Wii U Party for WiiU has been announced by Nintendo & developer NDCube as the next major Nintendo game to focus on controlling Mii’s in a casual party game environments. This time it is basically “Mii Mario Party”, as the game delivers a virtual boardgame that you can play with up to four friends, all of whom play as their Mii characters.
As they make their way around the game board, you will compete in a variety of Mario Party-style mini-games. It is the sequel to the Wii game “Wii Party”, and will feature a number of those same minigames in upgraded fashion.
However this game’s major hook is the ability to play classic tabletop family boardgames with two players using one WiiU GamePad. You put the GamePad on the table like a game board, and two players, one sitting on each end of the GamePad, can play as it if was a boardgame.
Awesome and innovative.
This is a new concept and one that Nintendo prototyped and demo’d as a possible use for the WiiU Tablet Controller when the system was first unveiled. It’s nice to finally see it being implemented in a real videogame. This is another “quickie” by Nintendo, but the kind of game that appeals to everyone and will surely be a high system seller.
Official Synopsis
It’s Time to Party with WiiU
Enjoy board games and mini-games on the TV, play familiar tabletop games using the Wii U GamePad controller or transform your living room into a game show floor. No matter what kind of party you’re throwing, Wii Party U offers something for everyone.
Key Wii Party U Features:
* Everyone at the party competes with his or her own Mii characters in a medley of party games.
* Experience new ways to play with others using the WiiU GamePad. For example, in “Lost-and-Found Square,” imagine you are the person holding the GamePad and you are lost in a playground. Your goal is to describe your surroundings based on what you see on the GamePad in order to help the other players find your location.
* Post your impressions of game sessions to Miiverse. You can rate your performance by adding a one-to five-star ranking after the match is over.
* When you want to leave the TV behind, you can choose to play exclusively on the WiiU GamePad with an array of 15 tabletop games, ranging from foosball to baseball, for two-player competitive and cooperative play.
* In addition to the main games that everyone can play together, there are 80 minigames that can be played on your own. These include the Tabletop Minigame that can be played with the Wii U GamePad only.
Xenoblade Chronicles 2 or “X” for WiiU was Nintendo’s E3 2013 Nintendo Direct bone to hardcore RPG players, offering an amazing looking title in development by Monolith Soft, the developers behind Xenosaga and Xenoblade Chronicles for Wii.
This sequel looks like it will be more of the awesome Action RPG gameplay that hardcore gamers loved with the original Wii game, and will feature massive worlds for players to explore, vast vistas and beautiful graphics. Only now, badass looking pilotable mechs are part of the action!
Xenosaga’s character designer Kunihiko Tanaka is working on this game. It also features Hiroyuki Sawano doing the X’s score, who’s composed many popular Japanese music for TV shows and anime.
This is definitely one to keep an eye on. No solid details yet, or even an official title. Although I’m kinda hoping they keep the game name as simply “X”!
The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker HD is arguably the game I am most excited for this holiday. Hitting in October, it gives an HD sheen, and a slight update, to one of my favorite games of all time.
Two new features were revealed for The Wind Waker HD. First of all, making use of Miiverse, players can visually send messages to other online players in a super unique way via a new “Message In A Bottle” system called the “Tingle Bottle”. Literally, you write or draw a message, Link puts it in a bottle, and then throws it into the ocean. That Message In A Bottle will then wash up ashore on the islands as other players are playing the game, if they are connected online to MiiVerse. Once they pick up the bottle they can see the message, picture, artwork, hint, etc. that you left! You can even attach an in-game screenshot using the Pictograph and can finally share these shots online with other players via MiiVerse, even putting the photo in the bottle as part of your message!
Send messages in a bottle with the new Tingle Bottle item!
This is an ingenious way to do MiiVerse! Instead of simply sharing messages on the MiiVerse “message board” or seeing the messages pop up on the overworld like speech bubbles, you actually get them delivered as a “Message In A Bottle”. Considering the seafaring adventure that is Wind Waker, this makes perfect sense and fits into the world like a glove! Very awesome!
Nintendo also revealed that they have upgraded the Tingle Tuner item. The original game used the Game Boy Advance GameCube Link cable and a second player could help out the first player by using the second screen on the GBA and controlling Tingle. This allowed them to sell items to Link, give Link the ability to float for a brief period of time, destroy enemies by dropping Tingle Bombs and purchasing items and healing potions for Link with Rupees. Tingle could also see a full map and reveal secrets otherwise inaccessible. Naturally, as one would expect, all of those features return in the new game but are now pulled off by using the WiiU GamePad instead. It sounds like new features or expanded features may have also been added. Exactly how different it has been changed though will have to wait until the game’s release.
