11 Best Wii U Adventure Games

Darksiders came out on PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 in January 2010, and the Wii U was the last to get it. The remaster, Darksiders: Warmastered Edition, arrived in late 2016, and a Wii U version was released on May 23, 2017. You play War, one of the Horsemen, who arrives on present-day Earth in the middle of a war between angels and demons. The Charred Council accuses him of starting the Apocalypse too early, strips him of his powers and sends him back bound to the Watcher, voiced by Mark Hamill.

It is a Zelda game wearing heavy armor, and nobody involved pretends otherwise. Players who love it say so openly: it borrows its dungeons and tools from Zelda and adds hack and slash fighting on top, and they like it for exactly that reason.

The original Arkham City tied with Skyrim as the highest-rated game of 2011 on Metacritic. The Wii U release, titled Batman: Arkham City - Armored Edition, was developed by WB Games Montréal and released on November 18, 2012, alongside the console's launch in North America. It has all the content from the earlier releases, plus a new Battle Armored Tech mode. Batman builds up energy during combat, and when you switch BAT Mode on, he hits a lot harder.

The GamePad lets you manage Batman's equipment and upgrades and view a map of the city without pausing. Nintendo World Report called it "the best way to experience Arkham City", though it found some new features a "nuisance". Players agree on the first part. They name it as one of the games that used the GamePad best.

Arkham Origins is the follow-up to Arkham City and the third main game in the series. WB Games Montréal took over from Rocksteady, which was busy with Batman: Arkham Knight. It came out on October 25, 2013, on the Wii U and the other consoles of the day. The setup is a great one. Black Mask has put a $50 million bounty on Batman, and eight killers come to Gotham to collect it.

The best new part is the crime scenes, where you can view virtual recreations and move back and forth through the crime's timeline to find clues. It was praised for its boss fights and storyline, and criticized for its general lack of innovation. Players rate it a step below Arkham City and still a very good time, with the map on the GamePad as a nice bonus.

The Cave was created by Ron Gilbert, the man behind Maniac Mansion and the first Monkey Island games. He built it on an idea he had carried around for nearly twenty years, about a cave that lures people in to explore their darker personality traits. Like Maniac Mansion, it has you pick three characters from a cast of seven. Each one has a trick of their own: the adventurer can swing across gaps with a rope, and the time traveler can phase through closed gates.

The cave itself talks, and it is the funniest character in the game. Up to three players can share it, one character each. Players call it a great puzzle platformer and love its cast. They also warn you it is short, and that seeing every character's story means replaying parts you have already solved.

Black Flag first came out for PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and Wii U in October 2013, a month before the newer consoles got it. For the first time in the series, naval exploration is a major part of the game. Edward captains the Jackdaw, a brig he captures from a Spanish fleet early on, and you spend half the game sailing between pirate towns and Spanish ports. Is there a better job in all of Assassin's Creed than pirate?

It sold over 11 million copies as of 2014 and won the Spike VGX 2013 award for Best Action Adventure Game. The modern-day story got a more mixed response, and nobody on a ship ever misses it. Players who bought it on the Wii U put more time into it than almost anything else they owned, and they say it plays great on the GamePad screen.

Assassin's Creed III is the fifth major game in the series, and it came to the Wii U in November 2012, the month the console launched. It was one of the first major video game releases to prominently feature Mohawk people. Ubisoft built a new engine, AnvilNext, for it. It also introduced naval gameplay to the series, where sailing your ship depends on the wind and the weather, and it lets you hunt wild animals in the Frontier.

Critics praised its ambitious scale, while criticism was directed at the mission design and the pacing. Players feel the same way. Plenty of them found it slow and complicated, and some needed convincing to try the next one. The ones who like it tend to name it with Black Flag, and to rate the pirate game higher.

Affordable Space Adventures was released on the Nintendo eShop on April 9, 2015. You fly a tiny spaceship on a budget holiday from UExplore, a company so sure of its own safety that its safety director was given an extended vacation. Things go wrong fast. The ship starts falling apart around you, one system after another, while the cheerful ads keep coming.

The trick is the GamePad. Its touch screen is the ship's control panel, with two different engines, a flashlight and scanner and a lot of switches to manage. Up to two more players can join with Wii Remotes and take over steering and scanning. It won "Best of PAX East 2015" from Destructoid before it even came out. Players describe it as "a fantastic adventure/puzzle game", and they say it is even better when you share the ship with friends.

Twilight Princess HD is a remaster of the GameCube version, made by the Australia-based Tantalus Media with Nintendo and released on the Wii U in March 2016. Most of the Zelda team was busy with Breath of the Wild, so Nintendo brought in an outside studio. It looks sharper, and it adds Amiibo support. The Wolf Link Amiibo unlocks the Cave of Shadows, a Wii U-only dungeon where Link fights waves of enemies as a wolf.

Other figures do odd things. The Ganondorf Amiibo makes Link take twice as much damage, which is a strange thing to pay for, but here we are. As a wolf, Link can dig holes and follow scent trails, and he moves faster than he does on foot. Players almost always recommend it in the same breath as The Wind Waker HD, as one of the games worth buying the console for.

Lego City Undercover started after Nintendo approached TT Games about making something for the Wii U, and development began in 2011. It was the first in the TT Games Lego series not to rely on a movie or comic license. You play Chase, a cop chasing a crook named Rex and his thugs around town, and the city hub was based on multiple real locations. It came out in March 2013, and the original Wii U version sold over 1.15 million copies.

Critics praised the story and the humour but did not like the long loading times. You will have time to make a sandwich. Players who loved it keep calling it underrated, and they mention the Nintendo jokes hidden around the city. It is also the game on this list most likely to be loved by someone's five-year-old.

Nintendo made The Wind Waker HD in 2013, after the team worked out it would take less than a year to remaster the whole game. It was released for the Wii U in September 2013, with high definition graphics and improved lighting. The GamePad's touchscreen serves as the map and inventory, and you can aim the bow by moving the GamePad around. The new Swift Sail makes crossing the Great Sea much faster, and the Triforce quest was streamlined.

When it first came out on the GameCube, the art direction proved divisive, and the game sold far below Ocarina of Time. Time has been kind to it. When new owners ask what to buy, the Zelda players point to first is usually this one, and only one game on this list is recommended more.

Breath of the Wild took five years to make, starting after Skyward Sword in 2011. The director Hidemaro Fujibayashi and the producer Eiji Aonuma set out to rethink the series, and they added detailed chemistry and physics engines that let you solve problems your own way. Monolith Soft, the Xenoblade studio, helped design the landscapes. It was released on March 3, 2017, as the last game Nintendo published for the Wii U and as a launch game for the Switch.

It won Game of the Year at the 2017 Game Awards and became the bestselling Zelda game. On the Wii U it is the same huge game, with the console's last big send-off attached. Players rank it with the best games the system ever got, and they recommend it more than any other Wii U adventure game.