The Chuffing Mental Third Anniversary Wii U Voting Thread: Thanks For Playing!

I know that Andyman had a retail-only vote, in addition to download and total.  I know that this was decided in a poll, and was therefore what the forum wanted.  

Simply, I don't think that this lends itself to a slow reveal, which requires surprise.  The 3DS total vote had one surprise only following the earlier retail vote (goodness knows how SM3DL squelched up into third), but that worked fine because Andy released them all at once.  I can see a point when, after numbers five and four from retail turn up in total, there's no point in doing a slow reveal of three to one because we know what they'll be.

I've given this quite a bit of thought.  Please understand.

10.

9.

8.

7.

6.

5.

4.

3.

2.

1.


Honourable Mentions:

Dishonourable Mentions:

Most Anticipated Wii U Game

3. Pokken
2. Zelda U
1. Xenoblade Chronicles X

Lets face it, Xenoblade X is going to be the biggest game of the year as far as rpgs go. One of the most visually and aurally creative worlds in the industry in recent times, and its sheer size is going to take ages just to cross, much less properly explore.


Best Visuals in a Wii U Game

3. Splatoon
2. Smash U
1. Wind Waker HD

It's an absolute testament to how ahead of its time Wind Waker was that you could simply slap a new filter on it, refine a few models, and have a game that looks like it was just developed. Everything looks not a day over one, and considering this is a gamecube game that is one HUGE achievement.

Best Sound in a Wii U Game


3. Splatoon
2. Smash U
1. Wind Waker HD

I was tempted to go Smash, but I feel that a good number of its themes don't actually fit the tone of a party brawler, with some of them feeling outright mellow. When in doubt, just go with the proven I say.

Best Character in a Wii U Game

3. Mewtwo
2. Shulk
1. Chibi Link

Ah, gotta love Smash allowing me to pick my top three Nintendo characters. Fortunately only Shulk is really a cheat, with Chibi Link appearing in Wind Waker and Mewtwo appearing in the upcoming Pokken.

Best World in a Wii U Game

2. Inkopilis (sp)
1. The Great Ocean (Wind Waker)

Few games manage to create a world that capture that feeling of a genuine adventure as well as Wind Waker. Not two hours in to the game still confined to land or a pirate ship I'm reminded why this games world stood out to me originally. Its design allowed for a world that felt massive and yet refined at the same time, add in massive charm and you have an unforgetable world up there with gamings very best.

3. Splatoon

2. Super Smash Bros. For Wii U

1. The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker HD

Splatoon is just a bit too one sided for me to place it higher, same although far less-so with Smash. Ultimately the winner for me has to be the improved definitive version of Wind Waker.

Dishonourable mention goes to the Stylus, whose placement is absolutely terrible and makes you wonder if anybody actually bothered to use it during testing. Did nobody think "well placing it under ones fingers allows for immediate and easy grabbing, whereas sticking it at the top makes it cumbersome to grab for basically every user, so we should stick it on the side like the DS"? Clearly not.

Shovel Knight does appear quite a bit.

Frenchy Bird (5 points, 1 "first")



"Honestly, it still amazes me that someone had the gall to charge money for this sick filth. Burn the Earth, leave it to the dogs. Mankind has failed."

Giana Sisters: Twisted Dreams (5 points, 1 "first")



"Ugly and hard to control, with bland tired platforming conventions throughout. The only challenging part was staying awake through the dull gameplay... except for the final boss, who was nails for no reason. Avoid."

Trivia: I referred to this as "Giana STD" in my spreadsheet.  I'm sure our commenter would approve.

Sports Connection (5 points, 1 "first")



"Wii U poison."

Super Mario Maker (5 points, 1 "first")



"Tricked myself into thinking it'd be better than other UGC games, it wasn't and the first party offerings weren't as good as a LBP game."

Trivia: Reports that this commenter was found face down dead in a ditch are unconfirmed.

The Wonderful 101 (6 points)



"An amazing theme tune that deserved a better game behind it.  Length of missions and shocking script were the main culprits here."
"Disappointing (probably just because I’m rubbish at it)"

UnEpic (6 points)



"Almost forgot about this, which says a lot.  Solid if un-user-friendly mechanics, but the humour, if you can call it that – well...
"
"It was just boring"

Game Party Champions (9 points, 1 "first")



"Another Game Party? I'd rather lick my own scrotum."

