Another look at the Wii U
Nintendo showed off a pretty impressive show today. There were not many big reveals, but we did get to learn about games that we knew almost nothing about before today. The show began with Shigeru Miyamoto announcing Pikmin 3, a game fans have been wanting for quite a while. Not a whole lot of new things were shown in the trailer aside from the visual upgrade and the addition of Rock Pikmin, but that was enough to pique my interest and to satisfy fans. The announcement alone is enough to get excited about.
Nintendo then announced that the Wii U will be able to support two of the console's special controller at a time. Knowing this answers questions, but raises others. For one, it wasn't shown how two controllers could be used at once.
Nintendo announced the social feature for the Wii U, Miiverse, on Sunday and talked about it more today. It will be able to connect all Wii U users within a specific region using the internet. Players can send notes, tips, and doodles to their friends and others through Miiverse, and it will be integrated into certain games. The first example of this was used in New Super Mario Bros. U. Players' Mii's would show up at designated levels on the overworld map to say something about that level.
Speaking of New Super Mario Bros. U, a trailer was shown at the conference of the new game that showed off Mario and friends' new abilities. First of all, the game looks fantastic. Some screens in the trailer featured impressive looking backgrounds with what looks like giant crystal mountains rising out of the ground. There was even a glimpse of a what looked like a Van Gough inspired ghost level. The game showed off new items like an acorn that transformed Mario into a flying squirrel costume, and a baby Yoshi that inflated like a balloon. The game also features the use of the tablet controller where a fifth player uses the screen to move blocks and platforms around to help the other players.
Warner Bros. then took over and showed off the special features that Batman Arkham City Armored Edition would have on the Wii U. The trailer showed off special item management on the second screen and included special additions to combat. After Batman, the new Scribblenauts Unlimited was announced for the Wii U. The trailer showed the ability to make anything they want within the game like previous games in the series, but this time around, they can combine items to make all sorts of new gadgets.
A video was then shown that gave glimpses of the other games coming to Wii U. Some had already been announced like Darksiders II, Ninja Gaiden 3, and Aliens: Colonial Marines. Others were new games that might not have been announced for the Wii U, like Trine 2, and Tank! Tank! Tank! was something completely new. A couple of surprises were also thrown in like Mass Effect 3 and Tekken Tag Tournament 2.
After this video, two fairly unimpressive games were announced, Sing and the oddly titled, Wii Fit U. Sing looks like just about every other singing and dancing game out there except the words are displayed on the controller. Wii Fit U just looks like Wii Fit but with the use of the special screen to help with the mini-games.
There was also a quick look at the Nintendo 3DS. The first game shown for the 3DS was New Super Mario Bros. 2, which featured a lot of coin collecting. The second was Paper Mario: Sticker Star which shows Mario in paper form again while he collects special stickers to gain special abilities. The last game was the re-named Luigi's Mansion: Dark Moon which didn't really have much to show.
The next game shown was Lego City Undercover for the Wii U and the 3DS. This game seemed to be a open world Lego game that featured a Lego cop chasing down bad guys. It also looks like it includes some platforming and building useful items out of Lego blocks.
Ubisoft took the stage and showed off some of ZombiU. The trailer showed how the controller can be used for sniping zombies and item management among other things. There is even a little feature that makes you look like a zombie, but this didn't look like it actually worked very well during the demo.
The conference closed with a look at the new NintendoLand. It is the mini-game collection that seems to be standard with new hardware these days. It is a game set in a theme park inspired by famous Nintendo games. They showed one specific game inspired by Luigi's Mansion where four players try to hunt down a ghost they can't see controlled by the player with the tablet controller.
Out of the three big conferences (Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo) I would probably have to give the crown to Nintendo. Even though the show felt a little underwhelming because of the lack of any huge surprises, I got to see what I wanted to see which was an in-depth look at the Wii U and the games being released for it. Not all of my questions were answered, but I still feel satisfied.
Out of all of the games shown, I am probably the most excited about the Nintendo exclusives like all of the Mario games, Scribblenauts, and Lego City. I'm still undecided about ZombiU and I definitely don't care about Sing and Wii Fit U. This year's E3 seemed to be a bit disappointing during these press conferences, but it seems like I can start relying on Nintendo again to really get me excited about what's coming in the future.
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