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GAMEPLAY: 9/10

It took a few levels to get used to the 3D, as well as how to move but you get the hang of it. By the end, I was moving in ways I didn’t think I’d be able to do in the beginning. There is one thing, that is the most important thing in this game and relates to gameplay: Mario’s shadow. Sometimes the 3D can be really…tricky. I found myself only able to move in some places because of Mario’s shadow. Without that aspect, this game would be 10x harder. Even the levels where the shadow is missing are considerably harder than the ground levels.

One of the hardest parts of the game is that it wears on your stamina. I think it’s your visual stamina, but I might be incorrect. In a 2D game, you see things for what they are. In a 3D game, especially when you’re Mario, jumping on blocks/clouds in the sky, where there’s no shadow for Mario, your brain really has to think hard to determine one thing all the time: where you are. It’s really frustrating in this game sometimes, and the reason why I’ve knocked gameplay down a point. Otherwise, you move like Mario and everything do/can do is pretty much what you’d expect Mario to do.

Regarding Difficulty: This game is either too easy, or pretty damn hard. There are 16 worlds, comprised of about 6 levels per world. The first 1-7 worlds are easy. So easy that this game was originally a joke to me. You could finish some levels so fast, it was ridiculous. Of course, me having to get the 3 Golden Coins per level made it trickier but regardless, the first 7 worlds are such a joke. The game really starts to get complicated on the 8th (and what I thought was the last) world. It was much more difficult than the super easy levels before it, but that’s not a bad thing due to the rest of the game’s ease. Despite that, after you finish the 8th world, you’re introduced to 8 more “Special” worlds. These 8 worlds, in which some levels are re-done older levels, with twists, were much more complicated. Some of the levels were damn frustrating even. Overall, if you look at the game’s difficulty, there are more difficult levels than easy ones. Don’t let the first 7 worlds fool you, this game can be pretty difficult even to a seasoned Mario pro.

Two other ways they made the last 8 worlds difficult, other than modified surroundings and environment, wwre the 30s time limit levels (in which you can gain 10s for every enemy you kill) and the stupid Shadow Mario (not to be confused with Mario’s shadow). The 30s time limit levels aren’t too difficult, as long as you kill a bad guy here and there, but they do give you a sense of urgency, making you play faster and force stupid mistakes. To be honest, I think I only died once to the time limit expiring, most times were just careless moves due to lack of time. One of my biggest peeves of this game was Shadow Mario. He’s a character that follows your exact moves, about 1-2s behind. Meaning if you stand still for 2 seconds, he catches up to you, and each time he touches you, you get hurt. In the first level with him in it, I tried to run away from him as fast as I could, not realizing he just mimics your moves. I kept dying to him repeatedly and I was swearing at the game “this guy is so f*cking fast, it’s so unfair”….not realizing it was me that was fast, and that I wasn’t supposed to stay still. I really really hated the levels where he followed me, I think I found those to be the most difficult levels. That is until you get to Special World 8, where most of the levels put the 30s timer on you AND Shadow Mario. Ugh. Like I said, they really made this game hard. Especially at the end. At least I wasn’t disappointed with the ease of this game, the feeling I got from the first 7 worlds. I didn’t feel like I was cheated out of my money on this joke of a game that I finished in a few days.

GRAPHICS: 10/10

Everywhere I read, they said that in this game, the 3D is necessary to playing it. I found this not to be true at all. While I played most levels with 3D on near the beginning, it became quite tiring on the eyes and I proceeded to play most of the game without 3D. Regardless, this game is a visual feat. I thought that with so few levels, they really did a small, crappy job on this game but that’s not true at all. After playing all 96(?) levels, there’s quite a bit of variance in levels….despite some levels being redone old levels. [Note: Super Mario World [SNES] had 96 levels too…just thought that was interesting]

MUSIC AND SOUNDS: 10/10

Once again, Mario takes some of its classic music and reinvents it, or creates new, interesting music. One of the funnest things about this game is getting these rainbow coloured musical notes to appear. If you collect them in the right order, the play a little Mario melody as you get them, it’s quite nostalgic and cool at the same time.

FUN: 10/10

I’m really happy with how well Nintendo did with this game. It’s got all the Mario fun of old games, small 2-D puns (like cardboard cutouts of enemies and 1-up mushrooms). It’s just plain fun. The powerups are cool though it’d be awesome (though maybe a bit OP [overpowering]) if you could throw more than 1 boomerang with the boomerang power. Still, the Toonoki Suit and the upgraded Toonoki Suit are really fun and useful. One of my “I’m having difficulty with this level” things to do was to go to S1L1, beat it in 50s but get the Toonoki Powerup. Grab two of those, save it before a difficult level….and if I couldn’t beat the level in a few tries, I’d quit and start from the save with the 2 suits. It ended up working really well. I know you get “special” power-ups if you can’t beat a level after 6 or 8 times but I found that as kind of a hack. There’s no fun in running around with Star power (invincibility) cuz you’re too n00b to beat something with normal powers.

