Wii

Reggie, lie? Never!!! It's fairly appalling that the Wii U is now released(20+ games at launch) and yet they're still showing tech demos.

That's a really nice trailer. Haven't heard anything from this game in so long.

Larry Hagman dead at 81, portrayed notorious TV villain J.R. Ewing (Reuters) - Larry Hagman, who created one of American television's most supreme villains in the conniving, amoral oilman J.R. Ewing of "Dallas," died on Friday, the Dallas Morning News reported. He was 81. Hagman died at a Dallas hospital of complications from his battle with throat cancer, the newspaper said, quoting a statement from his family. He had suffered from liver cancer and cirrhosis of the liver in the 1990s after decades of drinking. Hagman's mother was stage and movie star Mary Martin and he became a star himself in 1965 on "I Dream of Jeannie," a popular television sitcom in which he played Major Anthony Nelson, an astronaut who discovers a beautiful genie in a bottle. "Dallas," which made its premiere on the CBS network in 1978, made Hagman a superstar. The show quickly became one of the network's top-rated programs, built an international following and inspired a spin-off, imitators and a revival in 2012. "Dallas" was the night-time soap-opera story of a Texas family, fabulously wealthy from oil and cattle, and its plot brimmed with back-stabbing, double-dealing, family feuds, violence, adultery and other bad behaviour. In the middle of it all stood Hagman's black-hearted J.R. Ewing - grinning wickedly in a broad cowboy hat and boots, plotting how to cheat his business competitors and cheat on his wife. He was the villain TV viewers loved to despise during the show's 356-episode run from 1978 to 1991. "I really can't remember half of the people I've slept with, stabbed in the back or driven to suicide," Hagman said of his character in Time magazine. In his autobiography, "Hello Darlin': Tall (and Absolutely True) Tales About My Life," Hagman wrote that J.R. originally was not to be the focus of "Dallas" but that changed when he began ad-libbing on the set to make his character more outrageous and compelling. 'WHO SHOT J.R.?' To conclude its second season, the "Dallas" producers put together one of U.S. television's most memorable episodes in which Ewing was shot by an unseen assailant. That gave fans months to fret over whether J.R. would survive and who had pulled the trigger. In the show's opening the following season, it was revealed that J.R.'s sister-in-law, Kristin, with whom he had been having an affair, was behind the gun. Hagman said an international publisher offered him $250,000 (£155,879 pounds) to reveal who had shot J.R. and he considered giving the wrong information and taking the money, but in the end, "I decided not to be so like J.R. in real life." The popularity of "Dallas" made Hagman one of the best-paid actors in television and earned him a fortune that even a Ewing would have coveted. He lost some of it, however, in bad oil investments before turning to real estate. "I have an apartment in New York, a ranch in Santa Fe, a castle in Ojai outside of L.A., a beach house in Malibu and thinking of buying a place in Santa Monica," Hagman said in a Chicago Tribune interview. An updated "Dallas" series began in June 2012 on the TNT network with Hagman reprising his J.R. role with original cast members Linda Gray, who played J.R.'s long-suffering wife, Sue Ellen, and Patrick Duffy, who was his brother Bobby. The show was to focus on the sons of J.R. and Bobby. Linda Gray, who played J R's wife, Sue Ellen, confirmed that Hagman had passed away. She said: "Larry Hagman was my best friend for 35 years. He was the Pied Piper of life and brought joy to everyone he knew. He was creative, funny, loving and talented, and I will miss him enormously." Fans and celebrities took to Twitter to pay tribute to him. Larry King said: "Larry Hagman was a dear man who had an incredible career. He helped me to stop smoking. He was a very special person." Piers Morgan wrote: "Very sad to hear that Larry Hagman has died. His J R Ewing character was the greatest TV villain of them all. Wonderful actor." Hagman had a wide eccentric streak. When he first met actress Lauren Bacall, he licked her arm because he had been told she did not like to be touched and he was known for leading parades on the Malibu beach and showing up at a grocery store in a gorilla suit. Above his Malibu home flew a flag with the credo "Vita Celebratio Est (Life Is a Celebration)" and he lived hard for many years. In 1967, rock musician David Crosby turned him on to LSD, which Hagman said took away his fear of death, and Jack Nicholson introduced him to marijuana because Nicholson thought he was drinking too much. Hagman had started drinking as a teenager and said he did not stop until the moment in 1992 when his doctor told him he had cirrhosis of the liver and could die within six months. Hagman wrote that for the past 15 years he had been drinking about four bottles of champagne a day, including while on the "Dallas" set. LIVER TRANSPLANT In July 1995, he was diagnosed with liver cancer, which led him to quit smoking, and a month later he underwent a liver transplant. After giving up his vices, Hagman said he did not lose his zest for life. "It's the same old Larry Hagman," he told a reporter. "He's just a littler sober-er." Hagman was born on September 21, 1931, in Weatherford, Texas, and his father was a lawyer who dealt with the Texas oil barons Hagman would later come to portray. He was still a boy when his parents divorced and he went to Los Angeles with Martin, who would become a Broadway and Hollywood musical star. Hagman eventually landed in New York to pursue acting, making his stage debut there in "The Taming of the Shrew." In New York, he married Maj Axelsson in 1954 while they were in a production of "South Pacific. The marriage produced two children, Heidi and Preston. Hagman served in the Air Force, spending five years in Europe as the director of USO shows, and on his return to New York he took a starring role in the daytime soap "The Edge of Night." His breakthrough came in 1965 when he landed the "I Dream of Jeannie" role opposite Barbara Eden. In his later years, Hagman became an advocate for organ transplants and an anti-smoking campaigner. He also was devoted to solar energy, telling the New York Times he had a $750,000 solar panel system at his Ojai estate, and made a commercial in which he portrayed a J.R. Ewing who had forsaken oil for solar power. He was a longtime member of the Peace and Freedom Party, a minor leftist organization in California. Hagman told the Times that after death he wanted his remains to be "spread over a field and have marijuana and wheat planted and harvest it in a couple of years and then have a big marijuana cake, enough for 200 to 300 people. People would eat a little of Larry." (Writing by Bill Trott in Washington; Additional reporting by Alex Dobuszinkis in Los Angeles; Editing by Peter Cooney) http://uk.news.yahoo.com/larry-hagman-dead-81-portrayed-notorious-tv-villain-044143538.html http://uk.news.yahoo.com/dallas-star-larry-hagman-dies-044559190.html I'm in shock. May he rest in peace. He was a Legend!

