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] The Wii U Port Report

Check out what the Wii U does for the games you probably already played.

By

Jose Otero, 06/05/2012

http://www.1up.com/m...3946092&type=lg

The Wii U has plenty of new software on display at E3 2012, but Nintendo's new system also has its share of ports as well. Today at E3, I played Batman: Arkham City Armored Edition and Ninja Gaiden III: Razor's Edge, a pair of action games that presently exist on platforms you probably already own. But how do they play on Wii U? What benefits does Nintendo's new game pad bring to their experiences? And, more importantly, do they really work?

Batman: Arkham City Armored Edition

Of the two Wii U ports I saw today, Batman: Arkham City's visuals looked as sharp as the current versions available for consoles. The demo for Arkham City Armored Edition repurposes assets from the main campaign into a proof of concept demo that's broken down into playable combat and exploration sections. The first area tossed Batman into a combat situation inside Gotham Museum, as the Dark Knight tracked down an injured ninja -- some of you would recognize the combat space from the challenge room titled, "Survival of the Fittest."

Batman's rock solid combat makes a comfortable transition to the Wii U's GamePad, with the dual analog sticks, face buttons, and dual triggers handling the Dark Knight's assortment of nimble and deadly moves quite nicely. Batman's new armor charges up energy during combat, energy that can then be unleashed by pushing in the two analog sticks. The game pauses to make this action comfortable, so I can't speak to how difficult it is to access in the heat of battle. The unleashed energy made Batman's attacks stronger, which in turn made knocking out most thugs a one- or two-hit affair.

As far as extra features and functionality are concerned, the second portion of the demo focuses on the interface between Batman and his trusty gadgets and, to my surprise, the Wii U GamePad adds small refinements that work well for Arkham City. Players use the up button on the directional pad to bring up Batman's inventory. Doing so allowed me to map any bat gadget to the remaining directional buttons for quick and easy access. If you prefer to make selections on the fly, just push the up arrow to bring up the inventory and then select a gadget using the touchscreen. The touch UI follows a similar interface used by dozens of tablet applications already on the market, which makes navigating menus instantly familiar and easy.

At a crime scene, players pull both triggers (ZL and ZR) to bring up a first-person interface that can be controlled via the analog sticks or through motion control -- with up to 360 degrees of rotation thanks to the system's built in gyro sensor. Scanning evidence requires tapping and holding the desired point on the touchscreen. Players could also use the built-in motion control support and display to steer Remote Batarangs semi-comfortably to desired targets -- it took a little getting used to but ultimately worked nicely.

The Wii U GamePad also added puzzle solving to Arkham City's bag of tricks. Players must slide their finger across a circuit board to uncover hidden passwords -- this is done in place of twisting the thumbsticks in the current game. Of all the additional enhancements on Wii U, this one felt the most superfluous, but I suppose it's not more so than sliding around two analog sticks.

The final portion of the Arkham City demo focused on using a Sonar mode, a new addition that Batman can use to detonate Explosive Gel. Painting surfaces is as simple as the current console versions -- simply push ZL to ready the gel and ZR to spray it on a surface. After three surfaces have been sprayed, tapping the detonation points on the GamePad's display while in sonar view triggered the explosions. I accidentally triggered the detonations out of sequence, so I didn't get a super satisfying finishing to my demo, but the tweaks and touches of my experience proved Arkham City's potential on the system.

Ninja Gaiden III: Razor's Edge

Earlier today I also got hands-on time with the Wii U version of Ninja Gaiden III, a port of a game Ireviewed a few months back on Xbox 360. Subtitled Razor's Edge, the Wii U version of Ninja Gaiden III featured the same fast-paced action but felt slightly less automatic. My demo took place midway through the Khali Desert, in a section of the campaign after Ryu Hayabusa is given a bow. The bow in the current console version of Ninja Gaiden automatically locks on to enemies, often twisting the speedy ninja around in mid-air to fire at his foes. In my Wii U demo, facing enemies became an important strategy if I wanted to use the bow properly, and I was required to be more aware of the locations of distant enemies. Maybe it's been a while since I played Ninja Gaiden, but the trigger and bumper combinations required for long distance combat didn't feel right to me, which led to an awkward start to my demo. I eventually relearned the controls and proceeded to slide into enemies before finding creative ways to impale them on my sword.

http://www.1up.com/m...3946093&type=lg

The Wii U demo of Ninja Gaiden III also included all of the free DLC weapons that Team Ninja has released post-launch. Although there was a slight delay in switching weapons, the additional tools came in handy and introduced more variety to the combat. Again, as with Arkham City, the Wii U's GamePad held up nicely, but the distance between the top set of bumpers and the ZL and ZR triggers felt a little weird. Switching between the two felt cumbersome and slightly inelegant compared to a regular PS3 or Xbox 360 controller -- maybe the buttons are just too far apart -- but it took a while to get used to them and that led to a lot of accidental deaths in Ninja Gaiden's case.

