http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=516246
today I called Nintendo to order a replacement. I had read online that replacement gamepads were around $80. This apparently is incorrect. The amount Nintendo is billing my card is $150+ shipping.
That's a ridiculous price, there's no way it costs them that - its a broadcom chip and some controller bits, but that said...
how much of a simpering weakling do you have to be to let your airline lose all your shit and then NOT make them pay for EVERYTHING? Also, I don't know how it is in the US but travel insurance in Europe is cheap and covers lost luggage. Why is he even trying to get a new one like that?
Wii Mini would look neat to me, if it actually had online components etc. If you're a collector, it'd be a cool curiosity to own, like the Panasonic Q or something. I suppose I could see why you'd buy it if you were a cruel, Luddite parent that didn't want to see your children play new modern games or play on the Internet.
I decided to download
Batman: Arkham City Armoured Edition and
Tekken Tag 2 yesterday, and I am pleasantly surprised by both.
Arkham City: AE was torn to shreds on GAF and by Eurogamer's Digital Foundry guys, but having played it -- its probably the best console version of the game. I'm not just saying that as a Ninthing: if you were a fan of the game and you see it knocking around cheap (it was 23 quid on ShopTo recently), you might really enjoy it again on Wii U. It's a game that everyone's already played, and you're probably going to be busy in March playing Tomb Raider and other new games, but believe me - its a better port than people have let on.
- D.Foundry reported framerate slowdowns in bigger fights, but I've played up to the Mr Freeze rescue, fought the Titan goon and all of the penguin's henchmen - and there has been nary a hiccup.
- When I started the game, I couldn't hear Alfred talking. I thought it was some kind of bug -- but then I turned up the gamepad volume and realised that they use it as Batman's radio! Sometimes you will hear henchmen on the radio, then as you get closer to their location, their chatter fades down on the gamepad and fades up on the TV in a nice, seamless, distance-relative transition...
- You can have all the audio come via the TV of course.
- The new kinetic energy / hyper mode thing feels quite satisfying. I'm playing on a higher difficulty in case it makes things easier.
- The touch-screen Waynetech stuff is well implemented, and it takes away the need to pause so much. You don't even have to pause to choose upgrades. The only drawback to it is that the D-Pad has one less item slot -- 'Up' is allocated to displaying the touch-screen interface for gadget customisation. You get used to that though. A nice touch is that as you actually touch your gamepad, Batman does the same thing with the screen on his arm controller.
- The map/sonar is improved. You can set markers (without pausing) by double tapping on the map, you can drag it around, look at the indoor maps for buildings by double tapping on the buildings, etc. Its context sensitive too. During the GCPD rescue mission in the museum for example, you can see the status of the police you're trying to rescue (deceased, missing etc).
- The cryptographic sequencer has been given a new touchscreen implementation, the batarangs, batclaw, electric charge gun and other gadgets have been given gyro-controls (over-ridable with analog sticks).
- Visually, I don't know if I'm crazy, but it seems like weather effects are more pronounced to me, and some textures look a lot better. I've noticed a couple of places where the geometry looks different, possibly lower, but then there are other places where I've noticed improvements -- such as the bottle-bottom that functions as Penguin's eyepiece, or on specular surfaces and self shadowing models -- some of it looks really good.
- Being able to play games this good in a pseudo-handheld Off-TV mode
This is not a half arsed port by any measure. It's definitely better than the 360 version. You could really only argue the PS3 version is better if you somehow experience the slowdowns that I've not really experienced yet, because the interface improvements are all reasonably good. The cutscenes are PS3 quality, so that alone puts it over the 360 ver. I don't know when I'll ever learn to just not listen to what the Internet says. So fuckin' nitpicky.
I've not played too much of TT2 just yet, but I can tell its going to be fun online.