Ya I seen that but I think most sites think it's fake as Nintendo have enough on their plate at the minute and the Wii isn't selling so releasing a mini Wii doesn't make financial sense. But you never know.

Nintendo Life - ZombiU - review 8/10 http://www.nintendolife.com/reviews/wiiu/zombiu

If this game gets hacked, will this lodestar not ruin the whole online multiplayer experience?

We WILL be adding back the cursor sensitivity setting in our next update. I do not have any information on a date for that update as it is dependent on timing with Nintendo and our own ability to test the updates. As for everything else on the list, we will review each issue and see what can be done. This is a good thread for us to find the issues on, so feel free to keep posting here. We comb the forums constantly to see how you guys are doing out there. http://community.callofduty.com/thread/200542823?start=0&tstart=0

Mighty Switch Force: Hyper Drive Edition Review Developer: WayForward Technologies | Size: 487 MB | Price: $9.99 Officer Patricia Wagon is back. Eleven months ago, back in the 3DS eShop, we were first introduced to her – a cybernetic, intergalactic policewoman on the hunt to apprehend five escaped prisoners in the fast-paced platformer Mighty Switch Force. She pursued the Space Hooligan sisters through several puzzle-packed stages, using her unique helmet-mounted siren to dynamically switch blocks in the environment from the background to the foreground and vice versa. The levels were all built to be the stuff of speedrunners’ dreams, and while I had some issues with the pressure imposed by the game’s ever-present par times, I still recognized Patty’s debut as a great game in my 8/10 review. Now, a great game has become greater. Mighty Switch Force: Hyper Drive Edition is the new Wii U-exclusive upgrade of that 3DS design, and it makes two key changes to its source material. First, it adds all-new “Hyper” versions of each level – making them much more challenging – and second, it remasters/redraws every piece of art in the game. Before and after. The Hyper levels don’t require much analysis, as they are suitably stressful and the players who mastered the original game’s set of stages will no doubt love the chance to pull their hair out in frustration over how maddening these remixes can be – their addition alone is enough to recommend a double-dip for dedicated fans of the first release. The art, though, is the real draw here. It’s absolutely fabulous. It looks like a concept artist’s sketchbook has just come to life on the screen – Officer Wagon, the Hooligans, every enemy character and even the Ugly Twitching Dog all look brilliant in high definition, with fluid animation built from animation-cel quality still frames that exceed the work of several cartoons on the air today. Mighty Switch Force was pretty before, as WayForward’s skill at spritework is legendary – but this is just gorgeous. What’s more, you can choose to view that art in two different ways – up on your HDTV, or held in your hands via the GamePad-only mode. Either method is excellent, and after some new Wii U owners get a taste of how addictive the GamePad-only play style is through other titles like New Super Mario Bros. U, this new Mighty Switch Force will be a great option to keep the pseudo-portable good times rolling. Hyper Drive Edition isn’t perfect, as I do still wish the par times could be toggled off for the first run through the game. The Wii U GamePad’s buttons also doesn’t feel quite as precise as those on the 3DS in handling Patty’s movements – getting the timing right in triggering block shifts will take a bit of brain re-training for veterans of the first version, and your completion times will likely suffer a bit to begin with. And WayForward missed the second chance to add leaderboards. For a game so focused on speedrunning and completion times, it’s silly to not have a place to brag about your best runs – especially since the studio’s had almost a year of extra time to implement them. There’s the Miiverse community, of course, but its casual posts and commentary are no substitute for seeing your name at the top of a list of runners-up. THE VERDICT So Mighty Switch Force: Hyper Drive Edition doesn’t go as far as it could have gone in remastering the 3DS original, but the changes that are present here are superb – veterans will love the challenge of the new Hyper levels, and the quality of the high-definition art is so good that it’d be worthwhile to buy the game on looks alone. Here’s hoping this is just a first testing of the waters for WayForward and Wii U, as I’d love to see what else this artistic studio could accomplish on Nintendo’s new HD canvas. 8.5 Great. http://ie.ign.com/articles/2012/11/22/the-wii-u-eshop-launch-guide-in-progress?page=2 This game has no thread so I thought I'd start one and what better way than with a very positive review.

