Game: Nintendoland
Console: Nintendo WiiU
Publisher: Nintendo
Release Date: 18th November 2012
Nintendoland was launched, alongside the WiiU as a pack-in game with the premium selection. The game exhibits many new features of the WiiU gamepad as well as providing a new take on some famous Nintendo franchises. For the purposes of this review I'll be writing a little about each individual minigame as well as rating them individually, followed by a summary, as really this is little more than a collection of minigames, held together by the central plaza of the "amusement park" which is populated by Miis, and has portals to take the player to each minigame, as well as trophies earned by the player upon redeeming in-game coins.
I'll start with the Competitive minigames as this is what the game does best; the first of these is Mario Chase, which pits the gamepad user (who plays as Mario) against up to four opponents whose goal is to catch Mario within the allotted time (as various colours of Toad). The game dynamic works well with the gamepad user being able to see an overall map of the play area, and so the movements of his opponents also. The chasing players have only their proximity meter to follow in order to catch Mario. This is best played with 5 players, as any less tends to tip thegame into Mario's favour, and playing with 2 players is just downright unfair.
Every now and then an invincibility powerup appears in the centre of play, which can give Mario a burst of speed to help him evade the other players. In the case of a spare player slot, the computer plays as a Yoshi bot, which barks the colour of the sector Mario is currently in, to even the odds (although not completely).
Mario Chase: 7/10 - Its fun with all 5 players, but there's only 3 different courses and it gets repetitive, even when switching between chasing and being chased.
Without 5 human players, the Luigi's are replaced by clones of Monita (the robotic park guide) which are less than helpful in finding the ghost. Like most of the competitive games, the dynamic is good between the gamepad and the tv screen but the difficulty is somewhat off without a full set of human players.
Luigi's Ghost Mansion - 8/10 - There's more to do here than in Mario Chase, and the possibility for both sides to win through offensive action. Also the selection of maps is better even if there's the same number.
Animal Crossing: Sweet Day is the final competitive game on Nintendoland. The object of the game from the players with Wiimotes is to get a certain number of candies into the goal areas without being tackled by the guards who are controlled by the gamepad player. The more candies a player is carrying, the slower they run from the guards. Both guards are controlled independently, one by the right analog stick, and one by the left analog stick, and so it takes a bit of skill on the part of the gamepad operator to be competitive in this minigame.
As with Luigi's Ghost Mansion, the gamepad player can win after 3 tackles on the other players. In contrast to the other games, the targets are set lower for wiimote users without the full set of players, so this probably has the most balanced difficulty of the 3 competitive games.
Animal Crossing: Sweet Day - 8/10 Pretty fun with any amount of players, this is quite possibly the best of the competitive games.
So that's it for the competitive games, they're the most fun with the maximum number of players on the whole, and the computer isn't ever really a good substitute for a human player. With good gameplay concepts featuring the gamepad and wiimotes, this is where Nintendoland succeeds the most in showing off the screen feature of the gamepad, mixing it with franchise favourites.
The Legend Of Zelda: Battle Quest is a team game (although all of the team games can also be played alone, unlike the competitive ones), where the player(s) can choose to use a bow, or a sword to defeat enemies in a sort of on-rails shooter/slasher game, with visuals resembling a sort of felt/plushie world. There are a lot of levels for this minigame and it's one of the more rounded ones in the game, with different types of enemies and some good difficulty progression. Up to 4 players can play at once in team mode, (although if you wish to wield a sword, you'll need a motionplus controller), but even just using single player, there's a degree of depth to this minigame.
Legend Of Zelda: Battle Quest - 8/10
Pikmin Adventure is the next team game I'll be looking at, the objective is much like the original Pikmin series, although somewhat simplified; the player must escape by getting to a rocket, which is a distance away, past various enemies. Players can level up, and use bombs and their leaf attacks to damage enemies in their path. This minigame feels somewhat unrewarding however, the level ups that you get reset from level to level and the difficulty is too easy for it to make a good strategy/fighting minigame, yet there are too many enemies and not enough open space to make it about exploration.
Having another player on your team for this game doesn't make too much difference either, save for the amount of players attacking. You still have pikmin at your disposal, and there's no real double team moves either. Added to this, there's not much use for the gamepad's screen or features in this minigame, so it feels less of a new concept than the other games, and more like a watered down Pikmin.
Pikmin Adventure - 5/10
Metroid Blast is the last of the team games up for review on Nintendoland before we get into the solo minigames. Again requiring the use of a MotionPlus wiimote for multiplayer, I wasn't able to test this out as fully as I would have liked. From what I played of the single player campaign, its a shooter that makes the most of the tilt-view capability of the WiiU gamepad. The fact the it doesn't have to face the television to display any part of the game landscape is indeed rather clever, and aids gameplay somewhat. From what I have seen of the team play, it looks like another game that is better played with company, and there's a lot of levels to get through, so there's depth to it as well.
