The Wii U's online services are on their last legs. On March 27th, Nintendo is set to close down the eShop for Wii U systems, removing the ability to buy games and download demos although your existing purchases will still be accessible... for now. That's a real shame, because the Wii U is home to top-shelf software, including first-party, boundary-pushing titles that never got ported to Switch or rely heavily on the Wii U's novel controller.
So before it's too late, we're highlighting some of the most technically accomplished Wii U titles that are worth picking up before the shutdown - including some that are significantly cheaper digitally. As well as some big first-party releases, there are some great games from smaller studios that at least deserve to be remembered for what they did with the Wii U hardware.
The obvious place to start here are the two Zelda remasters for Wii U - Wind Waker HD and Twilight Princess HD. These are both essentially respun GameCube titles, modernisations that add new textures and effects but largely leave the original visual designs intact. Wind Waker HD is definitely the more successful of these efforts, with new textures, a redesigned UI, gameplay tweaks and reworked lighting featuring bloom, real-time shadow maps and ambient occlusion. Even with the original geometric meshes in place, the game holds up brilliantly at 1080p. There are some issues, too - there can be noticeable aliasing in ambient occlusion and shadow maps, and the cartoon stylings of the original models are lost somewhat in indirect lighting, but it's still a beautiful-looking game.