One of my Christmas presents this year was a $20 eShop card, so I thought I’d be able to get two $9.99 games from the Wii U eShop. Not so. The eShop is different from the Wii Shop before it: Rather than using Wii Points, it uses actual dollar amounts. That alone is not the problem…but I have an issue with the way tax is charged. Tax is charged when you purchase a game, not when the initial gift card is bought. So the tax comes out of your balance.
The problem with that is that games are generally priced in multiples of $5.00 ($9.99, $14.99, $19.99). By charging tax this way instead of at the time the card is purchased, they are ensuring your $20 card is not worth $20. If you want $20 worth of games (two $9.99 games for example), you are forced to buy at least $30 in credit! Yes, you’ll still have the remaining balance in your account, but you can’t just pay $22 to cover the cost. This way, they make sure you have a remaining balance. And to use that balance, you’ll more than likely need to buy even more credit. This may not be a big deal for those who will be using the eShop frequently, but it’s a pain for people who want to occasionally buy a game or two. This is not a very consumer-friendly change.
The Wii Shop did not work this way. On Wii, a $20 card would be charged tax at the time of purchase, not when you go to download a game. So the card would cost around $21.50 or so, depending on your local tax rate, but you would get the $20 worth of Wii Points you were expecting. So if nothing else, this is a heads-up and a warning to those planning future eShop purchases: Be prepared to overspend.
I did use $10.76 of my gift card balance to buy Nano Assault Neo. It’s a two-stick shooter on a microscopic scale. Your ship is extremely tiny…in fact, each level takes place on a single cell. You have to shoot 90% of the creatures on each cell to purify the cell and clear the level. You can move completely around each cell, much like Mario running on a planetoid in Super Mario Galaxy.
The action is pretty intense, with enemies, lasers, projectiles, and mini-explosions happening all around you. The graphics are impressive…and shiny. It definitely looks good, although sometimes you’ll get some awkward camera angles. You can grab power-ups and credits, which you can use to upgrade your ship between levels.
It’s fairly fun, but each time I seem to die on the third level (Epsilon 3). I’m going to need some more practice.
So my file has all five stars and 94 exits on it now. And they’re the shiny stars too, since I never used the annoying Super Guide. Wow, I hated the annoying doorbell sound of that Super Guide block. I hope they let you disable it completely (so it doesn’t even show up) in future games.
I’ll still need to play around with the Challenges and Boost Rush modes more, since I’ve barely played them at all. They seem to be all about doing things as fast as possible, like a speed run. So it comes down to memorizing the exact route to take to shave a tenth of a second off your time, and performing everything flawlessly. That type of thing doesn’t really appeal to me, but I’ll give those modes another chance before I write my review of the game.