Nano Assault Neo Review Developer: Shin’en | Size: 50 MB | Price: $9.99 There’s something especially shiny about Shin’en. Every game this studio puts out is so visually polished and beautiful – you just can’t look away from the graphics they’ve been able to achieve on Nintendo’s Wii and 3DS in titles like Jett Rocket, Art of Balance and Nano Assault. And now, with the Wii U’s high-definition capability in play, Shin’en’s latest release is their shiniest yet. Nano Assault Neo is an all-new sequel to the original Nano Assault, an under-the-radar hit that launched for the 3DS roughly one year ago. Like that first game, Neo once again puts you in the role of a pilot who’s been shrunken down to fly inside a human body. And, once there, it’s up to you to cleanse a series of cells from infection – by wildly blasting anything that moves to pieces with an overwhelmingly violent arsenal of lasers! This game is a visual spectacle. Truly, wonderfully stunning. Yes, Nano Assault Neo is a fast-paced twin-stick shooter that fans of that genre will adore. But it’s not just that – because its levels are free-floating 3D cells that you can travel across in any direction. Just like Super Mario Galaxy’s hovering planetoids, you can move all around these three-dimensional arenas hunting down viruses and creeping bacteria – using the GamePad’s left stick to move, and its right stick to aim your continuous laser blasts independently. It’s intense, gorgeous fun. You’re spinning around the surfaces of these cells slinging shots every which way, grabbing power-ups and credits to spend in the upgrade shop, trying to dodge all of the incoming fire these foes are sending your way at the same time – and it’s all playing out with such breathtaking visual quality that you might just need to stop and catch your breath for a minute after each level ends. Nano Assault Neo also includes bonus levels that play out like a cross between Star Fox 64’s tunnels, F-Zero GX’s hovercraft handling and Sonic the Hedgehog 2’s half-pipes, and every set of four stages is capped off with a boss battle at the end. There are leaderboards for sharing your high scores with the rest of the world and a two-player mode that lets a friend get into the action along with you. There’s the ability to play it all off the TV on just the GamePad screen if you choose, and separate Arcade and Survival modes to attack too. That’s quite a few features for a launch day download, and they round out what is a very attractive package for just 10 dollars. If there’s any drawback here, it’s in overall length – this is the kind of game that encourages replaying its set of stages again and again to go for higher scores, but that also means there aren’t a ton of levels total. Four sets of four stages apiece, for 16 total. 20, if you want to count the bonus levels used half-way through each quartet. Still, for just $9.99, getting that number of levels is getting more than your money’s worth. THE VERDICT Shin’en is a studio that’s been steadily improving its efforts on Nintendo systems over the past several years. Over a decade, even, as you can trace this latest game’s roots all the way back to the Iridion series on the Game Boy Advance. Nano Assault Neo is their boldest, more beautiful shooter yet, and Wii U owners absolutely shouldn’t miss out on its shiny twin-stick shooting. 9.0 Amazing http://ie.ign.com/articles/2012/11/22/the-wii-u-eshop-launch-guide-in-progress?page=2

Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 - Wii U Vs. 360 graphical comparison. Not much in it but the Wii U version looks better to me. Link is not working. A pain in the hole inserting videos. http://www.gametrailers.com/videos/zorvwd/call-of-duty--black-ops-ii-wiiu-vs-360-graphics-comparison

So true!!!