Ryu's special attacks -- the ones he unleashes when his arm glows red from all the dead enemies -- looked different than the ones I remember from the existing game. The deadly ninja still traveled from target to target, eviscerating foes while on a deadly version of auto-pilot, but the moves Ryu used to dispatch his foes looked different. Maybe the addition of dismemberment is the reason my memory is all fuzzy. I guess adding bloody, detachable limbs to any game you played previously would make "different" something to be expected.

Razor's Edge brings back the popular dismemberment system players of Ninja Gaiden II, which felt a little odd simply because the game is on a Nintendo platform. Still, I sliced and diced through plenty of foes and put on a semi-impressive ballet of blood and gore for as long as I could before succumbing to tougher enemies in the demo -- I died a lot, but that's something I expect from Ninja Gaiden. I didn't fiddle enough with the added touchscreen functionality since Ninja Gaiden is more about quick combat and less about menus and gadgets -- sorry guys -- but I can tell you that the demo moved nicely despite some added visual jaggies I don't remember seeing in the Xbox 360 version. Overall, the Wii U port of Ninja Gaiden III seems desirable and captures the type of combat and difficulty players expect -- just remember that there's a lot of action-focused QTEs in this one, something the developer would do wise to remove in the final Wii U version.

http://www.1up.com/n...i-u-port-report

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So what happens to 3rd party support 3 or 4 years down the road when we have more powerful MS and Sony hardware?

I wasn't that impressed with this conference at all to be honest. And I think this console is going to be a hard sell for them. The Wii honestly was a once in a lifetime kind of success.

Maybe I'm not their target market anymore, but I don't think this will go to well for the big N.

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'Trine 2: Director's Cut' adds new modes and expansion content for Wii U

By Philip Kollar on June 5, 2012 03:01 pm

desert_warrior_large_verge_medium_landscape.jpg

Trine 2: Director's Cut was hidden in a big group of surprise Wii U games at Nintendo's E3 press conference, but that doesn't mean you should ignore it. This well-received action platformer from developer Frozenbyte was released on Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and PC late last year, but the upcoming Wii U version has some major additions.

In addition to tons of minor fixes and tweaks, Trine 2: Director's Cut will have an all-new unlockable level and revised controls taking advantage of the Wii U GamePad. A Wii-exclusive mode called "Magic Mayhem" will allow up to four players to join in for online or offline multiplayer, though details on how this mode actually plays are still missing as of yet.

If the tweaked original game and the "Magic Mayhem" mode are not enough, Trine 2: Director's Cut will also include the upcoming "The Goblin Menace" expansion. This new campaign will be released as downloadable content for the PC version of Trine 2 but will not be available on other console versions.

Take a look at the first footage of Trine 2 on the Wii U in the lush video below:

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So what happens to 3rd party support 3 or 4 years down the road when we have more powerful MS and Sony hardware?

I wasn't that impressed with this conference at all to be honest. And I think this console is going to be a hard sell for them. The Wii honestly was a once in a lifetime kind of success.

Maybe I'm not their target market anymore, but I don't think this will go to well for the big N.

There will be no powerful Sony hardware. They already said it will be not much more powerful than PS3.

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I have been waiting to tell this. Alot of fans were left disappointed by Nintendo at this years e3. Most of them claim that the Wii U games are last gen such as PS3 launch titles. I was getting worried. I thought Nintendo was finished. Until I stumbled upon this. Notice the first line.

So, Nintendo has shown a little more of the Wii U at E3 2012.

Which gets me thinking. Nintendo always gives us surprises. At last year's E3, we were shocked. ALOT of people called the Wii U a gimmick and that it would fail. But, Nintendo slowly, throughout the year, give small hints about the Wii U. And, another article says that current Wii U games run in 720p. http://wiiudaily.com/2012/06/wii-u-games-run-in-720p/

So, in my point of view, Nintendo is hiding the Wii U's true power from us. And Sony. And Microsoft. Both copied Nintendo last time, and might do it again. But Nintendo is trying to stop that. I believe that between now to launch, at sometime Nintendo will give us something so impressing, It will be Wii all over again. And also leaving Microsoft and Sony with no time to react. And neither will the consumers. they'll all have no choice but to buy a Wii u.

If they really wanted to screw their last chance up, we would already have a launch date, great 3rd party lineup, and ALL INTERNAL SPECS. They don't want to give it all away yet. So I'm guessing in another Nintendo direct episode, we'll all be blasted away. Face it guys. Nintendo is always multiple steps ahead of us. They pulled it off with Wii, they'll do it again.

