13 Best Wii U Action Games

Lost Reavers was a download game on the Nintendo eShop that ran on the Nintendo Network. It was first shown in January 2015 under the working title Project Treasure, and the trailer showed four characters fighting zombies in a labyrinth to find treasure. It came out in Japan on December 2nd, 2015, and everywhere else on April 28th, 2016. It mixed melee attacks with third-person and first-person shooting, a setup it called the "Multi-View Action System", and it ran events like most free-to-play games.

Not many people played it. Even so, when Wii U owners trade recommendations, Lost Reavers still comes up.

Pokémon Rumble U puts every Pokémon from the first five generations into one toy box brawler. It was the first Wii U game to use the near-field communication reader in the GamePad: place a Pokémon figurine on the controller and that Pokémon jumps into the game. It came out in Japan on April 24, 2013, and reached North America on August 29, 2013.

Critics were less charmed. One review complained that the only way to upgrade a Pokémon you liked was to buy its figurine, and called the game too linear and short to enjoy the upgrades. Parents tell a different story. They keep recommending it as a game to play with their kids. Nobody under ten has ever minded.

Ninja Gaiden 3: Razor's Edge was announced at E3 2011 as a launch title for the Wii U. It is an enhanced port of Ninja Gaiden 3 that includes all the downloadable content from the original, plus extra changes made to improve the game. Outside Japan, Nintendo published it, which made it the company's third game rated M by the ESRB after Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem and Geist. Its Wii U release ran from November 2012 to May 2013, and the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 got it in April 2013.

The Wii U had it first, though, and that still counts with players. It keeps turning up when Wii U owners list the third-party games worth keeping on the console. If you only played the plain Ninja Gaiden 3, this is the one that earned its forgiveness.

Darksiders first came out for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 on January 5, 2010, and the Wii U version followed on May 23, 2017, after the Warmastered Edition remaster. You play War, one of the Horsemen, who arrives on present-day Earth in the middle of the Endwar between angels and demons. He gets blamed for starting the Apocalypse early, loses his powers and has to work with the Watcher, a Council servant who can execute him if he steps out of line. Mark Hamill voices the Watcher, and he sounds like he is having a great time.

Wii U owners still put it on their lists of ports worth playing on the console, usually right next to the sequel. A late arrival, but not one the console's fans turned away.

Arkham City was tied with The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim for the highest-rated video game of 2011. Batman: Arkham City - Armored Edition is its Wii U release, developed by WB Games Montréal and released on November 18, 2012, alongside the console's launch in North America. It contains all of the content from earlier releases. The GamePad lets you manage Batman's equipment and upgrades, detonate Explosive Gel placements one by one and view a map of the city. It also adds a Sonar mode that highlights points of interest nearby and the Battle Armored Tech Mode, which lets Batman store up energy during a fight and then hit much harder.

Players single out how it uses the GamePad, more than any other part of the game. Nintendo World Report called it "the best way to experience" Arkham City.

Batman: Arkham Origins was released worldwide on October 25, 2013, for the PlayStation 3, Wii U, Windows and Xbox 360. WB Games Montréal took over from Rocksteady Studios, which was busy with Batman: Arkham Knight. The story is a prequel: Black Mask has put a $50 million bounty on Batman, and eight killers come to Gotham to collect it. It was also the first game in the series with a multiplayer mode, a gang war between the Joker and Bane.

Critics praised its voice acting, boss fights and score, and knocked it for not changing much. Wii U owners rate it as the other half of a pair with Arkham City. Keeping the map on the GamePad, so you never stop to pause, is the part players remember.

Nano Assault Neo is the sequel to the 2011 Nintendo 3DS game Nano Assault. It supports Off-TV Play. In local co-op, one person plays on the Wii U GamePad and the other uses a Pro Controller or a Wii Remote and Nunchuk on the TV. It holds a score of 71 on Metacritic. IGN gave it a 9/10 and called it "a visual spectacle", while Nintendo Life went with 8/10 and "a great game that is a little light on content."

