Post by Gilvan Blight on Nov 23, 2007 11:29:24 GMT -5
Quickly: best platformer I have played since Sly Cooper, but it's a platformer.
[glow=blue,2,300]Summary:[/glow]The latest Super Mario game in the worlds most recognized platformer series. This is the first Super Mario on the Wii and it takes advantage of the systems unique capabilities.
As usual you take on the role of Mario and just as typically you are out to save Princess Peach from the evil Bowser. This time around Bowser has taken the Princess and her entire Castle during the Star Festival which occurs every 100 years. Bowser shows up in the middle of the festivities and literally rips the castle, Princess, Mario and all out of the ground and threatens to take them away to Bowser's "New Galaxy". After a failed quick rescue attempt Mario plummets back to earth.
The big M wakes up from his coma an undetermined time later on a small planet, ala The Littlest Prince, with an uber cute bunny looking over him. After a few tutorial levels where the bunnies teach you all your basic moves you find out you have been rescued by star people (called Lumins or something like that). They were on the comet celebrated during the Star Festival, except it's not a comet at all, it's a ship, and bowser stole it's fuel supply, power stars. It's all a bit confusing. The end result is that Mario has to help the Lumins and their princess recover Power Stars from Galaxies around the solar system so they can repair their ship and bring Mario to where Bowser has taken the Princess.
The gameplay is an extremely 3-d platformer. Extremely 3-d in the fact that you are generally running around on small oddly shaped world and using various means to jump to other oddly shaped worlds in order to get to the end world where you will get a star. Each of these worlds has it's own gravity but you have to beware falling off edges and getting sucked into black holes. A series of these worlds makes up a Galaxy and most Galaxies have 3-5 stars on them, each requiring that you take a different path and face different challenges. At first only one or two paths are open but as you collect stars more options and more Galaxies are opened to you. Each world itself is filled with a variety of puzzles, platforms and baddies to fight. They are all themed, so on the honeycomb Galaxy you help out the bee's and you battle giant beetles, while solving puzzles that involve you flying around like a bee and using honeycomb walls to climb.
The controls are simple to pick up with good use of the Wiimote. You use the nun-chuck to move around and the A button to jump. Flick either controller to do a spinning attack that stuns opponents and can interact with various items in the worlds. You can also use the nun-chuck button (Z I think it is) to crouch, allowing you to duck and to jump higher if combined with the A button. That's it for the basic moves. In addition to this you can use the Wiimote to point at the screen and move a cursor around to collect stars. You can also use the trigger to shoot stars with the Wiimote, used to stunning enemies and for interacting with the environment.
There are also quite a few mini-control scheme. In various levels you can find items that transformer Mario (the Fire Flower typical of these games for example). Each of these items adds something new to the control scheme. For example, Bee Mario can fly with the A button held down. Surfing Mario (on a mantra ray) is controlled by twisting the Wiimote instead of using the nun-chuck. All of these are very intuitive and explained as they come up in the game.
[glow=green,2,300]The Good:[/glow]This is seriously the most fun I have had with a platformer since Sly Cooper 1. I am really enjoying this when I'm not frustrated by way too difficult platforming (see The Ugly). The controls are very easy to pick up, very responsive and overall pretty intuitive. The graphics are very polished and cartoony cute as expected. The sounds are in surround and even use the speakers on the wiimotes. The level design in general is just tricky and interesting enough to keep you interested. There is always something new to do, and some new challenge on the next world. Each world run is nice and short, allowing for busy people like me to pop it on for half an hour and actually finish a couple runs. The game can be saved at any time which is a nice touch. The real winner here though is the physics and whole concept of the game. Running around on these odd small islands and worlds in space and rocketing between them is just cool. Using grab stars to float through an asteroid field is just fun. Feeding a hungry Lumin with collected stars only to see him turn into a Giant Wooden Yoshi planet covered in Goombas is weird, but interesting. This last bit is rather cool: they added a really simple thing to make this game more interesting for two people. Instead of just sitting and watching player 1 have all the fun, a second person can pick up a second wiimote and join in the fun by collecting stars, stunning baddies and making Mario jump higher. This really frees up player one to concentrate on the baddies and not worrying about all the stars they could be missing. It's a really nice touch that keeps a watcher interested and interacting. Another interesting use of the WiiConnect24 system. You can take a screen shot of your progress (what stars you have collected) and send them to other Wii users, I guess for bragging rights. I not sure exactly why you would do this, but it's good to see developers using the message system for something.
