ZombiU doesn't do anything to make the system work hard though. It doesn't do more than games like Need for Speed, it just does different things. Sure, it does character rigging (badly) and the like which NFS doesn't, but that's actually less technically demanding than a lot of what NFS does. (Open streaming world, more advanced shaders, etc)

If you want an apples to apples comparison, a good example would be Black Ops II, also on Wii U, also an FPS. It does better animation than ZombiU, better character models, better shaders, more complex AI, more happening at once. And if a subpar port is outperforming ZombiU, that's not a sign it's making good use of the system.

ZombiU already has, so I guess at least Ubisoft is already putting time into the hardware.

If we're defining generation by time, it's current gen

If we're defining generation by class of hardware power, it's last-gen

No one defines generation by how difficult it is to extract all the performance, like the article implies. If that were true, PS3 is part of the twenty-third generation.

I've seen it played by someone else. I don't see anything visually impressive about it myself; lighting and textures were mediocre, and character models and animations looked poor. It certainly didn't look like it was making use of the hardware.

NFS doesn't really have to deal much with animations, A.I., physics and such though which FPS deal with given how racers go, they're doing different things but I don't see much that NFS does to make it in another league like you claim as racing games always look good because they're more limited in what goes on in them. COD outperforming ZombiU is m00t as things go because they're both most likely causing more work then those games you listed which is the point, COD is a better example then the games you listed.