UK receiving second shipment of Wii U stock around December 15th
Posted on 12 years ago by Austin(@NE_Austin) in News, Wii U | 0 comments
Even though many costumers who pre-ordered the Wii U Deluxe bundle in the UK won’t be receiving their consoles on launch day, retailer GAME says that everyone who put money down will get one before Christmas due to a second shipment arriving sometime in mid-December. A statement on their website reads as follows:
“Please be aware this preorder does not guarantee a Wii U for launch. The second wave of Wii U stock will be arriving mid-December.”
It’s impossible to say exactly how much will be available or whether those who simply want to walk into the store and buy one will be able to, but at least folks who have their pre-orders down know that they’re at least somewhat safe.
Cardboard cut-out of Wii U controller went for up to $90,000 on eBay before being taken down
Posted on 12 years ago by Austin(@NE_Austin) in News, Podcast Stories, Random, Wii U | 0 comments
I suspect a few of you have seem this already (I noted it in the end of my feature last night), but in case you hadn’t heard how crazy things got towards the end, here’s the deal: The cardboard cutout of the Wii U Gamepad (above) had bids upwards of $90,000 over the last couple of days before being removed by eBay administrators for some ridiculous reason like “This is stupid” or “This is a piece of cardboard. You can’t charge this much for it.”.
While the lister won’t be getting rich quickly off of this hilarious mockup, he’s probably pretty happy that things went as far as they did. I wonder if anyone has gotten an interview with him yet…
[Opinion] A week with the Wii U – What do YOU think?
Posted on 12 years ago by Austin(@NE_Austin) in Features, Wii U | 14 Comments
Author: Austin
Sometimes it’s hard to look at a console objectively and pick out its successes and failures with equal clout– especially when you are trying to justify spending over $400 on it– but amid the great leaps forward the Wii U has made in its quest to become Nintendo’s greatest console of all time, it’s painstakingly obvious that parts of it still fall far behind the lines that were drawn even by Microsoft and Sony’s now-last-gen consoles. So here’s a question for you:
What do you think so far? What are your favorite things? What don’t you like about it? Let’s hear all of it, and if you need some inspiration, here are the things I’ve compiled thus far:
Here’s a Podcast – Episode 17!
Posted on 12 years ago by Austin(@NE_Austin) in Features, Podcast | 0 comments
17 episodes in and we’ve already started to get lazy with the show format! We end up getting through news and all of the regular stuff this week, in addition to a saturated discussion about whether the Wii U is “next gen” or not, and round things off by discussing the things we wish the Wii U could do after spending a week with it.
As always, thank you guys for your questions, and if you want to submit some for next week use our email address ([email protected]) or keep an eye on our Facebook page. I always ask for questions a few hours before we record!
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[Review] Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 (Wii U)
Posted on 12 years ago by Austin(@NE_Austin) in Podcast Stories, Reviews, Wii U | 0 comments
Author: Austin
A lot of people make fun of Call of Duty for being mindless, repetitive nonsense that too many people buy into when there are way better games out there that they could be playing. Hell, whenever I need a game to be the faceman of the excessively high-octane, testosterone-fueled trends that permeate gaming culture today, I turn to Activision’s inhumanely popular first person shooter franchise. It just seems… “right”, somehow. And yet, after playing Black Ops 2 extensively over the last week or so, I can’t help but feel as though I need to clarify something:
Treyarch is now exempt from the criticisms that apply to the Modern Warfare series.
Standard definition (4:3) TVs can’t do Gamepad/TV splitscreen in Black Ops 2, but Off-TV play works fine
Posted on 12 years ago by Austin(@NE_Austin) in News, Wii U | 0 comments
So here’s something unfortunate I came across while struggling to figure out why me and Jack couldn’t play Black Ops 2 splitscreen between the TV and Gamepad online: The game won’t let you use that feature unless you have an HDTV! I’m sure it has more to do with the aspect ratio (16:9 vs 4:3) than it does the fact that the TV is high definition, but it’s not good to hear nonetheless.
