System: I got the Deluxe Wii U. It looked nice out of the box. The System loves finger prints. When you touch it. It’s almost permanent and wiping it off will only leave scratches on the unit.
OS: Power it on, got the Day-1 update. It took nearly 1hr and 45min to download. Once installed my system locked up on me. Luckily, it didn’t brick on me. It then took another 30 minutes to set up. By the time I was ready to play a game; let alone see the menu it was around 2:30am
Controller: The screen was larger than what I thought. The colors are not all their, the resolution is ok and the screen is a resistive touch display. So no multi-touch. The screen can also be very inaccurate with touch inputs at time because of this. The distance of the controller I measured to be around 25 feet before it lost connection. I wanted to play Mario in my bedroom, however the system was too far from the controller. I really wish the controller supported a longer distance or used my Wi-Fi to stream the info. I do see the reason on why they have it communication directly from the console as it create virtually zero lag.
Games: I played Mario U and Nintendo Land. (New Super Mario bro’s U) is a lot of fun. It’s the same type of game that your use to in the DS and Wii version. The graphics are great. Not going to lie; It’s a little strange seeing Mario in HD. I also played Nintendo land. This game is more or less a demo for the Wii U and what it can do. You play games that go from using both screens to using one or the other. Not going to lie, this got confusing at times. There are certain points of the game that it will tell you to look down at the controller and vice versa.
Graphics: The graphics are good. Better that PS3 in my opinion, but not next-gen by any means.
Sound: it will support up to 5.1, no 7.1 support.
Performance: It takes around 10 seconds to load an app. It can be anything; Miiverse, eMarket, hell even settings take forever. It really is a poor experience going from app to app because it takes so long to load.
Disc: It uses 25 GB Blu-Ray disc.
Overall: The Wii U should have come out 6 years ago. This system for being new is very dated. Resistive touch-screen, HD graphics, 5.1 sound and 10 second app load time; it’s truly behind the times. Not sure why Nintendo has chosen this path, possibly to save money because the system doesn’t cost much. The only way I can see this system being great is its first party lineup and to get strong 3rd party support. Other than that, this may very well be their Dreamcast.
The Breakdown
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Design
6
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Software
4
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Game selection
5
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Controls
6
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Performance
5
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Heat / noise
9
