Mass Effect 3 Wii U Preview

Shacknews is offering a new preview for the Wii U port of Mass Effect 3, which obviously puts a lot of focus on the revamp controls. Here’s a snippet:

Shepard’s abilities are also mapped to the GamePad, letting you bypass holding the shoulder button to access your skill wheel. You can customize which abilities are mapped to the virtual buttons on the screen, giving you “quick” access to those custom actions. Unfortunately, this works better in theory than in reality. Taking your eyes off the action to look down at the GamePad feels cumbersome–and in harder difficulties, would likely mean the death of your character as it gets pummeled by enemy fire. The GamePad’s odd size also makes it difficult to quickly access these buttons. Letting go of your right hand in order to press a button in the middle of the large controller doesn’t feel fluid as simply hitting X on a controller, for example.

I actually preferred playing exclusively on the GamePad, as it was less confusing than the TV hybrid play. However, I felt as though there was a tiny bit of latency. My response time felt slightly slower than when playing on the TV–makes sense, given the Wii U GamePad is receiving a wireless video feed. Also, the game obviously loses some fidelity on the GamePad’s low resolution screen.