Trine 2 (10 points, 2 "firsts")



"Not Trine 2 hard with the gameplay, mind, are you?  Create boxes, jump on boxes, repeat, boak, turn off console."
"This got rave reviews when it came out. Why? The “beautiful hand-drawn art style” is just a mess; so many frilly bits that make seeing what’s what almost impossible. Horribly-acted stereotype characters. And a puzzle system that completely breaks when you upgrade the wizard, and just balance magic boxes on top of each other until shit happens or you cheese the physics system. Shit shit shit."

Four Points:
Game & Wario (two votes) - "The Miiverse mode was quite good.  Shame about the rest of the game."
"This isn’t bad as such; just a little disappointing. Islands and the Pictionary one are great fun in multiplayer (some of the best I’ve had on the Wii U); everything else has sort of fizzled away."

Alphadia Genesis - "Thank you, Masofdas, for helping to flesh out my five for this vote if for nothing else.  And the game didn’t offer much else.  Unoriginal unfun tripe."
Assassin's Creed III - "Dull, repetitive, linear while pretending to be open, full of pricks. The boats were fun but they didn't come into their own until Black Flag."
Citizens of Earth - "Several sound ideas built on more bugs than you could shake a stick at. Never have I had to reset a console as often through one single game."
Family Party: 30 Great Games Obstacle Arcade
Rayman Legends - "Yes, I know it’s pretty, and, to give it praise, it is original. But when you’re on a platform that also has Mario, the platforming better be good. Having to use a run button, and punches to extend your jump? Then having these on completely separate buttons? All of a sudden you’re playing a bad version of DDR. As well as that, there’s all of the “wacky characters” that, unless you’re a Rayman fan from the first day of his existence, are just random noise."  [Not wrong on the wacky characters...]

Three Points:
Baila Latino - "Broken, naff songs."  [Although the sequel will be brilliant.  I'm making it myself.  It's called Balla Latino.]
Chasing Aurora - "Pretentious wankyshite without any soul. Unreal that this was once the posterboy for the Wii U eShop."
Sonic Lost World - "Sonic had had a mini-revival of decent games when Generations followed Colours. Then, this. Its potential is buried beneath atrocious difficulty spikes and awks controls. Back to the drawing board at full speed!"
Transformers: Rise of the Dark Spark - "Looks like a PS2 game plays like a bad PS1 movie tie in and the best bit the Multiplayer was cut"

Two Points:
Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric (two votes) - "Easy to slag, but ignoring all of it's glitches it's just so far away from being interesting."
"I think there is worse games on the system but it was massive disappointment & a mess"

Hot Wheels: World's Best Driver
Mario Tennis: Ultra Smash - "Again, this isn’t bad as such, but disappointing from a single player viewpoint. Although the multiplayer is fun, I think Nintendo’s forgotten that we don’t actually want a load of gimmicks and theatrics in the middle of a game of tennis. The tennis is the good bit. You’re good at that bit!"
Marvel Avengers: Battle for Earth - "Downloaded it for cheap and it doesn't actually work. It's literally broken. Still, there's three worse Wii U games I've played."
Typoman - "Lovely looking with great music but plenty of bugs and some worrying design choices."
Yoshi's Woolly World - "It's a Yoshi game."  [Aw c'mon... although that's not actually unfair on recent performance.]

One Point:
Darksiders 2 - "I really liked this game; it was a nice Zelda stop-gap. But it was buggy as hell. The screen tearing is the only example of its kind I’ve seen on the console, and no Wii U game has crashed nearly as much (one particular section crashed the game more times than was successfully traversed)."
Kung-Fu Rabbit - "Too simplistic to enchant the player. At least the rabbit looks cute."

Appropriate enough that this gave rise to the worst award, with few votes (only 7) and too wide a spread of games (26) to come to any real conclusion.  A dire vote for dire games: perfect, in a way.  It's all uphill from here folks!

Like I said in the pre-votes preamble, these aren't the worst games on Wii U, because we don't naturally buy bad games.  So of course, there are a few oddities.  The notoriously awful Sonic Boom RoL coming "below" Sonic LW was one such I spotted.  Still, I can't argue with the order too much: three of my own votes placed in the top 4, and nobody else has played Alphadia (and rightly so).  

And thank you, mystery person, for helping me to land Trine 2 in first/last place.  Where it belongs.

Oh, and the Frenchy Bird gets the first STAR COMMENT award of this awards thread for being funny.  Sadly funny.

WONDERFUL 101!????!?!?!???