[glow=yellow,2,300]The Bad:[/glow]I'm not a fan of the comet system. This is where a world you have already beaten suddenly ends up near a 'Chaos Comet'. This requires you to go in and re-do the level but with some annoying thing making it harder. These annoying things include, do it in a time limit, do it vs a shadow you and do it quicker then the shadow, do it with the controls reversed, etc.
[glow=red,2,300]The Ugly:[/glow]This is a platformer, and as most people who know me know, I'm not a very patient gamer when it comes to platformers. I HATE games where one miss timed jump means death, and this is one of them. There were two levels I played last night that had me smashing and throwing things. I was ready to snap the DVD for the game in half on the Candy World. Now I will admit that every time I was doing something in the game that was so hard I wanted to break things it was a side quest, not something required to finish the game. Still why do they have to make these games so damn hard at times? I realize that fans of the genre probably love these challenges, but not I. Thankfully the regular levels and the rest of the game make up for it.
[glow=purple,2,300]Overall:[/glow]This is definitely the best platformer I have played in recent memory. It has an excellent control scheme that uses the Wii's unique controllers very well. This is combined with interesting, unique and challenging level design in a full 3-d world. The one problem with this game, and this is a problem with the platforming genre in general is that some of the levels are ridiculously hard, and are set up where if you miss time one step you die. If you are a fan of the genre you will love this game. Even if you are like me and not a huge platformer fan you will probably enjoy this, but you will find some frustrating levels. Due to this I suggest a buy for fans of the series, and a rent for everyone else.
[glow=blue,2,300]Summary:[/glow]The latest Super Mario game in the worlds most recognized platformer series. This is the first Super Mario on the Wii and it takes advantage of the systems unique capabilities.
As usual you take on the role of Mario and just as typically you are out to save Princess Peach from the evil Bowser. This time around Bowser has taken the Princess and her entire Castle during the Star Festival which occurs every 100 years. Bowser shows up in the middle of the festivities and literally rips the castle, Princess, Mario and all out of the ground and threatens to take them away to Bowser's "New Galaxy". After a failed quick rescue attempt Mario plummets back to earth.
The big M wakes up from his coma an undetermined time later on a small planet, ala The Littlest Prince, with an uber cute bunny looking over him. After a few tutorial levels where the bunnies teach you all your basic moves you find out you have been rescued by star people (called Lumins or something like that). They were on the comet celebrated during the Star Festival, except it's not a comet at all, it's a ship, and bowser stole it's fuel supply, power stars. It's all a bit confusing. The end result is that Mario has to help the Lumins and their princess recover Power Stars from Galaxies around the solar system so they can repair their ship and bring Mario to where Bowser has taken the Princess.
The gameplay is an extremely 3-d platformer. Extremely 3-d in the fact that you are generally running around on small oddly shaped world and using various means to jump to other oddly shaped worlds in order to get to the end world where you will get a star. Each of these worlds has it's own gravity but you have to beware falling off edges and getting sucked into black holes. A series of these worlds makes up a Galaxy and most Galaxies have 3-5 stars on them, each requiring that you take a different path and face different challenges. At first only one or two paths are open but as you collect stars more options and more Galaxies are opened to you. Each world itself is filled with a variety of puzzles, platforms and baddies to fight. They are all themed, so on the honeycomb Galaxy you help out the bee's and you battle giant beetles, while solving puzzles that involve you flying around like a bee and using honeycomb walls to climb.
