With Nintendo's latest console, the Wii U, hitting stores in less than a fortnight, things are getting a little bit crazy. Like a lot of you, we have our Wii U pre-orders taken care of, guaranteeing us the console as soon as it launches. The problem is which games to buy on top - New Super Mario Bros. U? Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed? Scribblenauts Unlimited (which isn't even confirmed as a launch title yet)? Perhaps even Epic Mickey 2: The Power of Two? It's the classic conundrum of too many games, and not enough money - but what if the rumoured console shortages begin to affect the games too? We don't want to be stuck with a shiny new console and nothing to play on it...
Given Nintendo's relative success with the 3DS eShop though, and the promise of the Wii U's online store being available from day one, the prospect of a games drought is looking fairly slim. With a range of games available to download on day one, and more being added on a regular basis as we head into the new year, the eShop's already got a pretty decent looking line-up - and here's a selection of six we know the most about:
Chasing Aurora
Sadly lacking in Dick Dastardly, Chasing Aurora is a game about the aerial antics of birds. Or rather, the members of a tribe of winged humans living in the Alps competing in a tournament composed of several different disciplines - or so we've heard, as information on this rather unusual title is scarce and conflicting at best. The first title in a planned trilogy of games about the dream of flying, players steer their character with the control stick and time each flap of their wings with a button, letting you pull of all sorts of crazy stunts and near misses in mid-air.
At it's heart, Chasing Aurora is a very multiplayer-centric game, with three different modes on offer, all of which make use of Nintendo's much-lauded 'asymmetric multiplayer' concept. First comes Freeze Tag, where the player with the GamePad plays as an icy bird who needs to tag all the other players and freeze them to win - while the others work together to stay unfrozen until a timer runs out, unfreezing each other if necessary. Next is an airborne version of hide and seek, where Mr. GamePad needs to hide from the other players while they try to hunt him down and snatch back the Aurora's Gem he's carrying, thus winning the match. The final mode, Chase, has players competing to grab and hold on to the aforementioned Aurora's Gem, but this time the bird holding the gem has the camera focused solely on them, with any players that can't quite keep up losing a life as they drop off the screen - the player holding the gem when all the other players have lost their lives is then declared the winner.
For lone players, the single-player mode is a race against the clock, flying as far as you can whilst avoiding obstacles such as falling rocks, lightning strikes and freak gusts of wind. Every so often you'll come to a gate, which gives you a boost to your time and score as you pass through, letting you fly for longer and rack up a higher score.
Cloudberry Kingdom
Billed as "the platformer to end all platformers", Cloudberry Kingdom is a game that never ends - each level is randomly-generated by the game, with limitless possibilities. Thanks to their dynamic creation, each level also scales to the ability of the person who's playing, based on your previous performances, perhaps starting off simply before eventually ascending into controller-flinging, naughty-word shouting levels of punishment. Seriously - this one looks like it's going to get very, very hard.
However, when a game boasts of it's insane difficulty level, and offers a $1000 reward to the player who manages to clear the entire game on the hardest possible difficulty, it can be enough to put those who are less confident in their platforming skills (like us) off. That said, Cloudberry Kingdom does come with six different settings, from the pedestrian easy and unpleasant settings, right up to hardcore and masochistic - so even if you prefer your platformers more on the easy side, you should still be fine.
Like many eShop titles, Cloudberry Kingdom also lets you set off on you running, jumping and dodging adventure with up to four friends in co-op - often with a few random alterations to mix stuff up a bit. Whether it's having everyone tied together with a bungee cord, sitting in rocket-propelled cardboard boxes or playing as a fatter character than usual, at least you'll be able to share your Cloudberry-induced pain with friends and family.
Little Inferno
With Christmas on the way, Santa is sure to have a few presents under the tree for everyone (unless you've been really bad anyway) - but what's more fun than playing with toys? If you answered 'setting fire to them', then you're thinking along the same wavelength as the Tomorrow Corporation, whose latest game starring the Little Inferno Entertainment Fireplace, should be hitting the Wii U eShop before the year is out.
A joint effort from the people behind World of Goo and Henry Hatsworth, Little Inferno is a game for all you budding pyromaniacs. With the absence of logs, coal or any other legitimate fuel, you're left searching for other methods to fuel the fire - which means flipping through the game's catalogue, spending a few coins to order in a burnable object. As it singes, it'll release more coins with which you can buy more things to burn, and so the cycle continues. Burning pairs of items together forms combinations - such as a mixture of dry ice and a cup of coffee to make iced coffee - unlocks new catalogues with even more things to add to your budding bonfire.
It isn't just a mindless toasting simulator though, as a somewhat strange and sinister story begins to unfold through a series of letters - perhaps from the Tomorrow Corporation, perhaps from the weather man or perhaps from your mysterious neighbour. It's the story of a world where snow constantly falls and keeping warm is a struggle, hence the perpetual roasting of your possessions - certainly an odd idea, but one we're strangely stoked for.