Satoru Iwata also revealed that The Wind Waker HD has made a number of tweaks to the gameplay to make this the definitive Wind Waker experience. For example, players can now speed up time as they are sailing, allowing you to get across the ocean much quicker. The slow pace of the Ocean Sailing, especially early on in the game, was one of the chief complaints of Wind Waker (as well as the long drawn out fetch quest towards the end), and it seems like Nintendo is doing what it can to clean it up and making this section less of a chore. Good news!
The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker for the GameCube was one of my favorite games of all time. So I can’t wait to play this new prettied up version!
Synopsis
One of the Greatest Adventures of All Time Returns in HD
The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker makes its glorious return on the WiiU console with gorgeous HD graphics and enhanced game features. In this timeless classic with a unique and colorful “toon-shaded” art style, players guide Link as he sets out on the massive Great Sea to find his kidnapped sister. Players will sail the seas in search of lost islands, fight fearsome enemies, take on mighty bosses and seek out the legendary Triforce.
Key Zelda: Wind Waker HD Features:
* The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker HD features 1080p visuals that will immerse players in the game like never before.
* With the WiiU GamePad controller, it’s easy to manage your inventory and view maps.
* Players will enjoy cruising the open sea with a new sail that gives them 50 percent more speed, bringing them to their next destination and action-packed adventure that much faster.
* Once players receive the “Tingle Bottle” item, they can connect with others by posting comments to Miiverse. Through this new feature, comments or screenshots posted on Miiverse will wash up on the shores of other players’ games. It’s like finding a message in a bottle.
* Players can also take and store more pictures with an improved Pictograph and then post them on Miiverse.
* If the television is already in use, this game can been played off-TV on the Wii U GamePad.
The game is made by the same developers who brought you games like Viewtiful Joe, Okami, God Hand and Bayonetta, and looks mightily impressive and awesome.
It’s somewhat similar to Pikmin, but you control superheroes who, much like Captain Planet, combine their powers to summon new attacks and devastate foes. It makes heavy use of the WiiU GamePad and is a definite core game that hardcore gamers will love.
Pikmin with superheroes!
Official Synopsis
Strength in Numbers
As Wonder Red, leader of the Wonderful 100, you must unite your mob of heroes to morph into powerful transformations such as a fist, sword, glider or gun to battle aliens throughout Blossom City. It’s up to you and your team of superheroes to take on colossal robots and alien masterminds bent on obliterating everything in their path.
The superhero powers in action!
The Wonderful 101 Key Features:
* Unite your horde of heroes to morph into powerful weapons to crush the invaders or to synthesize into bridges, chains and other objects that help you make it through the world’s different environments.
* Clobber bad guys with deep and engaging combat. String together combos, dynamically switch between Unite Morphs, defend and evade alien attacks and rack up points to earn the best grades and rewards.
* Explore each stage to find helpless citizens and recruit them to join your army of heroes. The more heroes you gather, the more powerful your Unite transformations will become.
* Fight alongside friends in five-player local co-op multiplayer. Each player controls a Wonder One character and pummels enemies with a unique Unite transformation.
* At the in-game shop, you can spend the valuable O Parts you earn fighting aliens to upgrade or buy entirely new Unite Morphs.
Pokemon XY is coming this October 12th worldwide exclusively for 3DS. Amidst all the craziness at E3 2013 surrounding PS4 and XboxOne, you can’t forget about the massiveness that is Pokemon.
New Pokemon games are coming soon, and this is the first Pokemon game to be rendered in polygonal 3D (with stereoscopic 3D graphics) and the first core game in the series to appear on the Nintendo 3DS.
I don’t really have much to say having not played a core Pokemon game since Pokemon Yellow, but fans definitely love the series and will certainly want to get their grubby hands on this latest version.
All-new Pokemon creatures!
Many new features and updates have been added, among the most important including an all-new Fairy Type of Pokemon and the ability to pet your Pokemon much like in Nintendogs to further bond with them.
Sonic Lost World looks absolutely beautiful. WiiU-exclusive.
Sonic Lost World made it’s gameplay debut at E3 2013 and the Nintendo Direct presentation which revealed the first solid details on this upcoming Nintendo-exclusive platformer for WiiU & 3DS.