For clarification, I played GPTV (new acronym: Gamepad/TV) splitscreen a couple of nights ago just fine on a 16:9 screen. Tried today on a 4:3 screen and it didn’t work. Brought down my 16:9 TV, tried it again, and it worked. I’d rather not have to switch back and forth just because I want to use one of the key features of the Wii U version!
[Review] New Super Mario Bros. U
Posted on 12 years ago by Austin(@NE_Austin) in Podcast Stories, Reviews, Wii U | 0 comments
Author: Jack
With the launch of a new console– Wii U in this case– industry staple Nintendo always turns to a premier intellectual property to act as a catalyst for initial sales to hopefully make a dent in the marketplace. With Wii U’s predecessor “Wii”, Nintendo forwent tradition and went with a (highly anticipated) Zelda game, in addition to a new family-friendly motion-gaming-based aesthetic, and the rest is history—Twilight Princess became one of the most critically acclaimed games of the seventh generation, and the Wii went on to outsell its Sony and Microsoft contemporaries by 29%.
This time around, Nintendo is going back to its roots and kicking things off with a Mario game, oddly enough only three months after releasing the third New Super Mario Bros. iteration on 3DS. The fourth in line for the series, will New Super Mario Bros. U break the mold of the increasingly cookie-cutter series and offer a fresh experience akin to Super Mario Galaxy, or will it continue down its road of slight obsolescence? Upon (near) completion, the latter is definitely a better descriptor, but New Super Mario Bros. U still manages to be well worthy of your time and money.
[Review] Nintendo Land
Posted on 12 years ago by Austin(@NE_Austin) in Podcast Stories, Reviews, Wii U | 12 Comments
The virtual Nintendo themed amusement park may seem like a very obvious way to teach us all of the new features of the Wii U, but it also delivers a fun and charming party game with the familiarities of our favorite Nintendo games.
Author: Laura
Following in the footsteps of Wii Sports, Nintendo Land uses a fun mini game style to teach us how to get the best experience out of the Wii U’s new features. I played some of it multiplayer on the livestream we did a few days ago, and some by myself, and I’m happy to say that either way it was a lot of fun. Party games are usually only fun in a…well, a party! But I can honestly say I enjoyed playing by myself as much as I did with friends, and you can’t get that same feeling with games like Mario Party, Wii Sports or Wii Party.
ZombiU sequel depends on first game’s sales, as expected
Posted on 12 years ago by Austin(@NE_Austin) in News, Podcast Stories, Wii U | 0 comments
Coming from a Twitter conversation I had with co-creative director of ZombiU, Florent Sacré…
No surprise that this is the case at all. Even after just two days with the game I want to see a sequel so badly, especially given how incredible the first one is! Fingers crossed.
The Wii U isn’t just hindered by one giant update– there are countless others
Posted on 12 years ago by Austin(@NE_Austin) in News, Podcast Stories, Wii U | 0 comments
Edit: Just wanted to note that these updates can be downloaded in the background while you play games.
I want to make it clear that I absolutely adore the Wii U as a console, but it definitely has some major problems. The two everyone seems to be talking about are the oddly long load times (10-20 seconds for an app, sometimes more than 30 for a game) and the big one-hour update that you have to do right at the beginning. What people seemed surprised to hear on our Wii U stream last night was that there are countless other updates that you have to install in order to play various games. By memory, here are the games and updates I’ve had to do so far:
– ZombiU: No update initially, but today I had to do an update that took about 2 minutes.
– Nintendo Land: Had to do two updates yesterday, one taking about 5 minutes and one about 8.
– New Super Mario Bros. U: Had to do an update once, took about 8 minutes.
– Sonic & SEGA Racing Time: One update, took about 6 minutes.
– Black Ops 2: Just the one update so far, taking about 8-10 minutes.
There might have been more that I’m forgetting about, but beyond that the system alterts you that it’s finished downloading something randomly every so often (especially yesterday), but gives you no indication as to what it is. I looked into it, but nothing seemed to help out.
This isn’t a system breaker at all, but I think new Wii U owners should be prepared: Long load times, lots of updates, and one BIG update will be there to meet you when you turn on your console for the first time. Unless they fix all of it by the time the next shipment arrives, who knows?
~Austin