FINAL THOUGHTS

I’d say this is almost a perfect game in terms of Mario games…but overall, compared to other games, it really falls short on story. Like, it’s no Zelda: Ocarina of Time. Maybe visually. Maybe in fun….but without story, you’re simply left with a pick up game with no emotional attachment to. Just like for the New Super Mario Bros. [DS] that I beat last week, I doubt that in a months time, I’d remember any of the levels, or any of the secrets in these games. I’d have to rediscover them if I replayed them. It’s kinda sad, almost feels like a waste of time playing these types of games. Even more wasted than playing other games that at least give you a story/something to think about. The only thing this game helps you with is improve your general gaming ability. But there’s no “remember when this happened?”. Like remember when you rode Epona and beat that Luigi looking character in Zelda: Ocarina of Time? Or when you stealthily went through the Gerudo Fortress? I do. But if you say “Remember when you beat that airship level” it’d be like “huh? which one…also…no”. Or if you asked “Remember doing the Bowser level” and you’d be like “well, I did it 16x but I don’t remember them… :/”. See?

Oops, sorta went on a bit of a rant there!

Anyways…I definitely recommend this game to longtime Mario fans. Despite beating it in 6 days (and I think 2 of the days, I didn’t even play it), I don’t think it’s a really short game, especially if you’re not a Mario pro. It’s got the fun factor you’d expect form Mario games but the 3D twist is nice compared to the general 2Dness of the games (though I haven’t played Mario Galaxy >_<). Anyways....

I’d played this game for a few days last week…in preparation for Super Mario 3D Land [3DS] which came out yesterday. By the way, I’ve only played it a few hours and I’m on World 3 of 8 already. I’ve been told it gets pretty hard in World 8…but right now, I’m breezing through it.

Anyways, back to New Super Mario Bros.

While it came out in 2006, I’m only playing it now cuz I just got a (3)DS this year. So it’s like, 5 years old. But it’s heavily similar to the Super Mario Bros Wii….well, actually the Wii game is similar to this. I’ll say that the multiplayer aspect on the Wii makes that game a lot more fun. The power-ups in the Wii make some things easier…and harder.

GAMEPLAY: 8/10

It plays pretty much like any Mario game. I found that it’s easy to do what I want generally…with the exception of when I use 2 of the new power-ups – Mini Mushroom and Blue Turtle Shell. While you need the Mini Mushroom to get a lot of the secrets in the game, you move differently than regular Mario; there’s more airtime but you’re also super fragile which makes the power-down (see what i did there?!) pretty crappy. Again though, you need this power-up to get the secrets for some levels (never for the level itself). Some of the most difficult aspects of this game for me was staying alive with this power-up long enough to get the Special Coin I wanted. The Blue Turtle Shell is also pretty crappy because when you run fast enough, you start moving like a shell that’s been thrown. It makes for a lot of unpredictability. You could get out of it by not holding the run/action button…but for me, I ALWAYS hold that button. That’s my natural way to play, so using the Blue Turtle Shell is kinda useless for me, unless it’s in a water level.

Anyways, the gameplay is still good/fun. The Super Giant Mario Mushroom is the opposite of the Mini Mushroom – you’re invulnerable (except from falling in a hole) except you destroy any chances of getting anything special, or going anywhere special. Effectively for me, who needs to get 100%, this is the most useless power up as I’d have to re-do a level.

So what I’m getting at is that all the new power-ups in this game SUCK.

At least they improved that in Super Mario Wii – No Blue Turtle Shell, No Giant Mario…but they added a penguin suit >_< that damn penguin suit. Difficulty wise, this game is super easy. There was one level in Super Mario Bros Wii that was pretty impossible to me. Not just me, I googled it and everyone struggled in it. But for that game, that was the only really difficult level. For this game, there were no really difficult levels. Just as an FYI - let me run down my timeline for this game to you:
Nov 8: Finished Kirby Mass Attack. Play New Super Mario Bros. : Worlds 1 to 2.5
Nov 9: World 2.5 to 4. At this time, I set myself a 4 day deadline to finish the game, so I could finish it for when the new Mario came out.
Nov 10: Worlds 4 to 6.
Nov 11: Worlds 7 to 8. Finished the game with all 3 Golden Coins per level. Finished all the levels. Spent all the golden coins. 3 Stars – 100%
It only took me 4 days to completely dominate & 100% the game. No real difficulty issues. Finished the game with 2 days to spare :D

Anyways, I just wanted to say – it’s easy for an experienced Mario gamer. And while there are a lot of worlds, it’s not deathly slow like Kirby Mass Attack. It was a welcome change from that game. *Shudder*

GRAPHICS: 10/10

They’re pretty good considering their age. It still seems to me like this game recently came out, it was in the stores for free play for so long. And the Wii, with all it’s updated capabilities, looks just like it. For Nintendo DS, I’m pretty impressed. It’s no PS3 or XBOX game I mean, but for Mario, it looks great.

MUSIC AND SOUNDS: 10/10

Same ol’ music. Maybe even more familiar than before for me because I played the Wii game first. Nothing to complain about, the music is engaging, but doesn’t make you sick even though you listen to it over and over. Seriously, all the water levels like, sound the same.

FUN: 9/10

This game is fun. Way funner than Kirby. Fun enough that I could spend hours playing it. Fun enough that I could play it so much, my thumbs hurt the next day cuz of how much I played. And that happened twice >_< I knocked it 1 point off because of the damn useless power-ups. Playing with those abilities was NOT fun, only necessary.

FINAL THOUGHTS

It’s a fun game. There’s nothing brand new, like Mario Land 3-D [3DS]. It doesn’t reinvent the wheel so if you’re looking for something brand new, you’ll be disappointed. I think this game is better for it’s nostalgia, since having a 2-D/2.5-D Mario game hasn’t been around in a while. Super Mario World [SNES] came out in 1991. That was the game I grew up with, the one that honed my skills. Anyways….drumroll please…de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-capachow!