Topic: Ten Reasons Why You Should Own a Wii U

Are you asking what's the point of playing games that aren't "deep?"

Because fun things are fun, I suppose. I feel like I'm well past the need for my video games to feel important about themselves, especially when the story could pass for some 8th grader's fanfic. And before you say it, The Witcher is different because it's an adaptation.

Unless by deep you mean gameplay. The Wii U already has one of the deepest single player games from a gameplay perspective though. It's called Bayonetta 2 and nobody bought it.

@Haru17
Ignoring your second paragraph of fluff entirely just for a second. If we're going to be ignoring ports then there isn't much on the PS4 or XBOne either at this point. I mean I'd know, because most of the games they're getting are also on PC anyways. I haven't had that much that's caught my eye on PC in the last year or so. The main exceptions being games that were on the tail end of last gen. Tomb Raider, Bioshock Infinite and GTA 5 mostly.

The Witcher 3 is your trump card I assume but given I'm not personally into it I'll just ignore it entirely as you have entire genres on the Wii U. Arkham Knight should be good for sure but I reserve judgement until its out, there are quite a few interesting games games on the horizon for sure. But if we're going to include games upcoming then we should do the same for the Wii U. It's only fair. How about we consider the possibility that Zelda, Xenoblade or StarFox will be good. Perhaps we may even hear something else interesting in what... about a day from now? Or we could just sit here and try to justify our purchases by making arbitrary measures of what does or doesn't count.

I mean deep in all senses. I'm obviously obsessed with Monster Hunter and the main story there is the 8th grader fanfic you mentioned, but the combat system is so good, so deep that that doesn't matter. Also "good" needs to matter, because depth is just obscurity without a good degree of quality.

By that measure Bayonetta 2, Pikmin 3, Smash 4, 3D World, and Tropical Freeze are the Wii U's single hand's worth of good 'deep' games. The thing is two of those hinge largely on couch coop IMO and I just don't have that resource in my life. As a result the Wii U's value is greatly diminished for me. Not to mention that many of the polished simple gameplay-only games are just dull to me. Monster Hunter is the only game that has managed to hook me on gameplay alone and many of Nintendo's games, well, just don't have as much to them as Monster Hunter.

Now I don't want to make this a multiplatform 'next gen' consoles vs Wii U thing, but apparently Skywake does, as his rampant defensiveness indicates, so I'll have to. And it's not even a matter of upcoming releases.

Now I'll come right out and say that I don't think the Witcher 3's a very good game; it's very clunky and harder than it's middling mechanics deserve to be. But it tries to tell stories. It makes an effort; some of them fall flat, but there are some really cool stories about broken homes, social ills, etc. It's a rolling trash can on fire of cool narrative.

The other games that have really gotten me thus far this gen are Dragon Age Inquisition and Life is Strange, both of which have very strong narrative and gameplay components. There's plenty of snarky comments that can be made about middle schooler fan fiction, but I try not to pay mind to such reductive snark, so I'll just say that those games are fun and intriguing both in their gameplay and narratives.

Your ignorance is showing

Your rebuttal isn't, love.

I don't. All I'm saying is that if you want to whine about the Wii U because of arbitrary yardstick X and personal opinion Y? We should at least apply that criticism evenly. The Wii U doesn't exist in a vacuum. You to are complaining that it doesn't have bucketloads of truly awesome single player experiences. I'm telling you now that as a PC gamer the last games that caught my eye in that regard on PC were all "previous generation" games. The Wii U is hit by it hardest particularly if you want a specific kind of single player experience but it is something that's hitting all of them.

It's only with upcoming releases that you really start to have much of an argument IMO. And at that point we're talking about a Wii U which has Zelda, Star Fox, Xenoblade and likely some other surprises. And as I've repeatedly said between Smash, Kart, Splatoon, Bayonetta, 3D World I've had more fun on my Wii U than I have on PC. Which for sure, is "the same games everyone is bringing up". Well guess what, again, same is true for everyone else. Double standards, you have them.

I'm not sure if you're not counting 3rd party games accidentally or there's another reason for it. You didn't even mention your obsession, MH3U. I guess the depth of these games vary, but here are some games with a strong focus on single-player content that sold and/or reviewed well on other systems and are also available on Wii U:

Assassin's Creed III
Assassin's Creed IV
Watch_Dogs
Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Blacklist
Mass Effect 3
Need for Speed: Most Wanted
Batman: Arkham City
Batman: Arkham Origins
Darksiders II
Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate
Resident Evil: Revelations
Ninja Gaiden 3: Razor's Edge

I'll also throw in the fantastic Wonderful 101 and the underrated ZombiU.

I could, I really could. However, at this point, I feel that hammering my head against a brick wall is more productive

@CaviarMeths
You forget that we're making arbitrary yardsticks here. Obviously the only third party games that count are the ones that came out after support for the Wii U was dropped

You're too close to the Wii U.

I don't have double standards, I have tastes. I just don't see much enticing about the Wii U. I will get a Wii U the day Metroid Prime, Paper Mario, Zelda U, or a similarly appealing new title launches on the console, unless of course they launch on NX first or simultaneously, in which case I'll just get them there. There are so many games nowadays, so many good ones, even, that Nintendo's just isn't offering the type of game I want right not. Why spend $300 extra on another platform I don't have enough time for?