Forbes - ZombiU: Why Ubisoft's Divisive Wii U Launch Title Is Misunderstood. ZombiU is a misunderstood game. The exclusive launch title from Ubisoft Montpelier for Nintendo‘s new Wii U console has garnered some divisive critical reaction. While it shouldn’t be heralded as the second coming of survival horror the point is that ZombiU is survival horror, a genre which has been diluted and, in many circles, completely forgotten. I’m not here to suggest that reviewers who pan the game are wrong, but I am suggesting that their expectations might be. In ZombiU your player character is tasked with surviving a zombie outbreak in London and nothing more. Aside from multiplayer bullet points, the game’s packaging further drives this home. In its heyday (think Resident Evil 1 and 2, Silent Hill) survival horror titles gave the player no false illusions of being an invincible soldier or fearless bad-ass. Unlike modern day shooters, classic survival horror games didn’t empower the player; rather, they removed all hope and made sheer survival the ultimate success. Some survival horror purists would even argue that handing the player any weapon whatsoever dilutes the experience. Several reviews of ZombiU fault the game for its clunky, lumbering combat. My response is this: Why should a zombie apocalypse be fun? Your avatar doesn’t have military training and is utterly clueless about the chaotic world around them. Their accuracy with firearms gradually increases throughout the game, but fumbling with a pistol while being forced to execute your former self to reclaim your precious inventory (players who are bitten turn into one of the infected, and retain all the items they died with) seems par for the course. Another complaint leveled at Ubisoft seems to be the game’s scarcity of ammo and its reliance on a cricket bat as weapon of choice. The lack of ammunition isn’t sloppy game design, it’s purposeful game design. Giving the player buckets of ammo detracts from the importance of survival, and negates the satisfaction gained from achieving said survival. And the crack of a firearm in an eerily silent alley isn’t exactly zombie repellant. Using a flare to distract a group of walkers away from you is a more viable strategy than diving in guns blazing. Yes, you’ll be bludgeoning hundreds of zombies with a cricket bat, and it will take anywhere from 3 to 7 hits to finally put them down. This isn’t the weapons buffet you’ll be treated to in games like Black Ops 2; this is “reality.” It’s repetitive, it’s visceral, and it’s necessary. Combat is the hallmark of a first person shooter like Call of Duty, not a survival horror game like ZombiU. The question I hear you asking is: “So what is fun about this game? Why should I play it?” The answer is in the Wii U’s GamePad — for all intents and purposes your survival kit. At times you’ll use it (with the risk of attracting zombies with light) to scan the environment for items of interest. Tension mounts as you fumble through your virtual backpack for the right item. In other instances you’ll hack electronic doors in real-time with zombie hordes fast approaching at your back. Inventory management, sniping, weapons crafting, and radar round out its many uses. To put it another way, the enjoyment comes via the challenges presented to the player. How you choose to tackle them, and the inherent satisfaction that comes with successfully surviving, is ZombiU’s crowning achievement. Hours into the game, I still feel chills shoot down my spine at every zombie encounter because my survival is anything but guaranteed. Ubisoft has aimed ZombiU squarely at core gamers, and especially at fans of old-school survival horror. Don’t pick up this Wii U launch title if you’re expecting a snappy shooter along the lines of Left 4 Dead, and don’t trust reviews with that expectation either. http://www.forbes.com/sites/jasonevangelho/2012/11/20/zombiu-why-ubisofts-divisive-wii-u-launch-title-is-misunderstood/

Nothing at all!!! Nothing at all!!! Nothing at all!!! Nothing at all!!! Nothing at all!!! Nothing at all!!! Nothing at all!!!