Metroid Blast - 8/10
The Team games are a strange mix of casual relaxed gaming such as Pikmin, and the more action based shooting/fighting elements of Zelda and Metroid. While the Pikmin game seems to stay closer to its game's roots, Zelda and Metroid seem to have more depth from having chosen a single part of gameplay and expanding on it. Overall, there's some fun to be had with these, especially with friends.
Yoshi's Fruit Cart is the first of the solo games I'm going to review. Another game highlighting the fact that there's two screens that the player can use whilst using the WiiU, the aim is to draw a path for yourself to collect the fruit (only visible on the tv screen), on the WiiU gamepad's screen. Whilst not a terrible idea, its something that gets boring quickly, even with the introduction of holes and traps on the screen. Save for park coins, there's no real reason to play very deeply into this minigame, which only really exists to tell you that there's 2 usable screens.
Yoshi's Fruit Cart - 4/10
Possibly the worst minigame in the game, Octopus Dance doesn't add much to the experience of Nintendoland. It shows off the dual analog sticks, and the fact that the gamepad can be tilted to control the player also, but so does exploring the plaza. I enjoy rhythm games usually but this feels like a poor excuse for one, it's not very difficult, the only real challenge coming from being turned around in game so that left and right are reversed. It's also one of two games to not be based on a fairly successful Nintendo franchise, (it's supposedly based on a Game and Watch) which should have left it more freedom to be a better game.
Octopus Dance - 3/10
Donkey Kong's Crash Course is a minigame using the motion sensing capability of the gamepad to guide the player's cart from one end of an obstacle course to another. Tilting the gamepad left or right increases its momentum and there are various obstacles requiring the press of the L/R buttons or a quick blow into the microphone. It also uses the dual screen element, with the TV providing a map and gamepad showing the player the smaller details of the part of the course they are on. There's quite a few courses for the player to complete and it controls well, mixing the elements of the classic Nintendo game Donkey Kong, with the new concept of the WiiU.
Donkey Kong's Crash Course - 7/10
Takemaru's Ninja Castle is a minigame based on the relatively unknown (at least here in Britain) famicom game "Nazo no Murasame Jo". In this game the player sends throwing stars out into a seemingly origami like scene, using the gamepad to determine the speed of the throw and its angle. Rather more satisfying than aiming a Wiimote, this game demonstrates potential for later games to use this sort of projectile missile system. There's a decent amount of levels in the minigame, and there are rewards for accuracy and defeating every opponent onscreen in a level.
Takemaru's Ninja Castle - 8/10
Captain Falcon's Twister Race is the penultimate solo game I'll be taking a look at; based on F-Zero, the WiiU gamepad is used in an almost unnecessary way to steer the vehicle. Instead of using the analog sticks as perhaps might suit a racing game, the gamepad is tilted to steer left and right and avoid obstacles, on the whole it feels slow, and as there's no multiplayer, highscore is the only type of competitive racing you are able to do with this minigame.
Captain Falcon's Twister Race - 6/10
Balloon Trip Breeze is the final minigame in the set, on Nintendoland. To control the balloon in flight the player has to slide the stylus across the gamepad screen in order to create wind. There's a nice gentle feel to this minigame, and it seems to control well, the only real problem being the lack of other features. There's a few things to do, but like other minigames, it can quickly lose your attention.
Balloon Trip Breeze - 6/10
So, having talked about all of the minigames, there are a few aspects of the game as a whole that I haven't mentioned. Graphically everything is modeled on a very arty theme, with the Legend Of Zelda game featuring a lot of felt like scenery, and Ninja Castle's Origami theme. While Nintendo could have chosen more "realistic" looking features for the minigames, to show off the new HD capabilities of the WiiU, the theme gives the game an overall feel to it, one of calm and paying homage to the games on which each minigame is based.
Musically as well there's a lot of themes which pay tribute to their original series or game, this is easy to miss in a game with so many things to do. Gameplay-wise also, even the ill-advised games control well, the game as a whole feels like more of a means to show off the WiiU's features than anything else. Perhaps the next closest thing is a nostalgia trip for Nintendo fans. The game's unlockables are also plentiful, a pachinko-esque feature is used to decide how many coins it takes for items to be unlocked.
Difficult as it is, to judge Nintendoland as a videogame whole, rather than the collection of minigames which show off the new features of the WiiU and gamepad, that it is, I think the easiest comparison is to that of Microgame collections such as WarioWare or Rhythm Heaven. Whilst a lot of the minigames here have more depth than anything either of the aforementioned games could claim, the overall quality of each is much more wayward, and although there are some decent experiences, as a whole Nintendoland doesn't feel like it can claim to be much more than a party game, at best.
The multiplayer experiences are better than the single player experiences all round (something perhaps intented by Nintendo with their new focus on community gaming). There are some fun moments to be had, but its more of a taste of what's to come and how other games might use the WiiU gamepad to great effect.
Rating: 73/100
Grade: C
No comments:
Post a Comment