Well, Miiverse is closing. The strange, extremely Nintendo-y, and occasionally much-loved social network built into Wii U (and built onto 3DS) will be shuttered come November 7/8 (depending on where you live).
Aside from Super Mario Maker - which will receive a patch to continue allowing for level sharing - that change will seemingly unavoidably affect over 100 games, rendering Splatoon's busy, graffiti-filled Inkopolis hub silent, turning Super Mario 3D World or Bayonetta's Stamps even more into collectibles for the sake of collectibles, and putting a stop to creation sharing in Zelda: The Wind Waker's Tingle Bottle or the Art Academy games.
But some games are hurt more than others by the way they embraced Miiverse. While most used it as a cosmetic tool, or a way to add a little extra flair to an existing world, the following games built it into their systems, and the way you play. You only have until November to play these games the way they were meant to be played:
This might be the most widespread hit a game takes from the Miiverse shuttering. Not only will players no longer be able to share their level editor creations (no Super Mario Maker patch solutions being put in place here, it seems), but replays can't be posted, and tournaments can't be created. Oh, and the Miiverse stage won't display Miiverse posts anymore, which was sort of the point.
Deus Ex was probably the most loving third-party port Wii U got, integrating the GamePad far more into its ideas than a simple "here's the map" addition. A major part of that was the Infologs feature, which allowed players to write notes, sketch things and even record audio logs that other players could access. On top of that, leaving an Infolog made up one of the game's internal achievements, meaning you'll no longer be able to 100% it after November 7.
Mario Kart 8's alteration is a strange one - Miiverse's removal means replays can no longer be uploaded to... YouTube. That's because replays are posted to both Miiverse and YouTube simultaneously - apparently one can't come without the other.
Also known as Pullblox World in Europe, this eShop delight scored points with us for allowing custom level creation and sharing. Unfortunately, level sharing was done entirely through the World Pushmo Fair, a portal to the game's Miiverse community. The Fair is closing for good, which is a sadder sentence than I thought it would be when I started writing it.
This little puzzler's changes are similar to Pushmo's - sharing custom levels will no longer be possible - but they come with an added sting. Playing other people's shared levels (or them playing yours) also earns you stars, which are used as currency to be spent in the game's Workshop - without that income, there's no possible way of grabbing everything there is to buy.
Miiverse was a big enough part of this minigame collection that it got its own entry on the main menu. Miiverse Sketch was a sort of freeform Pictionary that allowed players to suggest short titles, then presented them to others to draw sketches of those titles in 60 seconds, then see how other people coped with the challenge. Seemingly none of this will work come November.
While Xenoblade's BLADE Reports - messages that could be sent between squad members - don't differ hugely from many other games' Miiverse-based comment systems, reports felt more integral to how you played with others. They could serve as hints on where to head for treasure, or meaningful communication when schedules weren't lining up. Losing that changes how playing with a full 32-man squad feels.
This is probably the saddest of the lot. I near constantly bang on about how NapNok's complex spaceship platformer used Wii U's odd ideas better than anyone (including Nintendo), and that includes Miiverse.
Without spoiling why, the finale of the game uses a single Miiverse interaction as a punchline to its entire storyline. It puts a beautiful button on an excellent game, and one that'll lose much of its efficacy after the change.
Interestingly, one of the game's producers told me even they don't know what will happen to the online version of the game once Miiverse closes. I implore you to go and play it before that happens.
Joe Skrebels is IGN's UK News Editor, and he's just going to use this space to tell you to play affordable Space Adventures again. Follow him on Twitter.
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