Thursday 2 January 2014

Thoughts on Super Mario 3d World

I'll just prefix this by saying I was a Sega boy growing up, so sonic has always been my bag over Mario, but with my purchase of a ds and a wii, i grew to appreciate Mario, not as much as I do/did Sonic, but now i see this is a great game series I missed.

As far as mascot platformers, it's not been a great year, Sonic the lost world, a divisive game to say the least, was disappointing in my opinion, many loved it, many loathed it, I fell somewhere in the middle, while it was a decent platformer, there was too much taken from mario galaxy, and save for the blue superstar, you wouldn't know it was a Sonic game at all. There was also Ratchet and Clank Nexus, but I didn't play that one, as i never really got into the game series, Crash was always my playstaion platformer of choice.

Onto Mario 3d world. I haven't finished it yet, close mind you, I'm just collecting enough green stars to take on the very last level, (post completion edit, turns out there's some sort of bonus space world) which is my first gripe, why must i collect green stars? In my view, collectibles such as these should be used to unlock extras, new power ups perhaps, or new characters or attires or bonus levels even, but making you have to get them in order to play the actual main game just annoys me and seems like a way to force you to put more time into a game that just isn't that long and is trying to compensate. I don't mind the length though in reality, although it is short, without this end annoyance, it would be just the right length for me, I'm just now starting to get wary of it, and it would be a perfect time to knock it out of the park with a fun last level and make me look back at it with enjoyment, rather than frustration which is currently building.

As for the meat and potatoes of it, the gameplay, it's pretty much what you would expect. The great gameplay in these games was established way back in Mario 64, a short 18 years ago now as it stands. Sure, it's still fun, but is new powerups enough to keep it fresh. The levels for me aren't diverse enough, and after some great ideas in Mario galaxy regarding this, 3d land seems like a step backwards. There is something said about going back to the roots and classic Mario platforming, but they had moved on so well in galaxy, it seemed like an opportunity to move forwards, rather than reflect this (all this galaxy praise aside, galaxy 2 I felt was too samey and didn't finish, so I guess I don't know what i want really).

Difficulty of this game it also interesting. The first 2 thirds of this game are too easy, then there's a massive difficulty spike that comes out of nowhere, and after being led into a false sense of security, it comes as a shock and it took me a while to catch up, which made me feel foolish, as I've always prided myself on being a good gamer.

I seem to be sounding really negative on this and i don't mean too, I have enjoyed it, I certainly wouldn't recommend buying a wii u for it, but if you already have one, and in the unlikely event you don't already own it, you should play it. If you are considering getting one in the future, for Mario kart for example, then it's definitely worth picking up as an additional game at some point.

So in summary, it's full of niggles, but overall a fun, classic platformer, especially for the older(ish) gamer who grew up on this kind of thing (although the 2d era was more me, but my love of platformers carried across into the switch into 3d), but also a good purchase for anyone.

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