When hunting for a copy of Mario Galaxy 2, I came across a Yahoo Auctions lot that was priced as such so that they were effectively throwing this game in as a freebie. I've been meaning to replay the other NSMB games for a while since I beat the 3DS entry last year, so this seemed like a good a time as any to get my 2D Mario on~. I beat the Japanese version of the game 100% over a weekend in about 9 hours.
This being a Mario game, and especially a New Super Mario Bros game, the story is pretty bog simple. Mario, Luigi, and the yellow and blue toads are having a party at Peach's Castle. Bowser Jr. and the Koopalings sneak their way in in a trojan horse cake, and spirit Peach away to Bowser's Castle. Our intrepid heroes give chase, and the adventure begins. Not much to say about it really other than that I love the Koopalings and I'm always happy to see them in a game. Mechanically, it's New Super Mario Bros but with a little bit of some new twists compared to the DS entry. You still have 8 worlds to go through, you still have 3 star coins to collect in every level, and you can still wall jump. However, now you have a spin attack added to your base arsenal too. Like in Mario Galaxy, the spin attack is done by shaking the Wiimote. Calling it an "attack" is a bit of a misnomer, as it's basically just a sort of non-jump double-jump that you can do in mid-air to get a little extra distance. It makes a lot of the platforming just that much easier, and a lot of the harder jumps more or less require it. I just wish it weren't awkwardly bound to shaking the Wiimote. You also have two new powerups: the propeller hat and the penguin suit. The propeller hat gives you an upwards surge in height and can make a lot of tough star coins in certain levels far easier to do (if you can hold onto your powerup, that is). The penguin suit, meanwhile, is more like a supped up frog suit from Mario 3. It lets you swim better, sure, but it also lets you slide on your belly by holding down when you run as well as throw ice balls like an ice fire flower would. They're both interesting additions, although they both feel fairly unfocused and gimmicky compared to the tanooki tail and cape of old or the wing suit added in NSMBU. Yoshi is also present in some levels, but he's mostly a gimmick in the handful of levels he's in, as he can't be taken outside those stages. The world map is unfortunately a No Yoshi Zone TwT Then, of course, was the big draw for this Mario game: multiplayer! You and up to three friends can take on the challenge to save Peach and defeat Bowser if you're feeling able. It definitely makes the game harder, and also has some strange implementation decisions. For example, if you're player one, you MUST be Mario. You can't pick Luigi or either toad if you're gonna play by yourself, and that just seems so silly to me. In addition, players count as physical objects, so you bump into each other and can even pick up and throw one another. This means that multiplayer modes can often lead to accidentally messing up your friends, although if you're the type to troll people when you play cooperative games, then this is a perfect thing for you (especially since all four players have separate life counters) X3. At any rate, you can press the A button on the Wiimote to go into a bubble to fly back to your companions if you've been tossed to your death (or if you're coming back from death). The presentation is more NSMB, really. Same art style as the DS game a lot of the same music too. This game isn't trying to reinvent the wheel. It's only trying to pretty up the new wheel that NSMB DS started rolling out. That more or less goes for every aspect of this game, though. I view the NSMB series as a succession of games of better and better quality, and this is no exception. While certainly better than NSMB DS, it's definitely an inferior experience to NSMB 2. Verdict: Recommended. The whole experience really just comes down to: It's solid enough. There's nothing particularly noteworthy or special about this game other than it's a solid 2D Mario game. It's not bad in any significant regard (unless you're someone who just can't get with how the physics in this handle, which I know is no small amount of people), but it's also not terribly exceptional in any way either. It's certainly worth a play if you want a good time with a 2D platformer, but there's nothing about it that would make me recommend it over its successor games (or even classic Mario games). This game simply "is" in many respects, and if that sounds like it's good enough for you, as it was for me, then it's definitely worth a few bucks to check out.
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AuthorI'm an avid gamer who likes to detail their thoughts about what they play in the hopes it might aid someone else's search for a game to play. Archives
April 2024
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