I’ve tried out brief demos of quite a few Wii U games and have posted previews of a good number of them. But there are a few games I tried that I only have a little to say about; not enough to justify a full preview. Here are those games.

Tekken Tag Tournament 2: Wii U Edition

This game got good reviews when it came out for the PS3/360 in September, and the Wii U version looks to be a satisfying entry in the excellent fighting game series.


I played this game as the preview event I saw it at was winding down, and the guy who was showing off the game kept wandering away, so I didn’t learn as much about it as I would have liked. The game does include a special Wii U arena filled with Mario-style mushrooms that do things like make fighters into giants. (The Wii U addition also includes Nintendo-themed costumes, but I didn’t see those). This promises to be a solid, good-looking fighting game. It will come out on the Wii U’s launch date, November 18.

Call of Duty: Black Ops 2

I got a brief look at the multiplayer mode of this first person shooter. If two people are playing together, one can use the gamepad while the other uses a Wii U Pro Controller and the TV. This works quite well, and I preferred it to playing in the typical split screen mode. The game looks good, but the bots weren’t working well and my fellow player wandered off so I didn’t get to delve very deeplyinto this one. I am looking forward to a fuller experience when the game launches, along with the Wii U, on November 18.

NBA 2K13

This solid basketball game has already come out for other platforms and has gotten rave reviews. It’s a nice looking game and has an interesting control scheme, although since all I wrote in my notes was, that I “liked use of right analog stick,” I can’t go into any details. The touchscreen doesn’t appear to be used for much, although if you hold it up you can get a special view of players that indicates who is injured, which is a cute touch. The game looks like fun, and should arrive sometime in the next few months.

Mass Effect 3

I wasn’t a big fan of the first Mass Effect game, which suffered from a poor combat system, but I’ve been curious about the highly praised subsequent games, so I was happy to learn it was coming to the Wii U. Mass Effect 3 is an action role-playing game, but the demo I played just showed off the action, which involved running around shooting soldiers, going through doors and shooting more soldiers. The Wii U gamepad screen has a map and lets you choose weapons quickly. Its most interesting feature is that you can lead other members of your party towards whomever you want to attack by dragging them to the target. Even though the demo didn’t blow me away, I’m still looking forward to seeing what all the hubbub is about when it arrives a few months from now.

Sonic and All-Stars Racing Transformed

One of the things I liked best about the Wii was the way you could use the Wii remote as a steering wheel. The same thing would be possible with the Wii U gamepad, which also has an accelerometer, but in this kart racing game SEGA has decided to have players steer with the analog stick, probably because it is a multi-platform game and it is simpler to have uniform controls. The game doesn’t do a lot with the gamepad (the developers say they didn’t have time to add a lot of special Wii U functionality), although there is a map and a weapons cam, and if you hold the controller up a rear view mirror will appear. The game will ship on November 18 as a Wii U launch title.