Your Top WiiU games?

[DevilRising]

The Wii U had a handful of games for me that were worthwhile, but sadly, as stoked as I originally was for the system, I owned and liked FAR more games on Wii than I did on Wii U, which is surprising, because I didn't love tacked-on motion controls for most games.

Right off the bat, Breath of the Wild is easily the best game on the system. And it only drives home how badly the system NEEDED that game a year or two earlier. You easily could have pointed to BoTW and said "THIS game is THE reason you need to own a Wii U". That would have been a very compelling argument. But as it stands, it's a convenient/polite release, alongside the version that they actually WANT you to buy, the Switch. Having said that, BoTW is still, hands down, the best game on the console.



Outside of that, there are a few games that HAD a chance to be something really special, to me personally at least, to be games that I point to and say "THAT game rocks". Unfortunately, Nintendo did this thing on Wii U, over and over again, where they made VERY curious or outright idiotic game design choices, that made what would otherwise have been GREAT games, into just OK ones, or in at least one case, kind of a bad game. Those games were: Mario Kart 8, Smash Bros. Wii U, Pikmin 3, and Star Fox Zero. Or for people that cared about Mario Tennis, that can easily be included as well, as that was a very lazy development effort, as was the crappy "Animal Crossing" game they pushed out.

MK 8 is brilliant as a racing game, but has the laziest excuse for a Battle Mode ever conceived. Smash has a great roster (Except for Ice Climbers being gone), but has ZERO Adventure Mode, not even a shitty, bare-bones one, which to me was a massive detriment. Pikmin 3 is a solid game, but COULD have been on par with it's predecessors, if not for facepalm worthy exclusions of certain key elements, the most important of which being manual swarming, which was literally 50% of the gameplay and strategy of the first two games. And then of course they give us an already on-its-face lazy Star Fox release, basically just being a "Star Fox 64 Remix" type affair, but it could have at least still been FUN, if not for them tacking on god awful motion controls that no one asked for or wanted, and made that the ONLY control option. And thus the game sold like shit, giving Miyamoto and Co. further excuse to not bother making another one for years, because "no one buys Star Fox" (hint: they would if you'd quit fucking around and make an actual GOOD one again).


All in all, I am sad to say that my Wii U ownership was not as worthwhile as it should have been. I bought it at launch, and I can't honestly tell you that the system felt like something I was glad I spent my money on. That doesn't mean it DOESN'T have some good games, it does. But they were too few and far between, IMO, and overall, I think a strong argument can be made that Wii U was Nintendo's weakest home console they've ever put out. Gamecube had it's issues, as did Wii, but both had far better third party support than Wii U, and IMO, a better array of exclusives to boot.

Having SAID that, I did still enjoy some games on it, and am still currently loving (and getting frustrated by) Breath of the Wild. Here are my top Wii U games:

1. Zelda: Breath of the Wild
2. Shovel Knight
3. Hyrule Warriors
4. Super Mario 3D World
5. Mario Kart 8 (minus shitty battle mode)
6. New Super Mario Bros. U
7. Shantae & The Pirate's Curse
8. Lego City Undercover
9. Yoshi's Wooly World
10. NES Remix