ZombiU Review London Bridge is burning down. ZombiU is terrifying. Let’s get that out of the way early. This is a game that hammers home how fleeting life is, over and over again. It’s a game that makes you swear out loud with frustration, and a game that has your heart racing with every hit of a cricket bat to a zombie’s rotting skull. It takes you up high, and then throws you off a building. As London burns to the ground around you, you inhabit a series of survivors from the zombie infection. How many survivors you play as all depends on you. As you take on the role of each survivor, you begin with the cricket bat and a pistol containing six bullets. This is true no matter how far along in the game you are. How well prepared you are to handle this sort of consequence is entirely up to you, as your safehouse holds a storage box in which you can stash weapons and ammo. Every time you die, all the gear you held remains attached to the now-zombified body of your previous character. You have one chance to kill that zombie and reclaim your goods; if you die in that effort, those supplies are forever lost. You can replenish these items, as they regenerate in areas you have previously found over time, but to say that losing supplies is a setback is a major understatement. Melee combat is slow and difficult, requiring precise timing and spacing. If you miss a shot, you leave yourself vulnerable to attack for several moments, which is all a zombie needs to kill you. Don’t fret, though: you will die a lot no matter what you do. This is the nature of the game. As you play longer, however, it’s easier to adjust to the challenges of swinging the cricket bat, becoming more proficient at beheading undead foes. Some zombies take quite a few hits to kill, so if you have to deal with a horde, you are better off advancing and retreating to maximize your chances of success. The game requires you to use the screen on the GamePad for all non-combat tasks, such as inventory management or barricading a door. While in many games having to take your eyes off the screen may seem like bad design, in ZombiU, it’s effective in adding to the sense of panic and vulnerability. When you need to manage your inventory, you have to do so quickly and without error, or you leave yourself helpless against attacks. The inventory screen is a bit clunky, but perfectly usable without resorting to the stylus. ZombiU also uses the GamePad as a scanner. Scanning requires that you hold the L button on the GamePad, and use either the right stick or the gyro controls to move around and detect items in the distance. Unlike in games like Metroid Prime, where the story is largely revealed through scanned items, the scanner in ZombiU is mainly used to find ammo and health items. It can help identify from a distance which zombies are worth looting for supplies, and which are empty-handed. It’s occasionally used to progress the story as well, but if you find it slowing the pace too much, you can scan only as often as you feel is necessary most of the time. The story is a bit uneventful, unfolding the tale of a prophecy that foretold the zombie apocalypse. A faceless NPC called “The Prepper,” whose sole job is preparing survivors to get by in this hellish world, guides you through the game. It’s a bit jarring when he talks to you as if you’re the same character the entire way through when clearly you’re going through multiple characters as you die, and the same goes applies to several other NPCs you meet in the game. The story feels as if it came before idea of multiple player characters was developed, and never tweaked to make the two agree. Regardless, the voice acting is well done, and lends to the realism of the bleak world. Aside from the cricket bat, your character can use firearms, but they are easy to lose if you die, and ammo is hard to come by. You always start out with a pistol and one clip of bullets, but the pistol doesn’t necessarily seem like a better way to kill zombies once you are proficient with the cricket bat. Luckily, you can upgrade all the weapons, and those enhancements survive even when your player character does not. It’s one of the few things you can bring across from character to character, and it’s very helpful. The longer you survive and kill zombies as an individual character, the higher the score attached to that character. This ends up being a fun way to have a high score battle with yourself as you play, and alternatively, a fun way to know how well you were doing after you die. Folks from Miiverse show up in the game as zombies as well, carrying whatever loot they had on them when they died, which is another way to compare character scores and get extra supplies. It’s a fun reminder that Nintendo has built a very subtle, but effective, social media platform running underneath the games on Wii U. The world of ZombiU looks fantastic, for the most part. Some textures blur when you get too close to a sign or a wall, but many areas have incredible detail and are littered with embellishments that make this post-apocalyptic version of London believable. One scene in particular subjects you to a thunderstorm, and the weather effects add to the game immensely. The lighting tricks the game employs are very successful, and despite my early misgivings about blurry textures, the more I played of the game, the more impressed I was by how it looked. The world of ZombiU falls apart around you, and the mood is set early and often. The game contains a few simple local multiplayer modes wherein one player uses the GamePad to deploy zombies, and another player uses the Wii U Pro Controller or Wii Remote and Nunchuk to play as a survivor. One mode has you capturing flags, and another simply asks the survivor to hold out as long as possible in a score attack-like mode that includes leaderboards. Neither mode seemed all that interesting when compared to the single-player campaign, but their inclusion is a nice touch. Another way in which you can compete for high scores is the Survival mode. This mode is identical to the main campaign mode, except once you die, that’s it. There are no continues. You are scored based on how long you last and how many zombies you kill, much in the same way that you are scored in the regular campaign on a per-survivor basis. ZombiU seeks to scare the hell out of the player by making their very survival doubtful, and wildly succeeds. This game is stressful, terrifying, bleak, and, in all of that, wonderful. It is one of the best launch titles I’ve ever played, and quite simply, a return to form in a genre that has taken a distinct turn toward run-and-gun. These kinds of games are not for everyone, and some people may not like ZombiU due to its high level of difficulty or clunky combat. However, if you appreciate the qualities of the older Resident Evil games, the challenge of a game like Dark Souls, and the exploration of a Metroid-style world, this game is absolutely for you. Enter the survival horror. Summary Pros + Fantastically realized world + Great voice acting + High level of challenge + Scary as hell Cons - Multiplayer options are limited - Some blurry textures 9/10 http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/review/32557

Yes, I'm fairly sure they do. Also, the headbanger headset lives on so. You'll need a female USB to 3.5mm converter but that can be picked up on Ebay for a few €'s.

