does come with its own sensor bar, so don’t worry. I just didn’t want to reroute more cables). It has a power brick, so be prepared for that, but most consoles do now days.
I’m thinking that the Wind Waker limited edition WiiU must have had the initial firmware update, because downloading the updates on startup didn’t take very long (people were complaining of over a half an hour, and mine was done within a few minutes). Setup included downloading a small update, creating an account, and standard television setup. Everything could be done through the controller’s screen, so I was able to watch TV while doing all this, which was really nice.
Once all that business was done, I was greeting by the Home screen on the television, which consisted of other people’s Miis gathered around, and random comments would pop up about popular games. I think it is cool. On the controller’s screen was a menu similar to the Wii’s menu.
The WiiU’s controller is cool. It’s nice to wander around the house while running updates, or a download, and be able to press “continue” or something. The controller is surprisingly light, and I haven’t found it uncomfortable at all. Without going into details about playing games, I can’t really say much more about the controller. It’s a pretty standard controller with a screen on it, and it is comfortable.
The limited edition bundle WiiU came with 32GB of memory (about 25GB after the OS and formatting was done), but you are able to plug in a USB hard drive into it. I bought a 2TB Seagate and that has been working nicely. One thing to note is that you need either an external power for the hard drive, or a “Y” splitter that makes it so the hard drive powers from a second USB port on the WiiU. This made a pain to find a decently priced hard drive, so that’s one of the reasons why I ended up with a 2 TB hard drive, even though I’ll probably never need that much space.
Just browsing the store, I came to the realization that Nintendo hasn’t really changed its position on downloadable games. I can find full download games like Wind Waker (which was released digital first, than a few weeks later it was released to physical stores) and a few other Nintendo titles. However, finding previously released Virtual Console games from the Wii were mostly impossible, because Nintendo has not dumped most of them onto the WiiU Virtual Console. That disappointed me, because I’ve read about the process of transferring your Wii titles to the WiiU, and decided that I would rather rebuy them. However, I couldn’t, because Nintendo hasn’t added them yet, and they were slowly doing it. They want to make sure that they are compatible with the WiiU controller, which kinda makes sense. Another thing to note is the games that you buy are still tied to the console, not an account. In other words, if your console breaks and you want to buy a new one and redownload your digital games, you have to contact Nintendo, and they might let you redownload.
My overall impressions of the WiiU so far is just “meh.” I kinda figured that’s how I would feel about it before I bought it, but I knew I would want one for Super Mario 3D World, and it’d be really fun to play through Wind Waker again. Right now, there are not any “must have” games for the WiiU, so I don’t recommend buying one right now. I’m sure one day Nintendo will release a “must have” game for it, but third parties aren’t really supporting the WiiU. I mean, this is what happens when you competitors are releasing consoles that are many times more powerful; it makes it hard for third parties to port their games to your system.
I just wanted to give my impressions of the WiiU console. I do have a few games for the console now, so I’ll let you know once I get through them. I got New Super Mario Bros. WiiU, Wind Waker HD, Wonderful 101, and Rayman Legends. Currently playing through Mario, so I’ll give you my review of that one.
