Written by LvlUpUK writer Andrew Knight

Nintendo opens a new theme park.

Nintendo land opens its doors to the patient public and shows off a few of its new rides. With games like Animal Crossing, Fruit Panic and Luigis Mini Mansion, you may never want to go home. Though don’t worry as you don’t have to go anywhere since Nintendo land comes to you!

Nintendo land is a collection of mini games set in a Nintendo universe where you and mates can team up or play against each other to earn bragging rights. Now I got the chance to play 3 out of the 7 games on show for Nintendo land, which were Luigis Mansion, Animal Crossing, and Zelda.

In Animal Crossing, four people used the Wii remotes to go around the main screen picking up fruit off of trees whilst avoiding the guards who are controlled by a 5th player using the Wii U Game pad. The game is won if the timer runs out and all four people are still standing or if the guards catch you too many times. Luigis Mansion will have four of you walking around with a torch working together on the main screen to spot a ghost and take away his/her energy with the torch. The ghost controlled on the Wii U game pad has to grab you and knock you out and must do this to all four of you before you revive each other. The winner is either the ghost if he catches everyone or the Luigis if they stun and capture the ghost. The last game I got a chance to play was Zelda, now this was a game where your and your mates work together to complete objectives and fight off enemies with the person using the Wii U game pad being the archer and the others being warriors, this was kind of on rails based as you couldn’t move around but you had to use your shield and swipe accordingly. If one of you loses all your hearts then its game over so be careful.

All of the games in Nintendo land seem quite easy to pick up and play and straight forward enough to know what you’re doing. The controls are very simple, with not many buttons needed to get your head around. Graphically it’s a little lacklustre I found, the usual ‘Nintendo Charm’ was there but nothing that really shows off the potential of this new console. Most of it looked like Wii graphics only marginally sharper. The music had a typical Nintendo feel to it so if you like the usual Nintendo standard score of music then you’ll be happy in Nintendoland.

There’s plenty to see and do in Nintendoland, but most of the games were multiplayer based and pretty simple so may begin to grow stale after a few goes. Dare we say it? NintendoLand seems to be a new Mario Party. But overall we can’t really complain. This is what Nintendo does best and I can see lots of people buying this as their launch game. With plenty of ‘tendo action plus the usual characters and surroundings, not to mention if you have a group of mates then there is plenty of fun to be had.

So the sun shines brightly over the glory that is Nintendoland but for how long that is the question?

Platform; Wii U