Exactly, so let's hope it's not gimped. Batman and ZombiU had great potential but unfortunately they seem to be broken.

That's great. I hope more developers implement voicechat in this way. Any review in at for this game yet? It's fairly disappointing that this is the last game that has a chance of being a killer app.

DARKSIDERS II REVIEW 7.5 http://ie.ign.com/articles/2012/11/18/darksiders-ii-review-3

BATMAN: ARKHAM CITY -- ARMORED EDITION REVIEW Sometimes reviewers can't see the forest for the trees. When I finished Batman: Arkham City, I immediately cataloged what I thought it did wrong. It tossed in too many villains and didn't flesh them out, it clearly tried to replicate the Scarecrow stuff from the first game and didn't do it as well, and Batman still moves a bit stiffly when simply walking around. When I formed the list, I found myself disappointed with the game. But the days rolled on and I couldn't stop playing -- in fact, I only wanted to play more. The hundreds of things Batman: Arkham City nails outweighed my nitpicky problems. I realized Batman: Arkham City is a brilliant game. If you've missed the roughly 1.4 million stories on IGN, Batman: Arkham City picks up months after the events of Asylum. Former Arkham warden Quincy Sharp now reigns as the mayor of Gotham City, and he's moved the bad guys from Blackgate Prison and the inmates from Arkham Asylum to a cordoned off area in the heart of Gotham. This is Arkham City, Dr. Hugo Strange runs it, and Batman's job is to see what the hell is going on inside. It's an interesting story that starts with one of the best openings in modern games. After two years of dreaming about where this sequel would go, Batman: Arkham City delivered and hooked me. That can be said for most of the game. Fans of the Batman: Arkham Asylum will immediately be at home in Arkham City as developer Rocksteady took the core gameplay, refined it, and polished it. You brawl with one button, counter with another and leap when you feel like it. Batman's got a slew of new counter attacks -- including the ability to take out several attacking enemies at once -- and the ability to use nearly every gadget in battle with a hot key system. Even though the system can seem simple (that's if you ignore the combos and multipliers) the diversity in the attacks and battles keeps it interesting. I wanted to engage bad guys instead of sneaking past them. Maybe it was the promise of more experience points and the upgrades they unlocked, but it probably had more to do with wanting to see Batman dislocate another elbow. Rocksteady kept me on my toes by peppering in special enemies. Guys with stun rods, armored outfits and broken bottles all have to be dealt with in very specific ways. I needed to assess threats and engage situations like Batman would. I don't know if I can express how awesome that makes a comic nerd like me feel; after years of hypothesizing how Batman would beat Character X, I now have to do it to survive. Feeling like Batman made Arkham Asylum a must-play, and Arkham City continues that tradition. I felt like I had the upper hand when I walked into a room where the enemies outnumbered me 20 to 1 because I could drop a smoke pellet, use freeze grenades to take enemies out of the game and basically kick ass. Five gunmen with hostages didn't scare me because I knew I could disappear into the shadows to string them up from gargoyles, punch through walls to take them down and glide kick them over railings. This feeling of empowerment carries over to bosses, which is weird at first but makes sense. No boss in Arkham City really gave me a challenge. In fact, they're all a bit easy. Mr. Freeze had me stumped for a while as once you use an attack on him you can't use it again, but then the Bat-computer just sent me a cheat sheet. (Although, disabling hints would've eliminated this moment.) That specific instance was no fun, but overall, the joy of Batman bosses is the journey to them and not the fight themselves. The Penguin will never challenge the World's Greatest Detective. Arkham City isn't an open world like Liberty City; it's more like a hub world with a bunch of dungeons like The Legend of Zelda or a bigger version of Batman: Arkham Asylum. You can't go into every building, but as you explore, you're going to find you're kept from discovering some of the 400-some Riddler Challenges until you double back with new gadgets. As you unlock the game's dozen side missions, you have to search nooks and crannies for