Another work week kicks off, and we start it with a review from D3stiny_Sm4sher. It’s quite a big title to review this week, so hopefully you enjoy what he has to say! I’ll leave you to the review as I slip off to bed. See you all in a few, short hours!
Hey, there, GoNins. I hope you enjoyed the Thanksgiving holiday. I derived more enjoyment from it than I initially expected I would. I must admit, life these days has been not at all what I anticipated it would be, and I find it hard to feel genuinely thankful for many things I feel I should be…That said, I am definitely thankful for the opportunity RMC has given me to write on this platform and get to know some of you guys. So thanks as always for the feedback you folks leave. I found this review a bit hard to write because the fact is that I have been a Mario fan from day 2 of gaming (Super Mario Bros. was probably the second video game I ever played, Mega Man 3 being the first), but honestly, one of my main worries with this new title was that I would find it boring, old, and with little replay value. I was frankly expecting to enjoy it but not love it any more than the DS game, which, while a great game, I think could have been more original in its level design. Suffice it to say I stand corrected. Nintendo hasn’t gotten where they are by dinking around. Even with the new direction they’ve been taking, they sure as hell haven’t forgotten how to make a good game built around the values of creativity and pure fun.
New Super Mario Bros. Wii
-The [?] Opens-
Time Played: About 20 Hours (About 15 Hours Single Player, 5 hours Multiplayer)
Completion: All levels, Star Coins, and Secret Exits
Obtained: Purchased from GameFly
-Let’s-a Go (again)-
When you pick up the case to New Super Mario Bros. Wii, you intrinsically are meant to feel like something about this game is special, different from every other Mario game that has preceded it. The red disc, the shiny Wii logo, and the disc art are all symbolic of this game’s achievement of fulfilling the dream Miyamoto has been striving for over the course of years: creating a fully functional, truly multiplayer Mario platformer. More so than any other 2D Mario before it, however, NSMBW has been the brunt of a fair amount of controversy and negativity. While I can certainly see the merit in many of these arguments, at the end of the day, I just cannot deny that Nintendo simply knows its stuff, and this Mario title is just as well-made and polished as any other. It has its issues that could’ve resulted in an even better game, but really, toe-to-toe, this title stands alongside Super Mario Bros. 3 and Super Mario World in terms of quality and quantity of level design. The edge is a bit dulled due to the passage of time, of course, since this game doesn’t have near the same impact those two did, but it’s just as well-made and fun to play.
NSMBW is not a re-hash of the DS title, it’s not a port, and it’s not simply a level-hack with DS graphics. It’s also not entirely “new,” either. It’s best to think of this game as a “best of” Mario Bros. 3 and Mario World combined, remixed with its own fresh gameplay ideas. There are appearances of old enemies and mechanics from many Mario titles. Even the spin jump from Mario World is blended with the spin of Mario Galaxy, enabling a subtly game-changing split-second of airtime if used mid-jump. Much of the advanced gameplay that can be achieved makes use of this mechanic. And then there’s the powerups, which include the powers of ice — iceballs move at a different trajectory than fireballs and can freeze enemies, turning them into platforms or weapons. Furthermore, ice can kill certain enemies that, up until now, were generally indestructible. There are Mushroom Houses, board game world maps, and even those minigame map enemies (complete with that catchy tune from SMB3) that yield a handful of Mushrooms upon completion. Trampolines to forts, castles to airships, bony fish to Lakitus, fire-breathing Pirahnas to Hammer Bros., Monty Moles to Ghost Houses…The list goes on, including at least one or two levels that incorporate a lot of the most memorable enemies and mechanics from 2D Mario games.
This said, the game isn’t just resting on its laurels. If there’s anything New Super Mario Bros. Wii accomplishes from a design standpoint, it’s showing that solid game design ages well despite anything else, and that what can keep the platforming genre alive in this day and age is sheer variety and creativity. Every single level introduces something new, something specific for players to master, something unique to that area. It’s something that all great platforming games accomplish and its pulled off with even more deliberate action here than in many previous games in the genre. Entire levels are often based around one new mechanic or blending one already introduced with another to create a new one. The very first level even incorporates a new element unseen in a 2D Mario game — hills that literally roll around. As far as difficulty goes, I’m a Mario vet, and it seems to me that it’s about on par with Mario Bros. 3 and Mario World. The difficulty ramps up towards the end but I never found it to be brain-meltingly hard. I personally think that, like with Mega Man 9, it’s more a matter of people simply losing touch with the genre and thus feeling like the games are harder than they actually are.
