So what games have you played on the Wii U where you've died while looking at the touch screen?  Zombi U you do, but that's precisely the point, and it works brilliantly.  In Mass Effect 3, it's not hard to glance down for a second to check your powers (if you have a poor memory like me) and use them.  It actually makes things a lot smoother than having to pause the game to bring up your power wheel.  Yoshi's Fruit Cart from Nintendo Land uses the dual screen connection in a unique way, forcing you to look back and forth between two screens.  It's hard to describe if you haven't played it, but Zombi U does a similar thing, forcing you to navigate a minefield while the bottom screen shows their locations.  There is a lot of cool stuff to be done on the gamepad.  Nothing mind blowing yet but the potential is there.

Ofscreen play on the gamepad would be pointless and would prevent assymetric gameplay from being a key feature.  If you want a feature to be central to your platform, you need everyone to be able to use it.

I really don't like zombie games, so take that bias into account. I tried ZombiU, and of course not really digging the zombie stuff, did not find any gameplay elements that could not have been done 100% on the screen. The touchpad stuff was ok, but again could have been done with your eyes completely on screen. I myself have pretty good spatial muscle memory, but for those that don't you could easily do a cursor on screen that appears when you put your index finger on the gamepad to navigate the on TV screen inventory then double tap when you have the cursor on the item you want to equip. All in all I was not really impressed with ZombiU, not just in terms of the zombie stuff, but the added gamepad gameplay didn't really seem useful or worth it.

The other issue is almost every single genre I like to play works much better with pause than without. The non-pause inventory/status screen doesn't add any enhanced gameplay to the games I like to play.

I get the fact that Nintendo wants asymmetric gameplay to be a key feature. Problem is that is a feature I don't need or want and I think could have been achieved with heavy integration with the 3DS. I do also see the flaws in that, it would mean a signifigant number of Wii U's without a 3DS, thus developers would not target it nearly as much. So I get it, but it again means that Wii U is practically a non-buy for me.

That's a good point, but why use a cursor when you can simply tap the icon of the item you want without having to direct a cursor?

Only because I still prefer not looking down then back up. I just don't see the value. I don't even gain any signifigant time since over the method I described. I have never seen the value in two screens. I still didn't like the second screen on the DS for that reason as well and it had more reasons to exist (I own a DS).

I was talking about the OP too.

No, the OP isn't being sarcastic, he clearly suffers from some sort of cognitive impairment. I would be willing to bet he is very serious about it.

So what games have you played on the Wii U where you've died while looking at the touch screen?  Zombi U you do, but that's precisely the point, and it works brilliantly.  In Mass Effect 3, it's not hard to glance down for a second to check your powers (if you have a poor memory like me) and use them.  It actually makes things a lot smoother than having to pause the game to bring up your power wheel.  Yoshi's Fruit Cart from Nintendo Land uses the dual screen connection in a unique way, forcing you to look back and forth between two screens.  It's hard to describe if you haven't played it, but Zombi U does a similar thing, forcing you to navigate a minefield while the bottom screen shows their locations.  There is a lot of cool stuff to be done on the gamepad.  Nothing mind blowing yet but the potential is there.

Ofscreen play on the gamepad would be pointless and would prevent assymetric gameplay from being a key feature.  If you want a feature to be central to your platform, you need everyone to be able to use it.