Nintendo released its follow-up to the Nintendo Wii, the Wii U, in 2012, and it was a bust. The system didn’t sell well, with fewer than 14 million units sold globally. That’s pretty bad, but not as bad as the Virtual Boy’s sales figures. Regardless, Nintendo made sure the system featured plenty of games, many of which were excellent. In fact, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild was released for the system, so it had a good game library. Unfortunately, it also had some really crummy titles. We looked through the catalog and found five of the worst games released on the Nintendo Wii U, based on contemporary critics’ reviews upon release, how frustrating they were to play, and how much gamers hated them.
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1) Fast and Furious: Showdown
Fast and Furious: Showdown was released in 2013 for all available systems, including the Wii U. The game is set in the Fast & Furious franchise, taking place between the fifth and sixth films. It absolutely flopped across all consoles, with the Nintendo 3DS earning the highest praise, which was still incredibly low. Regardless, on the Wii U, the game was a huge disappointment that wasn’t fun to play. Marty Silva wrote in his review for IGN that the game “seemed to actively try to persuade me to stop playing before I reached the finish line,” which isn’t the kind of review anyone wants to get.
2) Steel Rivals
If you’re looking for a terrible fighting game you’ve never heard of before, you’ll likely end up finding Steel Rivals. The game was released in 2016 on the Wii U, where it failed to gain any headway with critics or players. The biggest problem with Steel Rivals is that it was released with serious bugs and gameplay issues, suggesting it shouldn’t have been released at all. Basically, it seemed like the devs just shrugged, said, “Screw it,” and shipped the game to the marketplace without fixing any of its many issues.
3) Meme Run
In the category of ‘Why did Nintendo allow this to happen?’, we have Meme Run, an endless running indie game that was made available on the Wii U’s eShop. The game is flooded with Internet memes to the point that it becomes difficult to look at for more than a minute or two. It was likely trying to attract younger players obsessed with memes. Still, the only thing that really happened was a copyright infringement lawsuit against the developers for unlicensed use of the trollface meme. After that, Nintendo deleted it from the shop, so the good news here is that you’ll have a hard time playing this incredibly eye-straining minimalist meme game.
4) Family Party: 30 Great Games Obstacle Arcade
While the Wii and Wii U were both great for party games, not every title in the genre is good. Case in point: Family Party: 30 Great Games Obstacle Arcade, released in 2012, is objectively terrible. It’s filled with the kind of things you’d expect: minigames, different modes, multiple gameplay options, and more. There were 35 minigames across five worlds, but the game featured buggy, poorly mapped controls, minigames that felt like miniature torture sessions, and annoying voice acting. It’s devoid of any fun or redeeming qualities, and is the lowest-rated game on the Wii U, according to Metacritic.
5) The Letter
The Letter is a 2014 adventure-mystery game developed by an indie studio and released on the Nintendo eShop. The game follows a young boy who receives a strange letter from his dad, prompting him to set out on a quest to find him. The reviews for this game are so bad that the people who made it are likely living in shame if they read any of them … which they probably shouldn’t. The Letter was criticized across the board for every aspect of its making, including the plot, controls, gameplay, length, and much more. It feels both unfinished and too long at the same time, and should never be played by anyone who doesn’t want to waste their time banging their head against a wall.
What’s the worst game you’ve played on the Wii U? Leave a comment below and join the conversation now in the ComicBook Forum!
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