And the difficulty is, as a whole, just right, incorporating new elements in every act. Even the final boss battle does something unique to the series after paying homage to its roots. Speaking of which, the Koopa Kids are a great addition, and Bowser Jr. appears a couple of times to be amusing and cute without becoming as redundant and annoying as he was on the DS. It’s true that the battles are, as a whole, easy, but there are definitely a few later on that are fairly hard for the series if you’re not wussying out and nailing them with fireballs. Ironically, boss battles become more of a struggle with four players.
And thus the debate reaches this reviewer, as it has all the rest: is playing with four players better than playing with one? No, it’s not. But it’s not worse, either. I’m not going to tell you whether to play with one or two or four because I played with all three options and enjoyed myself equally. What I will do is offer my own personal experiences and describe how I might suggest you play with each set of players. The game as a whole was seemingly designed with one player being the focus and the amount of enemies and physical space allowing for multiple players to join in. That said, there are definitey certain leves that work really well with four players (many are highlighted under the “Recommended” List in Free-For-All Mode). Of course, the main element that will determine your enjoyment is who you play with and what you expect. It’s so easy to switch back and forth from being helpful to being a jerk that four players playing together is utter chaos, unpredictability, and leads to literal LOLs more often than any game I have played in recent memory with others. This really is a great party game with folks willing to play it. I admit, my litmus test was a marathon play-through of Worlds 1-5 in a single evening (followed by the final Level and some Coin Mode) with a group of other generally game-oriented folks, so results may vary, but I can easily see the gameplay here being just as amusing no matter the level of experience in the users.
When it comes to four players, I must admit that when we switched to Coin Battle Mode — especially the specific levels designed for the mode — multiplayer felt much more organic and natural. Instead of everyone jumping on top of each other for the same goal, we would spread ourselves out a lot more, focused on carving out our own slice of the plentiful Coin Pie, trying to strategize on the fly how best to unlock invisible coins without letting our competitors collect them. I would highly recommend Coin Battle Mode for four players if Free-For-All Mode is getting some people frustrated. If the bar is set to flat-out compete, everyone will go all-out and there’s going to be a lot less frustration and more “I’m gonna get you back, bastard.” When the experience is tailored for specific competition it feels more cohesive, everyone’s on the same page, and it just seems to flow better. That said, the warped balance between competing and cooperating is still very funny and completely unlike most games I’ve ever played. We inadvertently turned the Ghost Castle of World 5 into its own meta-game when one of our ranks decided he would be a total idiot and would do whatever he could to keep us stuck inside the level, continually running inside the first door, thus trapping us in an endless loop. For 10-15 minutes we struggled as a team to come up with a ways to kill him and get to the end of the level before he could loop us back to the start. It will probably go down as one of the most hilarious and memorable multiplayer moments in my gaming history.
When it comes to straight up co-op, two player was where it was at for me. When I played with one other person and we dedicated to work as a team, yes, we inadvertently screwed each other up a few times, but it was a lot less frequent, and the game as a whole flowed a lot better than with four players — it wasn’t more “fun,” but progression went much more smoothly, and it was a different kind of experience.
With that core issue laid out on the table, I’ll summarize by saying that NSMBW is a blast to play, no matter how many players there are, and the different options really open up the game’s replayability. You’re bound to find some kind of multiplayer setup you enjoy while finding the main game to be quite solid as a single-player romp. The unlockable levels are a much greater incentive for collecting Star Coins this time, too, and the bonus movies you can open up demonstrate some purely awesome playing, be it showing off or simply speed-running.
When it comes to presentation, this game could definitely have turned out looking a lot better. It’s true, it could have gotten the hand-drawn treatment like Boy and His Blob, Muramasa, or Wario Land: Shake It! But it didn’t — likely because the A-grade production values are being sinked into Super Mario Galaxy 2 right now. Even so, this is still a good looking 2D game. There are a lot of subtle effects, especially with the use of some smartly woven 3D, that make the game look a bit sharper and crisper. What looked kind of funny on the DS with 3D characters looks much more fluid and natural here. Granted, Yellow and Blue Toads could have easily been swapped with SOMEONE, ANYONE with distinct personality (Toad and Toadette, Daisy and Peach, even Wario and Waluigi for crying out loud). It’s a shame and it befuddles the mind except to point out that maybe multiplayer for four was added in a little too late in development, perhaps. If anything, distinguishing between the two Toads could prove to be an issue once they get powerups. This is, of course, a minor gripe in an otherwise creative and well-designed game.
