Day 25 of 100 Happy Gaming Days: Nintendo Land

Spent a majority of the night playing this one so this blog is a little late.

This was the free game we chose from the Mario Kart 8 promotion, and if you haven't claimed yours yet what on earth on are you waiting for?! We chose Nintendo Land as we wanted to boost our library of offline multiplayer titles, and the Wii U has plenty, but we were heading over to my parents and thought this had a great selection of mini-games that everyone could enjoy.

You can tell the game has been purely designed to show off the capabilities of the Wii U, something that Nintendo Land does very well however, a lot of the time games like these are fun for five minutes then left to gather to dust. Nintendo have really pushed the boat out in the hope that Nintendo Land has the same level of re-playability as Wii Sports, and while I don't think they've succeeded to that extent, I'm certain this is a game that will always be considered whenever you're playing multiplayer with your friends and family.

I'm going to detail some of the mini-games that we played last night but in total there are 12 games, with 6 supporting simultaneous multiplayer, and the other 6 having alternate multiplayer.

Luigi's Ghost Mansion- A great little ghostbusting game that will have many players shrieking with terror, quite surprising when you consider how adorable this game is. One player controls a ghost via the Gamepad and has to hunt down the 'busters before they can fry him with their torches. The only clue that the 'busters have of a nearby spectre is the chilling rumble of their Wii Remotes, so better be quick with those torches or your ghost busting days are over.

Animal Crossing Sweet Days- There's trouble in the world of Animal Crossing and only the Gamepad controlled police officers can sort things out. Players have to work together to capture a set number of sweeties before the local constabulary can come and throw them in jail. The only problem is pigging out on all those sweets diminishes your ability to run, so consider your diet otherwise the fuzz will put you away.

Mario Chase- This was by far our most favourite game of the night as it's completely bonkers. The player with the Gamepad controls Mario and has to elude a group of Toads until the timer runs out. It's a simple hide 'n' seek affair but Nintendo have applied some great level design to make this one a big hit. There are areas where the Toads can gain higher ground so they can seek out Mario and guide their team to victory, but Mario can use power-ups to evade his mushroom shaped captors, so the Toads have to work together. And best of all when the game is over you get to see a little replay of how close the Toads came to snaring a little Italian plumber.