Mighty Switch Force HD
Considering the strong similarities between Nintendo's DS/3DS handhelds and the dual-screen nature of their latest console, the Wii U, we wondered how long it would be before remastered games started to crop up. The first such game to take the leap to the new console is the downloadable eShop title Mighty Switch Force, receiving a high-definition hand-drawn makeover for it's debut this Christmas.
As before, you play as the futuristic police officer Patricia Wagon, who's on a mission to relocate the escaped Hooligan Sisters. Not wanting to get caught, the two siblings are devious escapees, and have hidden in a range of hard to reach places in each level - but luckily, Patricia has a trick up her sleeve, as with a push of a button she can switch certain blocks from the background to the foreground and vice versa, creating platforms to jump on or revealing new areas to explore. The switching can also be used to defeat the multitude of enemies you'll come across on your travels, or to work the special block types you'll encounter during your travels, such as the ones that send you soaring off in a specific direction. You'll need quick reactions if you want to round up all of the escaped prisoners though, as the combination of switching, jumping, shooting and more switching gets quite hectic, particularly as you get further into the game.
Perhaps the only problem we had with the original 3DS download was that with only sixteen levels, it wasn't very long, and as far as we're aware, they haven't added much in the way of extras to the Wii U version - just repainted it. That said, if you've not tried your hand at the 3DS game, and the Wii U iteration isn't crazy priced, it's a pretty solid game and well worth a look if you're a fan of puzzley platform games.
Nano Assault Neo
With all the sniffles, sneezes and sore throats doing the rounds at the moment, you'll probably be cursing your immune system at some point this holiday. But have you ever wondered how it works (or not, as the case maybe)? While not exactly a biologically correct explanation, Nano Assault Neo certainly looks like the most fun way to zap those pesky germs.
Playing as a miniature spaceship equipped with some crazy powerful weapons, you get to fly around inside the human body, exterminating the brightly coloured viruses that have made their home there, rolling your ship around the surface of the mutated cells you land on and blasting in all directions - it's along the same lines as Mario strolling around a planet's surface in Super Mario Galaxy, only if Nintendo had armed him with a gun instead of bee suits and cloud flowers.
It's not just a bog standard twin-stick shooter though, with one analogue stick moving your ship and one shooting your guns in all directions, as there's also a few different levels to mix things up a bit. Some stages have you flying your antibody into the screen through a long tunnel, shooting at enemies as you race past at breakneck speeds.
Toki Tori 2
Some of you may remember the fat little yellow bird from his Wii Shop Channel debut in 2008 - a puzzle game in which you needed to make clever use of his limited number of items to rescue all the eggs in a level before you could move onto the next. It was a game that properly taxed your grey matter, as you needed to go round each level, from egg to egg, in precisely the right order, using the correct items each time.
And as the saying goes, you can't keep a good chicken down. Making it's way to the eShop in December comes a long-awaited sequel, but this time round a bit of a departure from it's predecessors level-based, item-centric ways - for starters, Toki Tori only has two moves for the entire game, a whistle and a stomp. You'll need to figure out how these limited actions can be used to affect different things in the environment and the creatures that inhabit it so you can overcome the obstacles that littler the landscape, explore the new larger world and seek out hidden collectables and secret areas. There's birds that can lift the diminutive chicken up to higher places, frogs that can encase you in bubbles and a giant lobster with a log on it's back that acts like a moving platform - each one has to be spurred into action by one of your two moves.
Trine 2: Director's Cut
With any new console launch, ports of existing games are pretty much inevitable - their pretty cheap, quick and easy ways of getting your game on a console at a time when everyone will be after something else to play on their shiny new device. Trine 2 is one such game - a fantasy puzzley platformer released on other platforms a while ago.
Playing as three different characters, each with their own unique abilities, you'll need to work out who's best suited to the job for each of the puzzles you encounter on your adventure - Amadeus the wizard can conjure objects out of thin air and manipulate things with telekinesis, Zoya the thief has serious archery and grappling hook skills and Pontius the knight who can give enemies and traps alike a good bashing with his sword and shield. With three different characters all needed at different points of the game, there's also the option of playing through the game in three player co-operative - either locally, online or a mixture of the two.
While the original Trine 2 has already been released for the Xbox 360, Playstation 3 and PC, the Wii U version will include the recently-released-only-on-the-PC expansion The Goblin Menace from the outset, as well as four player mini-game-centric multiplayer mode called Magic Mayhem - so if you haven't picked it up already, the Wii U will be the definitive version to go for.
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And that's your lot! Unfortunately, the only one with a definite release date is Toki Tori 2, which launches on the 20th of December, but we're imagining at least a few of the titles will be up for download from day one, seeing as it would be a bit naff to have a store with nothing on it, but we don't know for definite yet - not even for America, who's console hits shelves on Sunday. As with all things Wii U, only time will tell.
