The controller is one of the strangest bits of kit you will ever see. It basically resembles an unholy mating of a tablet PC and a gamepad. It's huge – you need both hands to grip it – and dominated by a massive, 6.2in touchscreen.
It has two analogue sticks, all the buttons you would expect to find on a gamepad (including two triggers on the back plus two bumpers, which weren't used during the demo), a camera pointing at you and a tiny speaker. It motion-senses like a Wiimote and has a gyro-sensor like the 3DS. The whole shebang basically has most of the elements found in the PlayStation Vita (bar the processor and graphics chips), and is much bigger than Sony's new handheld.
It's clearly not something you can wave around with abandon like the Wiimote, so we initially found it more than a little confusing. Luckily, the chance to experience some proper gameplay was at hand, and the point of the new controller became clearer.
Nintendo had been banging on about how that bizarre piece of design was all about providing new gameplay experiences, and from the off, there was no disputing that it delivers on that count.
Mii Chase
The first tech-demo we played – although it looked suspiciously like a mini-game that you might find in a Wii U version of Wii Play – was called Mii Chase. On entering the room, we had noticed a collection of Wimotes, which seemed odd, but Mii Chase rammed home the message that part of the point of the new controller is about interplay with the familiar remote control.
Mii Chase was an ultra-simple game for up to five people. I would navigate Mario, using the new controller, around a maze-like circular level, while four people equipped with Wiimotes would, after I had been given a head-start, try to chase me down within a certain time. The twist was that they had to share a split-screen on the TV, whereas my screen on the new controller showed a third-person view of my character, plus a top-down map with the whereabouts of my pursuers.
In gameplay terms, this was almost laughably simple, yet the whole experience felt fresh and innovative, as well as fun. The need for the pursuers to co-operate generated a raucous atmosphere, yet the private information communicated by the new controller's screen meant I could stay one step ahead of them.
If you think about it, there are an awful lot of Wiis out there, and if people are going to upgrade to Wii U, they'll be thankful that those Wiimotes, at least, won't become redundant. So to create gameplay from the interplay between the two types of controller could just be a stroke of genius.
Battle Mii
Next up was Battle Mii, in a similar vein to Mii Chase, but somewhat more sophisticated. Battle Mii is a first/third-person shooter, with two people (playing as their Miis) on the ground, armed with a gun and three lives each.
The person with the new controller pilots a hover-ship (equipped with six lives), using the analogue sticks as if piloting a helicopter in a game, while shooting with one trigger and using the other to zoom. Tilting the controller changed your camera view, so you could use that to aim.
Again, the dynamic was Wiimotes versus new controller. There was a Metroid theme to proceedings – the ground-based characters could roll into a ball like Samus – and health and armour power-ups. The gameplay experience was very different according to whether you were on the ground or in the air and, again, Battle Mii felt refreshingly unlike anything we had played before.
Shield Pose
Shield Pose showed that Wii U isn't just about the tension between the new controller and Wiimote-wielding adversaries. It used the new controller on its own, and required no pressing of buttons whatsoever.
The premise was endearingly madcap: a bunch of pirates on three ships – one central, one to the left and one to the right – plus the moon above were firing arrows at you, and you had to use the new controller as a shield. There was a rhythm element, too: you had to raise the new controller from the horizontal at just the right time (on a musical cue), then lower it, also with the rhythm, to shake the arrows off.
The head pirate called which direction the arrows would come from, and after a while you would have to raise the new controller and point it in various directions before shaking off your arrows. Simple, again, but completely original – and there was an endearingly humorous element to the game.
More tech-demos
Our hands-on finished with two more tech-demos. The first, Panorama View, had nothing obvious to do with anything recognisable as a game, but was startling and impressive. It was simply video footage taken from a car driving down a Kyoto city street. Or rather, stitched-together video from several cameras, as you could use the new controller's gyro-sensor to move your viewpoint around, as if you were actually in the moving car – looking up, down behind and around.
The last demo was blandly entitled HD Experience, but it will excite Nintendo fanboys. It was essentially a cut-scene depicting what a Zelda game would look like on Wii U set in a huge, gothic interior, with Link taking on a giant spider-boss.
Nintendo had mapped various functions onto the new controller's touchscreen, such as toggling the lighting between day and night, and scrolling through different camera angles. There was also a map, and you could press a button to switch images between the new controller's screen and the TV screen.
It demonstrated that the new controller's touch-screen can operate much like the touch-screen on a 3DS, letting you access inventory and so on.
So will Wii U eclipse the Wii?
Initial impressions would leave us answering that question with a resounding "Yes". In typical Nintendo fashion, Wii U is one of those objects that you have to get your hands on before you get what it is trying to achieve.