Players file it with the eShop games every Wii U owner should grab, and they describe it as a fun twin-stick shooter that looks great and plays great. It is small, and it does not need to be anything more.

Devil's Third was the first game made by Valhalla Game Studios, a company founded in 2008 by former Tecmo staff including Tomonobu Itagaki. THQ was going to publish it until its bankruptcy in 2013 left the studio without a partner, and it finally came out in August 2015 in most regions and in December 2015 in North America. You play Ivan, who is offered his freedom from Guantanamo Bay if he helps fight SOD, the group he used to belong to. The camera sits right behind him and switches to first person when you aim.

Reviews were positive in Japan and negative almost everywhere else. Devil's Third was the final game Itagaki directed before his death in 2025. Plenty of Wii U owners still name it when asked what to play on the console, rough edges and all.

Star Fox Zero was formally announced at E3 2015 and released in April 2016. Shigeru Miyamoto said it was not a remake, sequel or prequel, but a reimagining of Star Fox 64. A standalone tower defense game, Star Fox Guard, came bundled with it, and Wit Studio produced an animated short for it. Critics praised its level design, graphics and boss battles, and criticized its short length and a control scheme they found impractical.

Players are split on it too. Some recommend it to anyone setting up a Wii U, and some call it mediocre or a weird oddball. Both sides have a point. After it, no new Star Fox game came out until a decade later, so for a long time this was the last word on the series.

Bayonetta first came out for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 in Japan in October 2009, and in North America and Europe in January 2010. It reached the Wii U in September 2014, ported by Bee Tribe and published by Nintendo. It was the third game from PlatinumGames, a studio started by former Clover Studio staff, and Hideki Kamiya directed it. The team called itself "Team Little Angels", a play on "Team Little Devils", the team behind the first Devil May Cry, and the combat makes the connection obvious. Nintendo World Report reviewed the Wii U version and said it was "still a glorious action game".

Players almost always recommend it together with its sequel, and the two came in the same box in the special and first print editions. "You are really missing out by skipping the first Bayonetta", as one player put it.

Hyrule Warriors was announced in a 2013 Nintendo Direct presentation. Koei Tecmo's studios developed it with supervision from Eiji Aonuma, the Zelda series producer, who hoped it would offer a new style of play that differed from the main games. It came out in Japan in August 2014 and worldwide the following month. Critics praised how well it combined Zelda with Dynasty Warriors, and criticized how repetitive it gets. It became one of the best-selling games on the Wii U, and downloadable content packs kept coming from 2014 to 2016. Its Adventure Mode is a map based on the original The Legend of Zelda, where you complete specific objectives on each part of it.

Players talk about the hours they sank into it. The amount of content and the replay value keep them coming back, and the downloadable content kept it alive for a long time.

The Wonderful 101 was directed by Hideki Kamiya and produced by Atsushi Inaba, and its development began while the Wii was still around. PlatinumGames first thought of using Nintendo's own characters, but Nintendo asked how that idea would fill a whole game. Kamiya went with the Japanese henshin theme instead, a group of five original heroes who unite and transform into weapons. It came out in August 2013 in most regions and the following month in North America. Reviews were generally positive, but it failed to meet sales expectations.

That was not the end of it. A remaster for Switch, PlayStation 4 and Windows, paid for through crowdfunding, came out in May 2020. On the Wii U, players keep handing it to new owners, and it finished only just behind the game at #1.

Bayonetta 2 came out in Japan on September 20, 2014, and in October 2014 for the rest of the world. Platinum was first making the sequel with Sega, but Sega cancelled it during development, and Nintendo stepped in to publish it. Kamiya had believed they would never make a sequel at all. Yusuke Hashimoto directed it this time, with Kamiya supervising. The story opens with Bayonetta shopping on Christmas Eve with Enzo when angels attack New York City, which is about as calm as the game ever gets.

It received widespread critical acclaim, with praise for its combat system, visuals and improvements over the first game. Players keep it on their short lists of Wii U must-plays, and they recommend it more than any other Wii U action game.