I'm back with part 4 of my Wii U retrospective and this time it is 2015! Now i was fully expecting to be talking purely about doom and gloom here, with the NX project being teased and the generally perceived "Console is DEAD!" chat that i recall from the year!
Will i be pleasantly surprised or will the nightmares come flowing back?
Catching up and a surprise spin off!
Although a 2014 game in America and Japan Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker was actually released in very early January in PAL territories so that is where our look back starts! Although i didn't complete the game till much later on (Not the first time i will say this btw - and i reviewed this on the blog already!) my partner played the crap out of this! It is essentially a full game version of the puzzle levels from Super Mario 3D World and overall it was a very pleasant surprise! Its now on 3DS and Switch too so if you missed out on Wii U it is something i would recommend now.
I personally spent the first 4 months of the year catching up on Hyrule Warriors and Super Smash Bros 4! I talked about both of these games in the last post so i won't talk too much about it here but they did both add a lot of DLC in 2015, most of which i played and enjoyed. Nintendo really pushed DLC during this era with the second half of the Mario Kart 8 pass being released around this time too!
Mario Party 10 also came out in March and it was one of the most disappointing games for me personally throughout the whole Wii U life span. Mario Party 1 to 8 were all enjoyable and joyfully frustrating romps for 4 players that we still crack out at parties or drunken meet ups but 9 and 10 focused on co operation which just didn't work. 10 had the bowser mode for 5 players which was fun in spurts but overall it was a bad start of the year.
Some great and underrated titles
May was a HUGE month for the Wii U in 2015. Kirby and The Rainbow Paintbrush came out at the start of the month. Rainbow Paintbrush was a spiritual sequel to the DS classic canvas curse, where you control Kirby by drawing lines on the touch screen for kirby to follow down. You could also tap enemies and power ups to aid with progression!
The first thing you will notice about this game is the claymation style graphics that, frankly, is still beautiful. The music was also memorable and catchy as all Kirby soundtracks tend to be and to my surprise, the game is actually pretty tough to 100%.There was also a really cool multiplayer aspect where the rest of the players control a traditional character with your stand 2D platformer controls! Its a rarely talked about aspect of a game that in general is often forgotten but I was very impressed by Rainbow Paintbrush and i do hope it gets at least a 3DS port soon so more people can give it a fair shot.
But Kirby was quickly forgotten at the End of the month when Splatoon was released! Splatoon was an absolute phenomenon that quickly took over the Nintendoverse with its unique form of third person shooting and team based play. Splatoon's premise is simple, paint more than the other team and you win, but the depth was just so surprising. The single player was also very fun with the final boss in particular being a delight and it is needless to say that throughout the year Splatoon got a ton of new content and was kept in our machine for the next 2 years!
The last Q2 game for Europe was Yoshi's Woolly World in June. Now beyond a single play session i actually haven't played this yet but my partner loved her time spent with it. The art style was again beautiful and the woolly Amiibo were very cool. I will 100% get around to playing this soon, before its sequel comes out next year!
The next drought
The next 6 months were very barren in this house. Outside of Full Blast (Which i reviewed for Gintendo) i mostly just kept playing Splatoon, Mario Kart and Smash, and it felt so good. Much like the Gamecube the Wii U had really hit it's stride with the release of core multiplayer titles like this, no one does multiplayer like Nintendo for me and i fondly remember endless nights of Splatfests and Online Tournaments!
I know what some of you are thinking.... Um Super Mario Maker Dave? Yeah.... so despite being a lover of 2D Mario and buying almost all of the big Wii U titles to this point, i just couldn't get excited for Mario Maker. At the time i was working on video game development more and more and the idea of doing game design during my "Relaxing time" was a massive turn off for me. I have picked this up now and i am enjoying it alot, i mean it is ENDLESS MARIO!!!
I did pick up the much maligned Devil's Third but i still haven't got the playing that yet! Pete swears the online multiplayer was fantastic but that was sadly shut down fairly quickly! Mario Tennis Ultra Smash also came out around this time but well that was just a glorified demo. It's crazy to think the only Mario sports game on Wii U is one of the worst and just plain lazy games Nintendo has ever released!
Xenoblade Chronicles X and the cursed corrupted Memory stick
In November Animal Crossing: Amiibo Festival came out and.... yeah... it sucked... For Christmas this year i picked up the special edition of Xenoblade Chronicles X and that was really my main new Wii U game till the end of the year. I hadn't played the elusive Wii title that came before, i knew about all the fabulous accents and the damned MINADO, but i was still so hyped for X. Don't forget that the game had been shown way back in 2013 and was long touted as THE big open world game for the Wii U. As Wii U owners we had to watch the Xbox One and PS4 get a greater variety of a lot of genres and at the time the "big open world game" was beginning its rise to the premier genre so we hung our hats on the prospect of X. Overall i was not disappointed, X is a massive and beautiful game, How Monolith Soft got this to run on the Wii U with next to no load screens or slow down is insane.
I did however encounter an issue after Christmas which did unfortunately sour my love of the game. The cheap memory stick i had been using for expanding the Wii U's paltry memory failed and ultimately meant i lost quite a few game saves including Hyrule Warriors and Xenoblade X. I plan to go back to X fairly soon and when i do you better believe i will review it on the blog!
Overall 2015 was a mixed year. There was the highest of highs with Splatoon and Xenoblade but then the lowest of lows with Amiibo Festival and Mario Party 10. It was clear Nintendo were holding back following the early announcement of the NX Project but there was still some good games to look forward to! So how was 2016, effectively the last year of Wii U production? Find out next time!
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