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| Super Mario 3D World by Rafiki 01/20/2014, 12:33pm PST | ||||
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| I was originally disappointed that they didn't expand on Galaxy, and since I think the New Super Mario Bros. series is a little dull I was expecting this to be closer to that as well. It turns out it's great, incredibly addictive, and twice I had the Wii-U gamepad start rapidly blinking the battery light at me telling me that any minute it was going to die, making me look over at the clock and realize, holy shit, it's been 3 and a half hours. This is retro done right. Instead of being overloaded with references for the sake of LOL REFERENCES or carbon copying a beloved game from the 1980s and treating the flaws as virtues, this game is like people drew up a huge list of all the best things about the entire Mario series, added nods to most of the past games, and then put it together into a platformer that actually learned from the last 30 years of platformers. The name is kind of clunky and would probably make more sense if it were called Super Mario World 3D, because think of Super Mario World but with 3D. You can move in and out of the background, but the camera is mainly fixed to give a side-scrolling perspective. You can tilt the camera a little, but mostly you won't really need to. Levels are timed again, and at first I thought they felt short but when trying to find all of the items I ran into the warning timer several times and even died a few times because time ran out. They dropped all of Mario's stock melee moves from Mario 64 and on, but kept most of his acrobatics. The default way to kill enemies now is headstomping via jumping or ground pound. The only other attacks are given by suits, just like the old games. Jerry will be thrilled because they brought back pinball Mario. Everyone will be thrilled that they brought back the shoe. Some people will be thrilled they have the 4-player cast of Super Mario Bros. 2. They also brought back the cloud levels that are all about running as fast as possible from left to right while collecting coins with a super star. There's an overworld map like SMB3 or SMW, but you can freely run around it now and it has its own secrets like coins, 1-ups, and levels (!). Like Galaxy 2, I didn't give the difficulty curve enough credit. If you're used to platformers, you'll likely breeze through the first few worlds. The levels are still generally fun, I did die a couple of times, but the bar was low. By the end, though, the game is appropriately challenging. Then you unlock the bonus worlds and it gets harder and harder, and the final level is absolutely sinister. I've spent a couple hours on it, died over 40 times, and still haven't beaten it. I hope everyone appreciates the irony of a family game making you scream, "YOU CUNTING CUNTED CUNT," until the cops show up. It's called Champion's Road if you want to spoil it for yourself. When you see the last part with the speed tiles, I actually reached that point and my heart sank and I whined out loud, "Oh come on, are you shitting me?" Then I died again and gave up. Once you beat the main game, 2 things happen. One, you unlock the original Mario Bros. arcade game just because. Two, ghost runs from other players all over the world start populating your levels and you can compete for highest score and fastest time. I'm not a big speed runner, but it WILL sucker you in to killing an hour or two. They always include a ghost run of someone that's juuuuuust a few seconds faster than your own, so you figure you can probably beat it. So you try and do. Then if you return to the level, they'll give you a NEW ghost run that's juuuuust a few seconds faster than your new one. And it just goes on like this, perpetually baiting you with a carrot on a stick of some new, seemingly attainable time. I haven't tried the multiplayer, but the way Yahtzee described it was whoever finishes the level first gets to wear a crown on the next and the people that manage to touch the flag pole get showered with confetti. The crown is completely meaningless, you just get to lord it over everybody, so the multiplayer pretty much immediately devolves into everyone sabotaging each other just to wear the crown. He describes this as a negative, but how does this not sound like the funnest game feature ever? Who doesn't want to shit all over their so-called friends (PSH) for petty trinkets that objectively prove how much better and more handsome or pretty you are? Oh, and the cat suit. HUUUUHHHHHHHHHH. Look, you have to sacrifice a certain amount of dignity to be a grown adult playing Mario, but brace yourself for giving it up instantly. The first question block you encounter in the first 10 seconds of 1-1 gives you the suit. The title screen has kitty goombas hopping around. The loading screen has the full cast in cat suits. You walk around on all fours with your butt all up in the air. When you beat a level in the cat suit you meow. :( Luckily, it turns out to be a pretty good suit, and I'll be surprised if it doesn't return. It is a little overused (and overpowered) in that collecting items in some levels is incredibly difficult to completely impossible without it (and some of the levels don't have the power-up in it, forcing you to exit and return later), but it's somewhat forgiven since that's a new big feature they wanted to show off. It's also the answer to the question, "How do I get my girlfriend to play video games?" And maybe, "How do I tell if my boyfriend is gay?" IN CONCLUSION: This game is great. Me and the 10 other customers sure do enjoy it. This is my GOTY, although I didn't get very far in Saint's Row 4 because I got sidetracked with other things. |
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