murder victims and political prisoners in distress. If being Batman sounds good to you, expect to play this game twice and have the second time feel light years better than the first. New Game Plus unlocks after your first runthrough of Arkham City, and it carries over all your gadgets and shares your Riddler Challenge data. It also doesn't erase your original game's progress – it lives in its own section of your save. Historically, I despise playing games more than once. I know what's around the next corner, so where's the fun in it? Well, I adored Batman: Arkham City's New Game Plus. The difficulty is amped up, the enemies are more diverse from the get go, and the reversal indicators are turned off. New Game Plus takes the training wheels off and forces you to be Batman. When Batman enters a fight, he knows how to win; he just needs to execute his plan. That's you in this mode. You already know what's coming, you just need to execute your 45-hit combo, dodge explosives and save the day. This left me feeling more like Batman than ever before. “ I had the upper hand when I walked into a room where the enemies outnumbered me 20 to 1. Challenges rooms return and have been given an update since the days of Arkham Asylum. There are a dozen combat challenge maps (take out the four waves of bad guys) and a dozen Invisible Predator challenges (sneak around and silently eliminate all the bad guys) and each comes with three medals to earn. All that is standard, but Arkham City offers up Riddler Campaigns. These link three challenges together and apply gameplay modifiers like low health, time limits and so on. There's even an option to make your own Bat-exams. These challenges mainly serve to point out how slow my version of Batman is, but I'm glad they're here. They help hone my skills and provide leaderboards to chase and keep me playing. The four Catwoman story missions inserted throughout Batman: Arkham City are a fun (albeit simple) change of pace. This former downloadable content is now a natural, integrated part of Batman's story, and it expands the mythos of the game as you're playing it by changing perspectives to Selena Kyle to explain events that are happening off camera. Outside of the four missions, there are also has challenge maps for the feline and the ability to get the special Catwoman Riddler Trophies in Arkham City. For those who played through Batman: Arkham City in 2011, the Armored Edition doesn't offer much in the way of incentives -- by and large, this is the same top-notch action/adventure game Rocksteady released last year. The new BAT mode gives you an additional combat option, but it's both unoriginal and ineffective. You'll charge a meter, activate BAT mode, and become mildly stronger in a fight. The inclusion of the Harley Quinn's Revenge expansion, Robin and Nightwing's challenge rooms, and character skins goes a long way to lengthen the experience, but the Wii U Game Pad functionality is clearly a consequence of launch-title experimentation. Arkham City looks and plays just as excellent as always on the Game Pad screen, but when it's used for touch-screen weapon selection, or as an in-game gadget, the Game Pad is just awkward. Moving the real-world object to look for in-game objects is a chore, and better left to the analog sticks. Glancing at the Game Pad to see your sonar radar is the best usage, really, but even then it's unexciting and not as helpful as simply absorbing yourself in the game proper. THE VERDICT Batman: Arkham City isn't perfect, but listing the little things I didn't like gets in the way of all the stuff I adored. The voice acting, the challenges, the amazing opening, the unbelievable ending and the feeling of being the Dark Knight -- these are the things that standout looking back. I've beaten this thing twice and still want to call in sick and chase Riddler Trophies. Batman: Arkham City isn't just better than Batman: Arkham Asylum, it's better than most games on the market. 9.5 AMAZING Batman: Arkham City on Wii U is the quintessential version of one of the generation's definitive games. + Excellent combat and exploration + Outstanding character performances + Absorbing world and an engaging story + Inclusion of Harley Quinn's Revenge and Robin/Nightwing challenges – Irregular, awkward Wii U Game Pad usage http://ie.ign.com/articles/2012/11/18/batman-arkham-city-armored-edition-review I think we're looking at probably the highest ratest game of the Wii U launch. From Dark Knight to Dark Horse.

