Email: Wii U games

Hello Malstrom,

My family has had a Wii U for several years, and we’ve had some fun with it, but I think overall the Wii had a lot better game library. Here are the games that were most popular in my household (roughly in order):

Hyrule Warriors – This is an awesome 2-player game. My daughter and I played this for several hundred hours together. This is a perfect blend of 2 franchises, because I had been very disappointed with 3D Zelda before Breath of the Wild came out, and the Dynasty Warrior games are fun, but I get tired of them quickly. I was surprised how much more I loved this game over a Dynasty Warriors game.

Super Smash Bros. – The Wii U is my favorite version of the game, mostly because it has the most characters and stages. It also has a lot of options for which controller you can use. My wife, my daughter and I also played this for countless hours together.

Super Mario Maker – All of us (especially me) played this quite a bit when it first came out. I will probably come back to it again sometime soon. Whenever I need to scratch the itch for 2D Mario, this is the game I will come back to. There are a lot of really good levels out there, but you have to do an internet search to find them. Also sometimes I just like to do their 100 Mario mode.

Splatoon – I can’t really get into this game, but my wife and daughter absolutely love it and play it a ton.

Mario Kart 8 – I liked this game at first, but the game is also frustrating to me. I feel the basic game mechanics on the Wii version are better. My wife and daughter like this game better than I do.

NES Remix – This game was pretty fun, but I felt it was too short.

Super Mario 3D World – This is my daughter’s favorite game on the Wii U. I believe this is because you can be Peach and eventually Rosalina as playable characters. Also it has a cat suit power up and she really likes cats. I kind of like this game, but I also find it kind of disgusting. It is the most blatant example of Nintendo trying to train 2D Mario fans to like 3D Mario. It plays like 2D, flagpole Mario at first, but if you want to unlock the last 3 worlds then you have to find enough stars. So basically you gradually transition to playing a star finder type of Mario to experience all of the content in the game.

New Super Mario Bros. Wii U – This game is kind of fun and kind of bland. I really feel like the developers did a copy and paste on several of the worlds from the Wii game and then just made some modifications to the level design. It feels very lazy to me. You can say it is a rush job, because it was a launch game, but I feel Super Mario World got a far better treatment than this game. Super Mario World was rushed, but still an attempt at a good Mario game. This Wii U game feels like the developers were not even trying.

These were the games of note that we played on the Wii U. I hope you find this info valuable.

I’m on the last ‘world’ of NSMB U now. The game is now getting much better. However, it feels like the makers of this game are ‘green’ and think they are doing ‘fan service’ (although I have been a fan of every airship level). It isn’t working. One huge, huge flaw in NSMB U is that I feel like there is no adventure. The MUSIC sounds the same because it is the same. The levels all look the same. There is no adventure. I go nowhere. It is like Miyamoto said, “In this game, we shall do ‘level design’.” Boring!  I do like the use of the fire brothers though, as they were criminally underused in Mario 3. The sledge brothers are way too powerful. I think the stages are too long and too samey. I DESPISE the star coins. I cannot play this game for more than 30 minutes at a time.

I’m still going through Hyrule Warriors, and I expect I will be doing so for the entirety of December. Sometimes the game gets tiring, but I keep coming back. This is by far the most fun Wii U game I’ve played, but I have not played much yet.

My Wii U library has tripled. I got a bunch of games before Black Friday. I see Wii U stuff disappearing after the holidays. Perhaps I’ll share my library list for tomorrow. I have tons to go through. However, I can only go through a few games at a time.

I consider Mario Kart 8, Pokken, Smash Brothers U, and Zelda BoW to be Switch games at this point.