Sonic Lost World takes Sonic in a completely new direction, with a game world and platforming style that resembles Super Mario Galaxy. The game does not have as much of an emphasis on speed, but instead on slower-paced platforming, although there are some sections where you will speed forward through F-Zero like tunnels and fly through the sky.
The racing speedy sections of Sonic Lost World.
The courses look like a mix of Super Mario Galaxy, where you walk around planet-like objects, tunnels, up walls and the like, and the level design of something like F-Zero, definitely a great mix. Read the rest of this entry »
Pikmin 3 is nearly upon us, but was still featured at E3 2013 in the Nintendo Direct presentation.
New to Pikmin 3 are a number of new multiplayer modes that really take the strategic depth and fun of Pikmin to new levels.
Looks awesome!
You’ll have to compete with another player to try and kill all of their Pikmin or try and collect enough Fruit in a certain order in a unique Bingo style. Where the first player to find all the fruit in a certain order (based on his game board) wins. It sounds more boring than it looks, once you see it in action you’ll be a believer and see how awesome it is.
It looks like a heck of a lot of fun.
Sadly Pikmin 3 will NOT contain a co-op multiplayer mode, or online multiplayer. This is an extremely disappointing fact, but to be expected from Nintendo (sadly).
Zelda: A Link Between Worlds is the official title of “Link to the Past 2” for 3DS, the next Zelda game that is a direct sequel, and in some ways remake, of The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past for SNES. But with all-new snazzy and incredible stereoscopic 3D graphics!
The Legend of Zelda 3DS: A Link Between Worlds, as previously reported, has an amazing new mechanic where Link can turn into a 2D drawing that paints itself onto walls, where he can then navigate across the wall! This effect looks absolutely amazing and the puzzles that Nintendo can dream up using this mechanic will hurt your brain even briefly seeing it in action.
What’s unclear and a bit interesting plus disappointing (not for me though) is the fact that The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds is a re-imagined sequel to Zelda: A Link to the Past, the SNES classic from 1992. It is set in the same world as the original game, but features a new storyline, new mechanics, new puzzles, and basically looks to remix A Link to the Past. A fact that some people find disappointing, as you’ll be retreading very familiar ground for the most part.
2D Link YES! Sooo creative!
However it IS an all-new game, and thus the game will feature all-new elements including new dungeons. Whether other additions include new weapons and items, new enemies, new bosses or new characters remains to be seen. What we do know, is that the game features many of the same elements from the previous games, including the same dungeons (albeit likely remixed), same weapons (Bow & Arrow, Bomb, Magic Hammer/Mallet, Master Sword), same enemies, same bosses (including the giant worm boss), etc.
How much of this content is new? How much of this content is remixed? And how much of this content is literally simply a stereocopic 3D graphical upgrade of the same exact dungeon/overworld layout, weapons, items, etc. of the original A Link to the Past? This question remains unknown.
One definite change is the Magic Meter. Instead of picking up potions to refill it, it refills on its own gradually.
Classic dungeon GET!
However, either way you slice it, returning to the world of A Link to the Past is an extremely exciting proposition. Boosted by the fact that the game features incredible stereoscopic 3D effect that take advantage of the 3DS features like few games before it. And the 3D really has to be seen (in 3D particularly) to be believed. Once you see it in person, you WILL be impressed.
The viewpoint is the same as the original, but features new tweaks that really make you feel like you are in the world. Bones thrown at your shield will fly up towards the camera/screen for example. Additionally, dropping and getting bounced up to higher or lower levels of a dungeon, seeing enemies that pop up towards you… It all looks extremely impressive.
Less impressive, to me, is the art-style, which doesn’t look as cool as the 2D style of the original, which almost had a painterly, cartoony look to it. This new game features polygonal graphics, that don’t look nearly as artistic. However it features fully orchestrated remixes of the classic Zelda: Link to the Past music, which is awesome! That fact alone makes up for the less-artistic graphic style.
Having said that, the ability to turn into a literal Link painting (which looks like the Link from the stained-glass window artwork in Zelda: The Wind Waker) and walk along walls is ABSOLUTELY GENIUS. That mechanic and new hook sells the game itself, and I can’t wait to see the way Nintendo’s master designers, including Shigeru Miyamoto, use 2D Link!
This game will be released this November 2013!
Official Synopsis
The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds is a new game with a new storyline set in world of the Super NES classic The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past.