Though it's still not up on their website here is the Edge review of ZombiU: ZombiU is a smart and engaging exploration of what Nintendo's strange new machine can muster. Historically, third party releases in a console launch day have been chequered and timid affairs made by inexperienced teams fearful of losing their footing on unknown terrain. When Ubisoft Montpellier's ZombiU works in smart union with its host console, however, it frequently delights. London has been ravaged by a zombie plague, and the shambling husks of its businessmen, Beefeaters and tracksuit-garbed working classes make for tough opposition. A single zombie must be dispatched with five or six cricket bat blows to the head, and even then a final coup de grace is required once the creature's on the floor. When faced with a crowd, running and slamming doors behind you is often your best option. Ammo is scarce, health depletes in worryingly large chunks and the virus can be passed on with little warning. As a survivor (or rather, a sequence of survivors), you're guided by the voice of an ex-squaddie known as the Prepper - a Yorkshireman who chunters from a tinny radio withing your GamePad. Operating from a central safehouse deep in the London Underground, your quest is an odd mix of survival objectives and discovering the overarching intentions of the followers of Elizabethan occultis and academic John Dee. You must carefully tread through zombie-packed hubs, some tourist spots and a few housing estates. Throughout it all, your primary objective isn't just the plot MacGuffin you're after, but to also find savepoints and manhole shortcuts that will make your progress secure. ZombiU's gloomy colour palette isn't the only area of the game that's deeply in hock to Dark Souls: death for your character is final, so your first task after respawning is always to tramp back through areas to reclaim your lost gear. Armed with a mere six pistol rounds and a willow bat, respawning is a grisly process that invariably involves murdering your former zombie self. It's a somewhat lightweight variant of what Hidetaka Miyazaki acolytes have come to adore, yes, but this trick can help the game ratchet up to a remarkable level of tension. Fear of lost ground and fear of losing your gradually levelling character's abilities keeps you alert, involved and deep-set within a survival mindset that an autosave safety net would dispel. It's Wii U's GamePad that conspires to make this game impossible on other platforms, it's subtle art being to divert your attention from the primary screen. When you, for example, reorganise your inventory, you much touch-and-drag weapons, health packs and molotovs into easy-access slots on its screen, but up on the main display you're still vulnerable. As such, whether you're picking locks or inputting puzzle codes, you're forever worriedly peeking back up to the main screen to check the shadows. Very often those shadows move. Ubisoft Montpellier has been given free reign to experiment with the new hardware, and it's relished every moment. ZombiU makes the relationship between TV and GamePad screens fell fresh, and - displaying a clear awareness of horror gaming conventions - it toys with you brilliantly. Red herring clues, twitching corpses and suspect doors all play into its manipulation and contribute to sophisticated shocks. The GamePad's new way to play also presents new ways for you to be played, and the resulting suprises areoften delightful. As you move through the game, you develop a routine of survival: you turn off your light to let it recharge, you scan the area for loot and danger by raising the pad to the TV in a riff on Arkham City's Detective Mode, and you knock the head off anything that looks like it could cause mischief in the future. Beyond that, it's crowd control: dividing, conquering and nailing doors shut in the face of zombies, whether you're negotiating a party in a block of flats that's taken a turn for the undead or the Tower of London's corriders. The trouble with ZombiU comes when you go off-piste - those moments when you're thrown from the ribbon of the game's missions, or die deep down withing an unscanned area without a saved shortcut to easily retrace your steps. This issue is underlined when, just before the final act, the game forces you into a needless and poorly explained treasure hunt through previously explored environments. The strange dead end that confused you the first time round suddenly makes sense (and the Dark Souls-style symbol messages left by other players might water down the frustration), but it shines a light on the fact that ZombiU is a lot less fun when it can't deal out fresh shocks and surprises. The game's strong feeling of earthly realism, meanwhile, is also sadly lost as it continues. At first, threat and variety are ramped up by zombies growing faster and more reactive, and the occasional policeman in body armour. Beyond this, however, enemies break with what a purist might call Romero canon and the game takes an unwelcome lurch away from horror and into fantasy. A late-game forary into an arena scenario, meanwhile, is another instance of the needs of the game pulling out of synch with the needs of the narrative. The use of explosive zombies, which ignite upon a thwack of willow against gas tank, genuinely feel unfair with the odds stacked so high. The terrors of the horde that has descended on London come with caveats, then. ZombiU, however, is a title that will infuse impulse buyers, early adopters and Nintendo diehards with relief and appreciation for the novel gameplay that Wii U can and will continue to provide. It's a confident start, if not an end in itself - one that makes us eagerly anticipate where Montpellier will take it's ideas next. 7/10

ZombiU - King of Zombies multiplayer

ZombiU demo coming to the Wii U eShop Now this is the kind of news we want to hear. A demo of ZombiU is going to be made available on the Wii U eShop. We don't know when exactly it's going to be made available, but it shouldn't be too long after launch. http://www.gonintendo.com/?mode=viewstory&id=190819

What a lovely day of results that was. Capped off with Norwich beating Man Poo. You won't forget who Pilkington is now ol purple nose!

I'd wait for a lot more reviews to come before forming an opinion. Gamespot, like they've never ever been at the centre of controversy regarding reviewing games on Nintendo platforms. They just love generating the hits. Skyward Sword anyone?

EDGE have given it 7/10. I'll get the link shortly. It'll probably take a bit of time for the review to hit the site. 9.2 + 4.5 + 7 = 6.9 so far. We have ourselves a Metroid: Other M title it seems for the Wii U already with opinions wildly varying.