Nobody buys a Wii U for the bad games, but it still got plenty of them. Cartoon and movie tie-ins, rushed ports and spin-offs that felt half finished all landed on Nintendo's home console, and a couple of them vanished from digital stores once their licenses ran out.
Not every game here is friendless. Devil's Third and Sonic Lost World both have players who had a lot of fun with them. The rest are the ones people warn each other about. Here are the 9 worst Wii U games.
9. Sonic Lost World (2013)
Sonic Lost World is a platformer by Sonic Team, made under an exclusive deal between Sega and Nintendo and released for the Wii U and the 3DS in October 2013. Sonic teams up with Doctor Eggman, normally his enemy, to stop an alien tribe called the Deadly Six. The levels are mostly tubes and cylinders, and a sprint button lets Sonic run up walls and hop over ledges. Critics picked on the controls and the Deadly Six, and liked the look and the sound. It averages just under 55 out of 100, the best score here.
Plenty of players say they had fun with it, which is why it only just makes the list. If you enjoy Sonic at his silliest, this is the gentlest way into the bad end of the console.
8. Devil's Third (2015)
Devil's Third is an over-the-top shooter that mixes military guns with ninja swordplay, the first game from Valhalla Game Studios, a company founded by former Tecmo staff including Tomonobu Itagaki. THQ agreed to publish it on other consoles and PC, then went bankrupt in 2013, and Nintendo ended up releasing it on the Wii U. Reviews in Japan were positive. Reviews everywhere else were not. North America got it last, on December 11, 2015. It averages 52 out of 100.
Players who played it mostly had more fun than its reviews promised. It is a messy, loud game with a lot of ideas, and that seems to be what the fans like about it.
7. Mario Tennis: Ultra Smash (2015)
Ultra Smash is the series' first game in HD, made by Camelot, the studio behind the earlier Mario Tennis games, and it adds Mega Mushrooms to the Chance Shots and Jump Shots. Critics criticized its lack of extra modes and its smaller roster, and many found it worse than the games before it. It averages 50 out of 100.
Players call it unfinished, with too few modes to play. The tennis itself is not what let people down, it is how little there is around it once you have played a few matches.
6. Transformers: Rise of the Dark Spark (2014)
Rise of the Dark Spark is the third and final game in the Cybertron series, after War for Cybertron and Fall of Cybertron, and it crosses over with the live-action films. Part of it is an alternative take on the events of Age of Extinction. Edge of Reality made it, WayForward did the 3DS version, and Activision released it in June 2014 on seven systems at once. Reviews were mixed to negative, though the 3DS version did better. It averages 54 out of 100.
The players who played it on the Wii U count it among the worst games they played on the console. Fans of the earlier Cybertron games felt the sting most, since those were the ones worth playing.
5. Kung Fu Panda: Showdown of Legendary Legends (2015)
Showdown of Legendary Legends is a platform fighter in the mould of Super Smash Bros., made by Vicious Cycle Software and published by Little Orbit. The Wii U version arrived on December 15, 2015, two weeks after the others in North America. It was the last licensed game Little Orbit released before the company moved on to original games, and it vanished from digital stores on January 1, 2019, when the license ran out. It averages 52 out of 100.
Players never bring it up. Nobody seems to have loved it, nobody seems to have hated it enough to complain, and it is now very hard to buy legally.
4. Adventure Time: Explore the Dungeon Because I Don't Know! (2013)
Explore the Dungeon is an action game by WayForward, made with the show's creator Pendleton Ward. Princess Bubblegum sends Finn and Jake into her Secret Royal Dungeon to find out who is behind a rash of thefts and kidnappings, because she thinks the cause lies down there. The Wii U version has the four-player co-op the 3DS version left out. Critics mostly faulted the repetitive gameplay, and the Wii U version scored 40 out of 100 on the biggest review aggregator. It was pulled from digital stores on March 31, 2018. It averages 41 out of 100.
Players barely mention it. A game with four-player co-op and a show people love should have left more of a mark than that.
3. Animal Crossing: Amiibo Festival (2015)
amiibo Festival is a board game in the style of Mario Party, made by Nintendo and NDcube. The board follows the months of the year like the main series, and the goal is to make your villager the happiest in town. You need amiibo figures to play it, mostly, and eight Animal Crossing figures came out alongside it. It was a critical and commercial failure. It averages 38 out of 100.
Fans of the series call it garbage. A smaller group defends it as a laid-back, easy board game for playing with friends. Both sides have a point, since it is calm and simple, and it asks you to buy figures to get the full thing.
2. The Walking Dead: Survival Instinct (2013)
Survival Instinct is a first-person shooter by Terminal Reality and a prequel to the TV series. Daryl and Merle Dixon make their way to Atlanta in the early days of the outbreak, and you can fight the walkers or sneak past them. It came out on the Wii U, the PS3, the Xbox 360 and PC in March 2013, to generally negative reviews that went after its graphics and its controls. It averages 33 out of 100.
Players who played it think it's awful. Fans of the show wanted a game about the Dixon brothers, and this was a rough way to find out what that would look like.
1. Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric (2014)
Rise of Lyric is an action-adventure game by Big Red Button, started in 2011 under the title Sonic Origins. It runs on CryEngine, which was not designed for the Wii U, so many ideas were cut or simplified, and the story was rewritten when Sega handed it to the writers of the Sonic Boom TV show. After release, players found that pausing during Knuckles' jump let him jump to infinite heights, past most of the game. Pause was the best move in it. Speedrunners finished it in under an hour, until a one gigabyte patch fixed the glitch in January 2015. It is widely regarded as one of the worst Sonic games ever made. It averages 27 out of 100, the lowest score here.
For players it's the obvious pick for the worst game on the Wii U. As one puts it: "This really isn't up for debate."
Which one to play
There you have it, the whole list of the worst Wii U games. Most of these nine are tie-ins and spin-offs, and a few of them are bad in ways that are fun to talk about afterwards.
If you want a laugh with friends, play Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric and pause during Knuckles' jump. If you want a bad game that still has fans, try Devil's Third or Sonic Lost World. And if you want to avoid a game entirely, skip The Walking Dead: Survival Instinct and Transformers: Rise of the Dark Spark.