Not to mention that I played 50% of Monster Hunter 3 on Wii and the other 40% on 3DS. Then hundreds of hours of MH4, so after having indulged my obsession in the more polished iteration it's hard to go back. Not to mention that I've already seen everything in MH3 except like Alatreon, Abyssal Lagiacrus, and Dire Miralis.

@Haru17
All I'm saying is that this platform I do enjoy does indeed have content. If it didn't then I wouldn't enjoy the platform and I would argue that a purchase wasn't justified. However I have personally enjoyed its content so much that I'd argue it is a more worthwhile platform to own than a PC is at this point in time. If you want to claim that I'm "too close" to the Wii U? Well the fact that I spent far more money on my PC kinda screws over that theory.

I'm not saying the Wii U is for you. I'm not saying that the PS4 (or PC or XBOne) has nothing to offer. All I'm saying is that you're very, very quick to write the Wii U off entirely. You're making arbitrary judgements about what games count and what ones don't. The truth of the matter is that the industry as a whole over the last couple of years has been pretty thin on content. A lot of hype, not much delivery since the close of the previous generation. That said if a friend of mine asked whether they should buy a ___? Two years ago I would have told them to wait. Today the only platform I'd even consider talking them out of at this point would be the XBOne.

Yeah, that is heavily dependent on the particular games you buy, though. The aforementioned Monster Hunters, Dragon Ages, Smash Bros', and Mario Karts are all replete with content while your Titanfalls and Mario Parties seem quite thin.

If you ask me the biggest problem with gaming right now is content inflation. The glut of open world games translates to quantity over quality and games that take longer than they deserve to. We need a linear renaissance; brevity as a value.

I'm not sure if the industry is just going through growing pains or something more worrying is happening. My biggest worry is that mid-sized games are slowly disappearing. Everything seems to either be AAA or made by under 10 people. Major publishers don't seem interested in spending $10mil on a few games to make 50 each anymore. They'd rather just spend $100mil on one game to make 500. People who want to make mid-sized games are resorting to Kickstarter, which is great in some ways, but it's also putting the burden of funding on the consumers themselves.

So Nintendo can keep making their Mario Parties and 2D platformers. At least they're still making mid-sized games.

Dunno, I've loved a lot of AAA and indie games in my time, but few mid sized games. Do you have some mid-sized (AA) games you love?

These classifications become less and less useful as indie studios make some extremely impressive games, even 3D ones, while AAA devs can make boring, buggy titles. Heck, Dust: And Elysian Tail was made by one dude + a composer. Now obviously that's not the norm, but plenty of people are doing incredible things in the medium. I'd just rather have a great 10-hour linear game than a dull 60-hour open world one.

And it should be noted that game kickstarters are usually just proof of interest. Yooka-Laylee, Bloodstained, and Shenmue 3 are all just to prove the interest to their real investors; rich people and companies who can throw that kind of cash around. $50-100 million USD budgets are common for even smaller games and Kickstarter just can't pull that.

Well, I suppose you could count most of Atlus's output. Persona 5 is probably going to be their biggest game to date, and I'm not even sure if I would call that AAA. Most of my gaming these days is on 3DS and Vita and I would describe most of their "big" games as mid-sized.

I dunno, a lot of Japanese publishers are still doing mid-sized games. That's probably more due to the fact that the console market is disappearing in Japan. That's why Square Enix has adopted a more global strategy and Konami is the newest butthole of the internet.

$50-100mil isn't a lot of money for a modern AAA game, but it's still a hell of a lot of money. Recycled Assets 4 Ultimate sure didn't cost $50mil.

That's just the thing, though. Persona 4 is an AAA game. Whether or not it was before, it is now. It's a good game because of the AAA quality narrative, regardless of the budget. That's why these distinctions aren't as useful.

$50-100mil isn't a lot of money for a modern AAA game, but it's still a hell of a lot of money. Recycled Assets 4 Ultimate sure didn't cost $50mil.

I don't really know where you're going with that. No, remakes and enhanced ports do not take as much resources by their very nature. And who knows, Capcom could have paid that much to their employees while they were working on the 4 Ultimate version. Still, that games are expensive is my point. They main burden of funding development is never on the consumers outside of sales, Kickstarter or no.

I was kinda thinking something along the same lines. That the only way I could think you'd define "mid tier" games would be something that's big enough to be retail but "small" enough to be on a portable. Either because it's actually on a portable console or because it's at about that sort of scale. So that'd be stuff like Animal Crossing, Pokemon, Resident Evil Revelations, Portal etc. I don't mind the fact that Nintendo tends to make more games for that space. Especially in years when the big AAA releases are forgettable.

I am referring exclusively to budget and marketing costs. There is no other useful definition of "AAA." Mid-tier games don't transcend budget and become AAA because the story is really good. Persona 4 was a PS2 exclusive game in 2008. That alone should prevent it from being considered AAA.

We were talking about money here, which isn't subjective.

Do note that NSMB is about as AAA as it gets; it's development and sales would indicate that to me. Stuff like Unraveled, South Park, the Ubiart games, Ashen, Ark, Inside, Shenmue 3, No Man's Sky, etc, etc, etc all strike me as more AA (double-A or mid-budget) titles.

And there is a level of quality that has been associated with some, not all, AAA games. Just look at Warner Bros's recent licensed games or most big Nintendo games ever. That kind of quality and/or scope doesn't come from indie games 95% of the time.

Not that kind of money. Sales do not qualify games as AAA. Budget does. Cost, not earnings. Minecraft is not a AAA game, unless you consider Microsoft's $2.5bil acquisition of Mojang as a budget cost.