Some say they wanted to see more powerups — I say the ones here are just right in providing enough alterations to gameplay while not coming across as ridiculous. Too many powerups would mean that every single level would have to incorporate the possibilities that a player might have any given powerup. This same rule applies to Yoshi. It’d be great to carry him in any level but would make many sections of the game a lot easier. Now, while I can see Yoshi’s use being limited and the merit in that, from a gameplay standpoint, I really wish there had been more of him. He only shows up in about a 10% of the levels or so, if even that. The music is fun and bursting with energy, remixing older tunes with the DS theme and a couple of new songs. Sound effects are spot on, with subtle variations in powerup effects to voiceclips being mixed in, with the classic 8 and 16-bit sound effects being selected at just the right spots.
Going into this review, I really wanted to try and be harsh on NSMBW, trying to address all of the problems people were complaining about off the bat. I thought, “Maybe if I play multiplayer I’ll get frustrated with it,” or “Maybe the level design will suck if I play by myself,” or “Maybe it will just rehash too many old ideas,” or “Maybe the visuals will suck,” or “Maybe it’ll just be plain boring.” At the end of the day, though, I just can’t really fault the game for any of these things because it really does a splendid job at taking old-school game design and mixing in new elements to keep it entertaining. I definitely enjoyed this title more than the DS game and would honestly say that, from as objective a game-design standpoint as I can, New Super Mario Bros. Wii is just as good a game as the 2D Mario platformers before it. It would’ve been very easy for the game to simply copy old ideas over, but it really does add in a lot of new elements that organically slide around the pieces of classic Mario gameplay, and multiplayer is just the big element that has been layered on top of the whole thing.
You may have noticed by now that I’ve been blissfully ignoring one key feature many feel is missing from this game: online multiplayer. I’m not sure when online gaming became some kind of mandated standard in a multiplayer game, but I assure you, this title isn’t the kind that should be using it. Those efforts are best put to games like Mario Kart or Smash Bros. (which kind of dropped the ball anyway). Nintendo could certainly do with some more focus on this feature, and I admit it’s funny how this feature being present in a game like Uncharted 2 changes everything, while not being included in a game like Halo would make people go ballistic, and yet, here, in this game, it is entirely absent — a standout, key 1st party game, no less — and I find myself somehow not caring any less. If online existed here, would I really even bother? No, I wouldn’t. In the same manner that I just don’t seem to find appeal in Brawl’s online (even on the rare occasion I can get it to work decently enough to not freeze on me) this title is really designed to be played with other people in the same room. It’s not about freaking competition, it’s about the experience of sharing in the laughs and falls and bumbles with your friends. Online simply wouldn’t deliver this. LittleBigPlanet’s online multiplayer quickly bored me for the same reasons, and this would likely do the same, so it’s probably for the best that Nintendo focused their resources on polishing what was there instead of tacking online functionality to it. I can see why people are upset that it’s not there, but it’d be like complaining that there’s no intricate story in a fighting game — it just is irrelevant to what the game is about and I personally found it to be unrelated to my enjoyment of the game. Thus, while understanding that some people somehow have no one to play the game with, I can’t fault it for not including something I feel isn’t necessary. You’d be better off roping your relatives into playing this with you than trying to play it with strangers online, trust me.
-Not In Another Castle This Time-
New Super Mario Bros. Wii is not quite as sublime as Super Mario Galaxy but it still valiantly proves that the gameplay design of the classic 2D Mario series is still inherently fun and entertaining, even over fifteen years later. It’s not just nostalgia that glazes our eyes with a love for the Mushroom Kingdom, it’s just quality gameplay in its simplest sense. All that was needed was some new level designs, powerups and moves, and the mixup of simultaneous four player action. It’s really kind of shocking that the game exists and is as engaging as it is — you’d think a premise this old would go stale by now. It just goes to show that a solid foundation can stand the test of time with some creativity and execution.
-Score-
9/10
Look for Resident Evil: Darkside Chronicles next week, folks. After that it will probably be Bit.Trip Void, and what comes after that is still up in the air, though you can bet I’ll be looking into Spirit Tracks this month, another contested major Nintendo release this season.
