Good 3rd Party Wii U Games

[Deleted]

Last one of these I promise. And it's the hardest one I think. I'm looking for good games that were neither developed nor published by Nintendo on Wii U please.

Affordable Space Adventures
Assassins Creed III
Assassins Creed IV
Axiom Verge
Batman Arkham City
Batman Arkham Origins
Bit Trip Runner 2
Child of Light
Darksiders II
Disney's Ducktales Remastered
FAST Racing Neo
Freedom Planet
Guacamelee!: Super Turbo Championship Edition
Lego Jurassic Park
Lego Marvel Super Heroes
Lego Star Wars: The Force Awakens
Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate
Nano Assault Neo
Octodad: Dadliest Catch
Rayman Legends
Resident Evil Revelations
Runbow
Severed
Shantae: Half-Genie Hero
Shantae: Risky's Revenge
Shantae & The Pirates Curse
Shovel Knight 
SteamWorld Dig
SteamWorld Heist
Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed
Sonic Lost World
Stealth Inc 2
The Swapper
Tekken Tag Tournament
Teslagrad
Toki Tori 2+
Zombi U

[🧀Son of Suzy Creamcheese🧀]

I just realized I only own one third-party Wii U title. I always lump in Bayonetta 2 and The Wonderful 101 with the third parties but those are published by Nintendo after all.

That one game is Rayman Legends, and it's probably to this day best played on Wii U because of the gamepad.

I honestly barely have any recollection of what third parties came out on Wii U. Apart from indies that were mostly multiplatform. ZombiU is kind of notable I guess, but apart from that, I'm usually surprised to learn or remember if something got a Wii U port.

[dsparil]

The Wii U was always in a weird place. At the very beginning, it seemed like it was going to have better western third party support than the Wii since it was similar in power to the PS3 and 360. So you got your major Calls of Duty, Ubisoft checklist games and various other bits of "AAA" games even when it didn't make a whole lot of sense like Mass Effect 3. However, once you get to the transition to the PS4 and XB1, the Wii U's fate was already sealed by then and those types of third party games stopped coming out entirely since now they weren't dealing with three platforms of similar power and unlike the Switch, there simply wasn't the user base to justify those costs. On the Japanese side, publishers greatly backed the 3DS instead since it was able to right itself fairly quickly after an initial stumble in a way the Wii U never did and had already sold twice better than the Wii U ever would. That also ties into the way that many more modestly sized publishers focused on portables due to lower development costs and the Wii U couldn't change that type of fundamental dynamic. This is also evident in the way that the proportion of games unreleased in Japan was higher than usual and much lower for other regions.

It was of course a great system for Nintendo's own games and various Virtual Console games, but I still ended up with a few third party games that are recommendable. 

Major Publishers

Assassin's Creed III
Assassin's Creed IV - I haven't played it due to not liking the sailing in III, but this is better regarded
Child of Light - I hated it, but it reviewed well
Darksiders II - I don't like this as much as most people but still think it's okay
Disney's DuckTales: Remastered
Lego Jurassic World
Lego Marvel Super Heroes
Lego Star Wars: The Force Awakens
Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate
Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed

Timed or permanent indie exclusives

Affordable Space Adventures
Fast Racing Neo
Shantae and the Pirate's Curse - timed console exclusive but first on 3DS
Toki Tori 2+ - The original version was a timed exclusive

Multiplatform Indies

Axiom Verge
Bit.Trip Runner2
Guacamelee!: Super Turbo Championship Edition
Octodad: Dadliest Catch
Severed
Shantae: Half-Genie Hero
Shantae: Risky's Revenge
Shovel Knight - Apparently Nintendo published it in Japan
SteamWorld Dig
SteamWorld Heist
Teslagrad

[ZenithianHero]

Wii U was carried by indies.

Major company:
Tekken Tag Tournament 2, also comes with exclusive Wii U features.
Sonic All Stars Racing Transformed
Sonic Lost World is extremely YMMV but it's worth hunting down.
Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate
Rayman Legends


Indie:
Affordable Space Adventures
Child of Light
Fast Racing Neo
Freedom Planet
Guacamelee 1
Runbow
Shantae and the Pirate's Curse
Steamworld Dig
Stealth Inc 2
Shovel Knight
The Swapper

[Deleted]

Jun 9, 2021 8:53:17 GMT -5 dsparil said:

Shovel Knight - Apparently Nintendo published it in Japan

For games published by Nintendo in only one region, but the third party in another I have chosen to include them. Sonic and the Lost World is another, published by Nintendo in EU/AUS. 'Child of Light - I hated it' wasn't exactly the best recommendation I've seen from you (though it did make me chuckle) but I see ZenithianHero also posted that one so I included that too.

On the subject of listed games we hate, you also both listed FAST Racing Neo. I really can't stand that game, and am outright offended any time I see a request to have Shin'en make F-Zero off the back of it. I did enjoy their Nano Assault game though so I've added that.

A few others I've added:
Resident Evil Revelations (I played the 3DS version but the entire time I was thinking 'I wish I'd picked this up on a home system', so I'm making the assumption it's a nice conversion)
Batman Arkham City and Origins.

I'm surprised how many examples have been come up with. I didn't realise digital support was so strong.




 

[dsparil]

I only played the port of RE: Revelations a little bit since I have it on 3DS, but it seemed well done for the most part. What is is about FRN that you don't like? It seemed fine enough although I wouldn't go so far as to say Shin'en should make a new F-Zero.

Wii U did have a lot of digital games although there's also a fair amount of absolute junk. Japan missed out on some legitimately good stuff like Axiom Verge that would have come out there in better circumstances as the Switch version did get released there, but Europe mainly missed out on some of the junk. The main thing though is that there are very few worthwhile exclusives and a whole lot of Wii U ports came out after other platforms sometimes by a year. Anyone that had access to other platforms would have likely played them there instead.

[Deleted]

Jun 10, 2021 8:33:26 GMT -5 dsparil said:

What is is about FRN that you don't like? It seemed fine enough although I wouldn't go so far as to say Shin'en should make a new F-Zero.

I just really didn't like how the vehicles handled. It felt very heavy to me for such a fast game. The tracks were pretty uneven I thought, with the dlc ones being my most disliked. I found some of the track design at odds with the handling. For the F-Zero comparison I find it a little off too. I didn't find they played similarly at all with F-Zero being highly responsive without consideration of realism.