Nintendo Land (Wii U) [E3 2012]

If someone put the words Nintendo and Land together before now it would've instantly put an image in my head, it would be a theme park, a Nintendo based theme park, a Nintendo Land if you will, with rides and zones based on loveable game characters, there would be a Hyrule zone where you go on a Zelda themed rollercoaster, buy a shield and sword whilst drinking potions, a Mushroom Kingdom zone where there's a water ride involving going down pipes and rescuing a princess, a jungle zone that had a runaway mine cart ride with Donkey Kong. What I wouldn't picture however is exactly what Nintendo announced, something that infact isn't a land but is more of virtual hub to play some mini games that have had loveable characters mercilessly tacked on to make them appealing whilst you learn how to use the Wii U.

There are 12 games in all including;

Takamaru's Ninja Castle
This seems to be a game designed to get you used to touch and motion controls where you flick stars into little paper ninjas whilst the tablet is in portrait mode.

Donkey Kong's Crash Course
this is a maze based game entirely on the touchscreen controller, you guide a mine cart down to a fruit at the bottom of the screen, you tilt the controller to again momentum and tilt the opposite way to slow down.

Animal Crossing: Sweet Day
A similar layout to the Luigi game, players pick enough fruit to win form trees around the town whilst the touchpad player controls guards to capture them.

The Legend of Zelda: Battle Quest
Taking place in a patchwork Zelda world with enemies made of cloth and cardboard this is an on-the-rails battling system with two players slashing swords with wiimotes and a third shooting a bow and arrow with the touchscreen.

Luigi's Ghost Mansion
This is a top down maze that teaches you how the multiplayer system works on the Wii U. One player uses the touchpad to play as the ghost and can see the other player on the television screen and thus go after them. the other players who all use standard wiimotes have a torch and have to sense where the ghost is base don rumbles and seeing it with the torch.

These games are joined by an F-zero based racing game amongst others.

Overall as you can tell from the video it's not that exciting, think WiiSports for a new console, fun the first time you play it but after that you'll never touch it again and the tacking on of nintendo mascots is simply unneeded, there's no benefit for it other than hoping you'll play it.

Overall i give it a resounding "Meh!"
(sidenote: Nintendo, don't have a translator speaking over a Japanese man at the same volume that the Japanese man is talking, I have no clue what either of them saying, it's like they're arguing across two different languages)