Online multiplayer would have been good and I agree monita is annoying and creepy [MOG]
The Wii U's party trick.
Nintendo Land is a fun game, an entertaining game, that’s built around the formula that made Wii Sports one of the most successful games of all-time. It’s a proof-of-concept social experience, designed to show what the Wii U GamePad is capable of achieving.
Nintendo Land is a compilation of twelve Nintendo-themed mini-games called Attractions. Six of them are single-player and the remaining six support up to four or five players.
Like everything about the Wii U, at first the Plaza, a theme-park styled menu system, could be daunting for the casual player. It isn’t as simple to navigate as Wii Sports and there are more than double the amount of options. On the plus side, it opens up a wide variety of activities played with the GamePad and Wii Remotes.
Best of all, a majority of the games are plain and simple fun. You'll endeavour to do better in the single-player attractions, and be determined to outwit your friends in the competitive battles.
Upon selecting your Mii to explore the Plaza, you’ll be introduced to an annoying robot called Monita. Be warned, she doesn’t shut up, and will persistently buzz around for the first hour or two when all you want to do is play the game. You can skip her instructions during the Attractions, but Monita insists on blabbering on whenever you return to the Plaza until there is absolutely nothing left to say.
Monita is the modern day equivalent of Clippy and is there to guide the most incompetent of newcomers. However, Nintendo really dropped the ball by failing to include an option to turn her off. Her robot-esque voice is meant to be cute, but I found it creepy -- very creepy.
Once you’ve finally evaded Monita’s desperate stare, you can jump into the thick of the action. Donkey Kong’s Crash Course and Balloon Trip Breeze are two of the best retro-inspired solo games genuinely reminiscent of their origins.
Some Octopus Dance monstrosity is less exciting, and holding the GamePad vertically to use the motion tilt in Captain Falcon’s Twister Race is a little too awkward to evolve into anything beyond a mini-game. It’s proof of a concept that doesn’t really work.
While there’s some fun to be had with the solo games, at its core Nintendo Land is a multiplayer affair. The six social games are split into three Team and three Competitive modes (the latter is multiplayer only).
These include the brilliant Luigi’s Ghost Mansion, which sees four players using Wii Remotes try and avoid a Boo that can only be seen on the GamePad Screen, controlled by a fifth player.
The Pikmin Adventure leaves us pinning for more and Pikmin 3, while Animal Crossing: Sweet Day follows the same engaging chase formula as Luigi and his Mansion.
Like Wii Sports, the twelve attractions are designed to demonstrate the potential of the Wii U GamePad, and do a great job. It’s without doubt the most responsive motion control of any platform, and the touchscreen is easy enough to use whilst your eyes are firmly fixed on the TV screen.
Most of the other launch games are at their best when the full game is played on the GamePad. Others, like ZombiU, have a firm grasp on the specifics of what they are trying to achieve with the innovative controller, and rightly so. Nintendo Land displays a diverse range of what is possible. For the moment, it’s the Wii U’s party trick.
Best of all, a majority of the games are plain and simple fun. You'll endeavour to do better in the single-player attractions, and be determined to outwit your friends in the competitive battles.
Nintendo Land’s aesthetics aren’t going to blow your socks off, but the simplistic graphics are crisp enough to remind us that the Wii U has made the step up to high definition. The sounds is more nostalgic, with some nice remixes from twelve very different Nintendo ventures. If anything from Nintendo Land made me want to dig out a retro version of the games these Attractions are based on, it’s the soundtrack.
Considering some of the better games are limited to multiplayer, it’s a bit disappointing that there is no online multiplayer. Granted, it mightn’t have worked for every game, as there’s an element of teamwork, but if someone tells Nintendo about real voice chat, there’s no reason to be physically sitting next to each other anymore. Online functionality allows Miis to roam around the Plaza, but this isn’t all that exciting.
Nintendo Land isn’t Wii Sports, but it’s the must have offline social game this new generation. The twelve Attractions do a commendable job of demonstrating what the Wii U and its GamePad are capable of and offer enough content to keep you playing much longer than you had ever envisioned. Nintendo Land is at its best as a multiplayer game with five players, and that’s exactly how it should be played.
By Ben Salter
8.0/10
kangle4 said: I was surprised by the amount of content it has.
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