According to this, Ubisoft won E3. Why? Caused they SURPRISED US. Sounds familiar? Nintendo is a boss at surprising us. And I'm sure they will do it once more.

No one knows what Nintendo knows. Who knows when the developers ACTUALLY go the dev kits.

Nintendo is smarter than what everyone thinks. That is why they WON'T fail. At least in my opinion. What do you guys think?

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The Wii U Will Have 8GB Internal Memory,1.5GB RAM And Other Fun

Jun 8th 2012 3:18 PM by Jeroen Amin

580x324xGamepad_thumb2.png.pagespeed.ic.2G539HsfNo.png

VGleaks, apparently a site of video game leaks, posted what were apparently the Wii U devkit’s specs recently. The specifications of the devkit offer up a good idea of what the final Wii U build will look like and offers up some information Nintendo haven’t yet released. Some users on NeoGAF have confirmed the accuracy of the specs leaked through some insider information and Nintendo’s official specs, released after these, correspond to it well. So there’s good reason to sprinkle a bit less salt on these specs than normal.

It’s a very long list but check out the main points after the break.

  • Tri-core, PowerPC based CPU with a 3MB L2 cache
  • 3GB RAM in devkit; 1.5GB expected in retail
  • GPU API currently based on AMD r7xx series (Radeon 4000 series)
  • 32MB eDRAM
  • Modern unified shader architecture
  • MSAA 2x, 4x, 8x
  • Multisample shader surface reading
  • Anisotropic filtering at 2x, 4x, 8x, 16x
  • Tesselation unit
  • Compute shader support
  • Stream out support
  • 120MHz audio DSP
  • 802.11 b/g/n wi-fi controller
  • 4 USB slots
  • SD card slot
  • 8GB internal storage
  • 512 internal storage for OS

So, what do these neo-hieroglyphics mean? WiiU’s got some power. It’s like that short guy who can benchpress you into the dirt. How powerful? It’s not a full generational leap like the PlayStation 2 to the PlayStation 3 but, at the same time, it’s not simply a slightly better Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3 either. If anything, it’s likened to appear anywhere from 1.5x to 2x the power of the Xbox 360.

The processor seems to be at about the same level as the Xbox 360′s, which is also a tri-core PowerPC based CPU, but it’s impossible to tell if it’s better at all without further information. The RAM is thrice that of the Xbox 360′s, which is a rather large boon for developers. So far, a third of it is set aside for OS functions, leaving developers to assume a RAM amount of twice what the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 offer. The textures in this LEGO City: Undercover screenshot should speak for itself.

The GPU appears to be rather fully featured compared to the Xbox 360′s offerings. The 32MB eDRAM cache alone is a huge help for developers, allowing for multiple passes at high resolutions, thus the higher amounts of Anti-Aliasing available to the Wii U. The separate tessellation unit and compute shader support are indications that we’ll see the Wii U pull of fancy graphics that the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 have not touched yet. The Xbox 360 has a tessellation unit as well but it’s about seven years old now. A modern one should yield much nicer effects.

The eight gigabytes of storage is, at first blush, ridiculously small given the original Xbox had the same amount while the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 launched with 20GB (60GB on some models of the latter). However, it appears that Nintendo is also trying to keep costs down so that they can “pleasantly surprise” us with the price of the new system. Cutting down on internal memory is probably the most effective way to do it, especially since it will have support for a variety of alternate sources of memory including USB keys and external hard drives. You could simply plug in a 1TB external flash drive if you like.

Still, a notable exception is digital audio output, again. So far, no Nintendo console has ever offered it while their competitors have since the PlayStation 2 days. It’s disappointing for a system bringing in the new generation to skimp out in such a small, but vital area, but the HDMI support should provide an adequate bridge for some. Notably absent is the optical drive spec. The Wii U isn’t a download-only console, especially not with that size of internal memory out of the box, so it’s a bit odd they didn’t specify any optical drive. For all we know, they could be working on providing a blue-ray drive sans movie playback to provide the most disc space with the least cost. Given the rise of Netflix, why not?

http://geek.pikimal.com/2012/06/08/the-wii-u-will-have-8gb-internal-memory1-5gb-ram-and-other-fun/

Given that the Unreal Engine 4 demo shown late last night was running with an "off the shelf" graphics card, I find it hard to believe that the Wii U wouldn't be able to run it, if these specs are to be believed.

here's the demo, running all in real time, nothing pre-rendered (make sure you change the quality to HD and fullscreen).

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Did Nintendo even officially reveal the price of the Wii U at E3?

no, they never officially reveal the price of their console until a couple months before launch. i'd expect an announcement around September. everyone outside of Nintendo is saying 299-349, but Nintendo just said everyone will be "pleasantly surprised" with their price, so it may be even lower.
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