Please note the following article is my honest and non biased analysis of the Wii U gamepad. It is very obvious I love Sony but I also loved Nintendo pre-Wii. Nothing in this post will be sarcastic, trolling, or have a bias towards one company or another. With that said, please enjoy.
The Wii U is a revolutionary new console from Nintendo with a brand new take on the traditional controller. Similar to the Wii's remotes, the Wii U's gamepad changes how games are played. The Wii made motion gaming a household experience while the Wii U is bringing dual screen gaming to the living room. The console's specs are great but for obvious reasons everyone is focused on the controller.
Just looking at that picture a casual gamer who didn't know better would think the gamepad was a portable system. This is the Wii U's identity crises. No I'm not arguing a similar argument to the 3DS being confused for the DS; my discovery is far more fatal. To really understand this problem we need to go back to 2006 and look at the Wii. Every gamer remembers first seeing the controller and thinking "it looks like a TV remote" and indeed it does.
This wasn't a problem however for the Wii because the similarities were skin deep. After only a second of playing it was obvious the wiimote was not a remote. Nintendo had transformed a menial tool for changing channels into an innovative way to interact with games. No one is upset when the wiimote can't control the TV. The gamepad however is another story.
Nintendo this time around is transforming a handheld system into an innovative way to interact with games. This is problematic because Nintendo has "left in" the portable. When ignoring the TV the gamepad acts and feels like a handheld. At the same time when focusing soley on the TV the gamepad replicates a traditional controller. So which one is it?
It does look similar to current generation handhelds but the Wii U is just too big and awkward to feel as good as them. Unlike the 3DS and Vita, the gamepad has large spaced out buttons and a lot of unused space. This makes use of the touchscreen problematic. In order to freely touch any location on screen the user must let go with one of their hands; a huge no no for action games. Holding the device and using both buttons and the screen is just impossible. The Wii U gamepad tries to be like a handheld system but just isn't as good. Not too suprissing since this is a home console after all. What you don't expect is it to fail on the traditional controller battlefield too.
Why is the pro controller being released? It's because even Nintendo agrees the gamepad can't compete with Microsoft and Sony controllers. The gamepad feels bad when only using the buttons because the ergonamic bumps on the back are too small for this. When holding the controller only parts of your hand actually touch plastic. The rest is awkwardly forced to be suspended in air. Factor in that the shoulder buttons are not even triggers and it is obvious the gamepad is inferior for intense gaming.
So then what is the gamepad? It fails as a handheld and fails as a traditional controller. A jack of all trades but a master of none. Discuss!