The controls are simple to pick up with good use of the Wiimote. You use the nun-chuck to move around and the A button to jump. Flick either controller to do a spinning attack that stuns opponents and can interact with various items in the worlds. You can also use the nun-chuck button (Z I think it is) to crouch, allowing you to duck and to jump higher if combined with the A button. That's it for the basic moves. In addition to this you can use the Wiimote to point at the screen and move a cursor around to collect stars. You can also use the trigger to shoot stars with the Wiimote, used to stunning enemies and for interacting with the environment.
There are also quite a few mini-control scheme. In various levels you can find items that transformer Mario (the Fire Flower typical of these games for example). Each of these items adds something new to the control scheme. For example, Bee Mario can fly with the A button held down. Surfing Mario (on a mantra ray) is controlled by twisting the Wiimote instead of using the nun-chuck. All of these are very intuitive and explained as they come up in the game.
[glow=green,2,300]The Good:[/glow]This is seriously the most fun I have had with a platformer since Sly Cooper 1. I am really enjoying this when I'm not frustrated by way too difficult platforming (see The Ugly). The controls are very easy to pick up, very responsive and overall pretty intuitive. The graphics are very polished and cartoony cute as expected. The sounds are in surround and even use the speakers on the wiimotes. The level design in general is just tricky and interesting enough to keep you interested. There is always something new to do, and some new challenge on the next world. Each world run is nice and short, allowing for busy people like me to pop it on for half an hour and actually finish a couple runs. The game can be saved at any time which is a nice touch. The real winner here though is the physics and whole concept of the game. Running around on these odd small islands and worlds in space and rocketing between them is just cool. Using grab stars to float through an asteroid field is just fun. Feeding a hungry Lumin with collected stars only to see him turn into a Giant Wooden Yoshi planet covered in Goombas is weird, but interesting. This last bit is rather cool: they added a really simple thing to make this game more interesting for two people. Instead of just sitting and watching player 1 have all the fun, a second person can pick up a second wiimote and join in the fun by collecting stars, stunning baddies and making Mario jump higher. This really frees up player one to concentrate on the baddies and not worrying about all the stars they could be missing. It's a really nice touch that keeps a watcher interested and interacting. Another interesting use of the WiiConnect24 system. You can take a screen shot of your progress (what stars you have collected) and send them to other Wii users, I guess for bragging rights. I not sure exactly why you would do this, but it's good to see developers using the message system for something.
[glow=yellow,2,300]The Bad:[/glow]I'm not a fan of the comet system. This is where a world you have already beaten suddenly ends up near a 'Chaos Comet'. This requires you to go in and re-do the level but with some annoying thing making it harder. These annoying things include, do it in a time limit, do it vs a shadow you and do it quicker then the shadow, do it with the controls reversed, etc.
[glow=red,2,300]The Ugly:[/glow]This is a platformer, and as most people who know me know, I'm not a very patient gamer when it comes to platformers. I HATE games where one miss timed jump means death, and this is one of them. There were two levels I played last night that had me smashing and throwing things. I was ready to snap the DVD for the game in half on the Candy World. Now I will admit that every time I was doing something in the game that was so hard I wanted to break things it was a side quest, not something required to finish the game. Still why do they have to make these games so damn hard at times? I realize that fans of the genre probably love these challenges, but not I. Thankfully the regular levels and the rest of the game make up for it.
[glow=purple,2,300]Overall:[/glow]This is definitely the best platformer I have played in recent memory. It has an excellent control scheme that uses the Wii's unique controllers very well. This is combined with interesting, unique and challenging level design in a full 3-d world. The one problem with this game, and this is a problem with the platforming genre in general is that some of the levels are ridiculously hard, and are set up where if you miss time one step you die. If you are a fan of the genre you will love this game. Even if you are like me and not a huge platformer fan you will probably enjoy this, but you will find some frustrating levels. Due to this I suggest a buy for fans of the series, and a rent for everyone else.