4 Things About the Wii U That Will Blow Your Effin’ Mind

I admit, I was among those who let out a bit of a chuckle when I heard the name of Nintendo’s next home console. I mean, come on. “Wii U”? It has less flow than the hoover dam when it has no water in it. Or anything else that has no water, I guess. But that’s beside the point. I wasn’t going to pass judgement on an entire console simple because the name sounded like an ambulance passing by, or a cowboy who just wrangled a large stallion. I wanted to play it first, and so I waited in line for three hours, moved to another line, and then waited in line for another hour before the Nintendo representative opened the gate and I headed into the designated area to get my hands on what could be called the most revolutionary gaming device since the 3DS.

You Have (Literally) A Window Into a Virtual World

The obvious focus of the Wii U is its ridiculously interesting controller. Like it or not, Nintendo is once again on the cusp of pushing the gaming world just a little bit closer to virtual reality, embedding with their controller the ability to literally become a window into any game world they could possibly imagine.

The first game I played upon entering the Narnia of E3 was a demo titled “Shield Pose”, and it involved using the UController (I’m coining that term, by the way) to block arrows that came from all around you to the beat of a song, all while (and I quote) “striking awesome poses.” Not too many people played this game correctly- almost none of them struck awesome poses, and I think one person I saw actually did the dance at the end- but regardless, it was hard for people to stay serious when they realized that they were dancing while making sure they didn’t die a horribly painful death at the hands of various pirate archers who shoot arrows at you from various locations.

No seriously, the arrows literally come from all around you.

Your character is standing on a boat, and there are three other boats on the deep blue see, as well as a moon in the sky. Arrows can come from any of these four locations (boats or the moon), and the whole game world is viewable in full 360 degree high definition via turning the controller. You can begin to see why this works so well.

It’s like having a really expensive picture frame that can protect you from pirates. Sort of.

Unfortunately, ‘Shield Pose’ was really the only true game in the castle that took advantage of this window-like quality, save for a tech demo, but don’t worry: this isn’t because fully viewable HD worlds don’t have enough uses to fill up multiple TVs. It’s actually just because there’s so much other awesome stuff about the controller that they didn’t have room to give each feature more than one TV.

You Don’t Have To Ever Stop Playing Video Games Ever

So let’s say you’re sitting around playing a few rounds of New Super Mario Bros. and your roommate/mom/girlfriend walks in and forces you to stop playing so he/she can watch the latest episode of Lost. Before the Wii U, a massive argument would have erupted ending in both of your crying and at least one of you taking one two many Ambien to get to sleep at night.

”Lost is OVER! There are NO MORE NEW EPISODES!”

Now, however, things are different. All you have to do is push a button and your game is streamed in full HD to the UController, fully playable, and everything it was on the big screen. It’s implied by the controller layout and the videos we’ve seen that this could theoretically work with Wii games as well as Wii U games, so anything you’d need to play won’t have to wait for your girlfriend to watch Jersey Shore.

There is some bad news though: With games like Ghost Recon: Online, there may be no way to put the whole thing onto the controller, because the controller itself performs necessary game functions. Perhaps the developers will change it so you can bypass this, but for now it looks like only select games will be UController-only playable.

Your HUD Is In Your Hands

It sounds kind of lame, but really one of the coolest things I’ve seen about the Wii U is its ability to play the role of the HUD in gameplay, best displayed by Ghost Recon Online. In this game, you start by selecting a class and customizing your weapon using the touch pad, which sounds really lame and not revolutionary, but for some reason it just makes everything ten times nicer and much more intuitive.

Another thing that adds a whole lot to the immersion, intuition, and fun of the game is the map, which is displayed in 3D (not parallax 3D, but like Metroid Prime maps 3D) on the touch screen the whole time. Rotate the UController to rotate the map, zoom in and out using the touch screen, and plot waypoints that all your teammates can see simply by touching any point on the map with your finger. Additionally, you can touch the “Drone” button to send out a fully touch-controlled drone whose camera (like on the Call of Duty predator missiles) displays on the bottom screen. Any enemies seen by this drone are automatically plotted to your map whenever they are in sight of your drone, and they also appear as red dots on the TV screen so you can have a reference point for where they are.

I’d love to be able to put one of those picture jokes in, but this game was actually just awesome.

Another massive advantage of the UController is that, if you’re skilled enough, you can actually keep playing and shooting while doing all of this map and drone nonsense. There is no need to stop the action on the top screen like there is in games like Call of Duty or Battlefield, because you have two screens. It’s sort of like the big brother to the DS in a weird way.

How Bad The Name Is

They say a picture speaks a thousand words. Well I’ve got two.

Weeyuu, Pee-Wee!

WEEEEYUUUUUWEEEEYUUUUUWEEEEEYUUUUUU

Come on, you really couldn’t think of something that rolled off the tongue just a little bit easier? How about something like the “Nintendo Café”? Or the “Nintendo Game System”? Anything would be better than “Wii U’.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you the ‘Nintendo Wii ‘N’ Us’

I’m not speaking about the meaning, though. Let me get serious for a moment and say that I like the idea of the “Wii U” representing us as singular, more core gamers as well as the collective “we”. That’s a wonderful idea that I have zero problems with. But how about something like the “Wii Basement” or the “Wii Potato Chips” to really help represent our singular culture? Is that really so much to ask?

Image References: Here, here, here, here, here, and here.