Wii U: Features

Like everything nowadays, the Wii U comes bundled with a bunch of features. The main menu is very similar to the Wii's (see picture below), with everything laid out simply for quick access, and the option to arrange everything as you want it. (Incidentally, you scroll across to the right for more screens for the more items you have.)

That's not my Mii at the top-left, I stole this picture 

Miiverse

If there's two things that are the Wii U's USP, it's THAT gamepad and Miiverse. I'll get to the gamepad later, but the Miiverse is Wii U's inbuilt social network, kind of like Twitter (or, to a lesser extent, Facebook). You are allowed upto 100 friends (for now), can follow upto 1,000 people and can have as many followers as you can get. As with other social networks, your news feed shows the posts of your friends and people you are following; the difference on Miiverse is that every game has its own community and you make your posts to a community's feed rather than on your own page (though they do show up there) or use hashtags etc. This means that any posts you make will show up on the news feed of that game's community as well as that of your friends and followers.

There are some special communities as well, such as Year of Luigi and Legend of Zelda, which relate to those characters/series rather than just one specific game. Obviously, people use some of the communities for non-game related posts; the FIFA 13 community has turned into a general football community, the YouTube community seems to cater for anything and everything in popular culture, and some of the smaller communities for unpopular games get hijacked occasionally by people using the community's emptiness and lack of action as a chance to just post with friends and other random people about whatever they want.

The Miiverse itself is separated into 3 geographical boundaries: Asia, Europe and Oceania, Americas. As a default, I get the community for my area (though I can go on the Americas or Asia communities if I want), and can filter posts within a community further by language or by showing posts only by people who've played the game on their system (posts have a tickbox on them to show if they have played/used a game/feature on their Wii U); this helps sort out some of the occasional trolls on there because everyone can see they've not actually played a game that they are criticising. Posts are limited to 100 characters when typing, though you can comment on your post to expand further and you can also draw on the gamepad's screen and post pictures (or writing) you've done on there.

Perhaps the best feature of Miiverse is the ability to post pictures directly from games; while playing a game, simply press the "Home" button, enter the Miiverse and it allows you to post a screen grab of either what's on your main screen or gamepad screen at the time. This is a pretty cool feature, especially if you find something especially interesting/glitchy or, if you're stuck at a particular point in a game, you can post the picture on Miiverse and ask for help.

The Miiverse, in case it's not abundantly clear, is absolutely brilliant, and will perhaps turn out to be the greatest feature or innovation of the "next generation" of consoles. The Wii U's ability to let you enter it without closing down the game you're playing makes it even better, meaning you can post screen grabs as I've said, or dip in and out without having to load up/out of your game in full every time. Being able to see other people's thoughts or approaches to games, in a much friendlier way that you will ever get in other online message boards is a lot of fun, and being able to get involved in discussions on elements of games is such a simple and genius idea you have to wonder why none of the console companies thought of doing this before.

Nintendo eShop

The eShop's layout is pretty simple, newer releases at the top, features for indie games, sections for "sports", "online" games etc. That said, there aren't too many games available just yet so it's probably pretty easy to set out. The one problem I've had so far with the eShop is the sluggish download times: Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate took about 6 hours to download; it initially said 4.5 hours, though I did slow it down by going on Miiverse and the web browser while it was downloading. Considering I have 300mbps broadband and MH3U is 6.2GB in size, that is pretty slow, even at 4.5 hours. That said, you can make downloads happen in the background while you play games or do other stuff, which takes longer but is less boring. As I write this, the Virtual Console is not yet properly available, but this is due in the next few days starting with about 8-10 games.

TVii

This feature isn't available yet in Europe so I can't really comment, but from what I've read online, it seems especially good for sporting events. It seems to be a feature which adds a kind of Twitter (Miiverse?) feed to the programmes/networks supported, and has extra information (such as formations, tactics etc for sporting teams) on the gamepad while you watch the programme.

Web Browser

The Wii U's web browser is actually pretty damn good, it's super quick and allows tabs (which the Wii's didn't) so you can have several pages open at once. It doesn't play flash videos (don't really know what that means, though this is to stop people playing flash-based games apparently) but YouTube works great on it, as does Tumblr, Twitter and pretty much everything else I've tried. Even Blogger works fine on it, though editing text (i.e. justifying, adding links etc) seems to be a problem as the text box you type in opens up as a separate box rather than being edited on the main web page if that makes sense. I have a laptop for doing this though so I'm not that bothered.

Wii Mode

What's that? You've still got your old Wii games? Or there's some Wii games you'd like to play but never had a Wii? Well, don't worry, the Wii U's Wii Mode replicates almost exactly the Wii (some features like the BBC iPlayer and web browser aren't on there), including the Wii's excellent Wii Shop where you can get classics such as Super Mario World. The only drawback is that you'll need a Wii remote/nunchuck etc to use it, which won't be a problem if you have a Wii (I have 2), but if you don't have a Wii, you will need to buy these, though they can be picked up second hand in game shops for less than a tenner second hand. Two consoles for the price of one!

Wii U Chat

I've not used this feature but one of my Wii U "friends" messaged me to say they tried to get me on here and I should check my "missed calls". I didn't do that. This is just Skype for Wii U.

Wii Street U (Google)

This is basically just Google Street View. It's pretty cool, you can zoom down to the road outside your house and look around! You could stand in that same place in real life too and actually do it for real, but it's not the same.

Others

Lovefilm, Netflix and YouTube channels came installed on the console. I deleted Lovefilm and Netflix as I have no desire to use them (I can always download them again later if I change my mind) and have found that YouTube runs a lot better via the web browser than on its own channel, much like it did on the Wii. I should probably delete that too. There is also UPlay, a Ubisoft app that gives you points for in-game achievements (for Ubisoft games only) which you can trade in for items such as extra in-game outfits etc. It's ok.