I was yesterday at Gamescom and I try to do a little round-up about the Wii U games I played and saw.
First thing I wanted to do is to play Splatoon and I was there early enough to wait just about 10 minutes to play it. The game is fun, fun, fun. You could play a warm-up round and then 2 4vs4 games. I got a good grip of it after the first 4vs4 game and there are so many ways in which you can approach this. The squid mechanic really adds a lot in it. Not only that it allows you to hide in the ink or move really fast towards enemy territory by using a succession of paint - squid - jump moves, but it can help you also climb the walls and get into a higher ground when the enemy is around you. The whole scope being painting the ground it means that you permanently need to keep an eye on the map as you might fighting hard against the enemy and meanwhile a damn squid is painting all over your home turf. I even got to play another session of 2 games and my team won and I was the best player, which was nice.
I skipped SSB 4, as I've seen so much of it already that I didn't want to wait in the queue for it, and went next for Captain Toad. I played the dragon level. It looks better visually than SM3DW and the levels in the demo all had a different structure and practically different types of puzzles. I think it will turn out to be a great game, it seems to have the a lot of diversity and so many good ideas in it (like SM3DW). Captain Toad really needs to be pushed more into the spotlights, he has character.
After that I played Bayonetta 2 and 1 (in this order), I will copy what I wrote in the Bayo 2 preview thread:
I finally played the demo for Bayo 2 today at Gamescom. It was so damn good. Really fluid and spectacular. It was so good that I would have stayed there and played the same level over and over again if I could. It was quite a queue (I was lucky to wait just 20 minutes) all day.
I played the level with the Italian looking city and the church inspired by the Belgian Royal Palace. It had very detailed environment, nice models for Bayonetta and the enemies, nice textures (by comparison Bayo 1 that I played afterwards did have some not so nice textures), very good looking water (it will be heaven for that Miiverse guy that is impressed by water), the lightning looked also to be a step up from Bayo 1. The animations are smooth. And with all this, even when the fight was frantic and there were 5-6 enemies on the screen the game was so damn fluid. Smooth and gorgeously looking (the art is also helping more than in Bayo 1). A real joy to play.
Because I was there and there was no one trying Bayo 1 I gave it a go, using Samus costume. The costume really fits well in there and it's fun. But playing Bayo 1 intermediately after Bayo 2 it really seemed to me that they are a generation apart. The jump in quality it's obvious for Bayo 2.
I watched Hyrule Warriors being played and it confirmed me that it is a solid game. If you know what to expect of it you won't be disappointed.
Mario Party 10 was better than I expected as I watched 4 guys playing it. I think it will add up quite nice to my party games collection to use when the friends are visiting us.
Yoshi Wooly World is a cuteness overload. It will be the best looking 2d platformer. The wool mechanics are doing a damn good job of separating it from the other 2d platformers too. It adds a lot to the gameplay.
As for popularity, except for Sonic Boom and partially for Mario Party 10, for the other Nintendo games there were big queues with SSB 4 and Splatoon being the most popular, but Hyrule Warriors and Bayonetta 2 were close behind. A lot of women/girls playing Hyrule Warriors and Captain Toad.
Edit: I forgot about the indie game of 2015: Affordable Space Adventures
I got to play a little bit and had a chat with the guys there at the Mega Indie Booth. I got quite fast a grip on the mechanics and the idea and the execution (at list visually, because the sound was replaced by some dubsteb from a neighboring booth) is really great. The developers were saying that the game is 98% ready but they will spend some month on polishing it to be as they want it. The whole "control your damn cheap space ship" is very nicely done with the Gamepad and while I played the intro and it was easy I got some glance and a more difficult area and some very interesting puzzles. I also liked some of the details, like that you can't steer the ship underwater (except for increasing and decreasing the mass) because you can't use its engine there. This will be probably released at the beginning of 2015, but I think it will turn out into a great game.