Key Features of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds:
* A daring adventure awaits Link in Hyrule, where he can use his new ability to become a “drawing” and move along walls of dungeons. This opens up new ways to explore and puzzle elements that give Link access to locations he could not otherwise reach.
* The game brings this top-down, 2D world to life with elevation and depth made possible by the Nintendo 3DS system’s stunning stereoscopic 3D visuals that reinvent classic Zelda gameplay at a constant 60 frames per second.
* Players can Use the touch screen to touch and drag the items/weapons from the Equipment Window and switch the items assigned to the X and/or Y buttons.
Super Mario 3D World for WiiU has been announced via Nintendo’s E3 2013 Nintendo Direct presentation which showed off footage of the all-new non-side-scrolling Mario game.
This game expands on last year’s 3DS title “Super Mario 3D Land”. As the name suggests, it is not “Land” (like “Super Mario Land”) but “World” (Like Super Mario World), and thus is a step-up and giant expansion of what we saw on the 3DS, this time on the WiiU with console-lized HD graphics and cool new features.
The biggest feature of Super Mario 3D World is the addition of Peach, Toad and Luigi as completely separate playable characters all with their own separate abilities modeled after Super Mario Bros. 2! Not only that, but you can play as… wait for it…. CAT MARIO! The Cat Suit allows you to transform into Cat Mario, Cat Luigi, Cat Peach or Cat Toad with some really cool new abilities.
I love the way you can leap between platforms as a Cat!
The Cat Suit allows you to run very fast, quickly “pounce” and shoot downward towards platforms as you leap, catlike, from hill to hill, and best of all, the ability to climb walls! While the Cat Suit sounds completely ridiculous at first, once you see it in action you will cheer. It really makes the game look so much funner than it would without it and makes the platforming pop even more above and beyond standard Mario.
Get a much more in-depth view of the game with this Developer Interview.
Other than that, this game looks like Super Mario 3D Land, just not in stereoscopic 3D. The viewpoint is the same as in the 3DS game, and Shigeru Miyamoto emphasized that this game will have a greater focus on Pipes and Warp Pipes in this game, and you can actually see inside the pipe as your three other buddies go through them.
Remember these levels? Now with four players!
All in all, Super Mario 3D Land is a nice surprise, although not as huge of a leap for a new non-side-scrolling Mario game than say, the first time we saw Super Mario Galaxy. In that sense it is a bit disappointing, but once you see the game in action and realize that you get to play through it with four of your buddies on the couch in local multiplayer (will it support online multiplayer? We can only hope!), you will be hard pressed not to have a smile on your face. I know I sure did! Can’t wait to play it, and definitely more excited for this game than New Super Mario Bros. U.
It should be noted that this game and the new Donkey Kong are the titles Nintendo seems to work be working on first, and trying to get them out quickly to boost sales of the WiiU. Therefore, these games are based on previous games (Donkey Kong Country Returns and Super Mario 3D Land), which allows Nintendo to build and make them much quicker than if they had to build a completely new, and more innovative and unique game, in the vein of what we saw with Super Mario Galaxy. So take heart, a more innovative Mario game will definitely come soon enough, albeit probably not for another year or two.
Mario Kart 8 has been announced for WiiU at Nintendo’s E3 2013 Nintendo Direct presentation!
(Be sure you watch the trailer in HD!)
This game looks absolutely phenomenal. It is seriously a huge step up from Mario Kart Wii for Wii and Mario Kart 7 for 3DS, taking elements from both of those games (such as the motorcyle bikes from Mario Kart Wii and the ability to hover or glide through the air and go underwater from Mario Kart 7) and then adding insane new tracks inspired by F-Zero with new hovercraft that the standard carts can change into at will.
Once in hovercraft mode, players will be able to drive along the walls and the ceiling, and the tracks now feature winding, crazy looks, tracks that go upside down and along walls, just like in the F-Zero series!
You have to see it in action to truly appreciate how awesome this game looks. I was not a big fan of Mario Kart 7 or Mario Kart Wii (which I didn’t even play), but this new game has my attention. Additionally the graphics look great, finally an high-definition, graphically impressive Mario Kart game!
All of the returning characters you know and love return including Toadette(!), Mario, Luigi, Toad, Bowser, Peach, Yoshi, Koopa Troopa, Wario, Donkey Kong, Waluigi, and Daisy. Surely more characters will be featured in the game, which always feature tons of Mario characters. I wonder if they’ll finally add NINTENDO characters to the game. I really want to see Link and Ganon driving carts!
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