Caltrops - Nintendogs - The Nintendo Media Center

Forum Overview :: Nintendogs

by Rafiki 12/26/2012, 9:13pm PST

Ok, so I have one, let's talk about it.

Once you turn it on get ready to redownload the entire operating system when you connect it to the internet. I'm not joking, it's a 5GB "update." Check the internet. And since it's not a proper OS, why does it take so long to load a fucking app? Even going into the system settings takes 5-10 seconds. Christ.

After downloading and reinstalling the OS, the beginning experience can be summed up as "Installing updates..." Every time you load anything for the first time, Installing updates... I'm use to games having to install something and I can understand after you download an app, but it's a little annoying when all of the default apps that come with the system still require an installation when you start them up.

Gamepad

The resolution on the touchscreen is decent, but it would have been nice if it were HD. Even my phone is HD now :(

I read some early reviews that said the plastic quality felt "cheap." That's retarded. It's not like it's some fancy designer gadget, but it feels like you could throw the gamepad into a wall and it would be fine, which is what you want if you have a house full of ugly children that can't be trusted with nice things.

Being able to play games or watch movies straight off the gamepad screen turned out to actually be really nice. I'm with family right now, SOME OF WHICH are crazy about what's on TV to the point that if their kid is witness to even a single microsecond of non-children's programming, they'll have to throw it away because it's ruined forever. I was at the point where if I had to watch one more FUCKING episode of Yo Gabba Gabba I was going to burn the house down, and cell phone games are still garbage, so being able to play a game or watch a movie and plug in headphones on the gamepad worked out well and no one had to die. So what I'm saying is that the Wii U saved Christmas. On the other hand, if you're single and live alone because no one could ever love or care about you, this won't really be a useful feature to you.

The gamepad can also serve as a universal remote but only for a TV. It's unbelievable to me that it can't control more and function like Logitech's Harmony line. If they don't expand this aspect of the remote control it'd be a huge missed opportunity.

Nintendo Store

It's basically Steam by Nintendo. You can download every game available, although I only messed with the store for a few minutes so I didn't look into if the full-blown Nintendo store catalog is including the old consoles. I'm assuming yes since you can transfer your data from the Wii. I don't think you can buy Wii games, but wouldn't surprise me if this gets added in the future. I didn't buy anything yet and there's obviously not a huge Wii U catalog, but it at least seemed easy to nagivate.

In searching for info on Wii purchases, I found out they're running a promotion for the deluxe version of the Wii U where all purchases of $60 games through the online store get a $5 credit from now until 2014. So I guess if you have the deluxe version of the Wii U, new releases are going to cost $55 to buy online. Check it

TVii

So this is their media center hub. On startup, you enter in your cable provider, then your favorite shows, movies, TV channels, and sports teams. There's probably some behind the scenes marketing data bullshit, but if you enter in your actual favorites it will check your cable listings and tell you whenever they're on TV. For sports teams, it will give you their entire season schedule and tell you what channel upcoming games are on. For games that have occurred it gives you the score, but I didn't check to see if there was an option to watch a replay or highlights somewhere.

I was under the impression that for movies and shows it was supposed to search not only cable but also online services as well. I setup my Amazon Video account on the Wii U, but it wasn't returning results from that. I only used it for a few minutes, so I didn't check if I need to connect the two from the options somehow. I did notice that if you want to watch a movie there's a "Live" listing where it returns every movie playing on cable and let's you scroll through them. If you click on them you can watch a trailer or, strangely, open up a webpage to its Wikipedia entry. Let's just go ahead and assume every movie and TV show ever invented should have an entry in the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. forum from now on.

There's also some social media options I didn't mess with where you can take screen captures and post them to Facebook or Twitter or Miiverse (haha), and/or post comments about what you're watching. So basically you can liveblog what you're watching if you're one of those assholes that liveblogs what you're watching like an asshole.

Youtube App

Crashed the console TWICE. The second time it crashed so hard I couldn't even turn it off with the physical power button. I had to pull the plug out of the back. Holy shit.

Games

They're almost all the same games as on other platforms, so they're as good as those. I haven't touched Nintendo Land (haha), and don't have any of the exclusives. They did totally steal the Demons/Dark Souls system of being able to leave messages for other people in-game if the game actually supports it, but this has the added feature of being able to draw a picture and leave it as a message too. It's a moderated system, so every game won't just be an endless forest of dongs. I can't imagine how bad the people that are paid to moderate that want to kill themselves.

Overall, I'm kind of surprised so far. Things are better than I expected, except for the games which there doesn't seem to be any worthwhile exclusives yet and all of the good games I can buy on Steam and play them on a PC where they'll look better. So why wouldn't I. That's kind of my biggest problem so far. 95% of games are multi-platform, so I just default to PC because they always look better and I have my Steam account already.

The next Playstation and XBox are likely to blow the Wii U out of the water on hardware specs (HUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUHHHHHHHH), and I can't imagine Sony and Microsoft didn't instantly copy TVii for their next consoles, so who the hell knows if this fucking thing will be worth owning by the end of next year. But so far a decent start if you have a shitty PC and not an XBox360 or PS3, I guess. Give me two more weeks and I'll have a nice long list of everything you could ever hate about this console.