I Haven’t Felt This Ripped-off Since Luigi’s Mansion
Gamers expecting New Super Mario Bros. Wii to rise to the greatness of its previous 2D console installments will be left scratching their heads with a great big empty void filling the pit of their stomachs, questioning why it’s already over… this, right before the feeling of being pissed-off sets in because you just spent $50 on a 5 hour cakewalk.
New Super Mario Bros. Wii has some huge, almost impossibly larger than life, shoes to fill. It is the first time that the Mario Bros. have made a "2D" console appearance since Super Mario World was released in 1991. Super Mario World is one of the greatest platformers of all time, maybe just barely not able to reach the greatness of its previous installment known as none other than Super Mario Bros. 3. New Super Mario Bros. Wii nowhere near tries to meet or beat either of these two godly games.
Speaking of the two previous console Mario Bros. games of this type, here’s what I was really hoping what would have happened with the development of New Super Mario bros. Wii: The game makers should have played through both Super Mario Bros. 3 and Super Mario World again, before even writing the first line of code for New Super Mario Bros. Wii. They should have asked themselves, "what made these two games so great?" They should have strived to make New Super Mario Bros. Wii longer, more difficult, and better than these two previous console installments. It’s painfully obvious that they didn’t even try. Nintendo now-a-days seems to be here just to make money off of casual gamers, soccer moms, "partiers", and the unsuspecting victims with great big Nostalgic Nintendo Entertainment System Hearts; longing to relive their past experiences (like me).
The main problem with New Super Mario Bros. Wii is that it’s just too short and not very difficult, when referring to the single player experience. I don’t recall dying more than 4 times on any given level and I also beat the final World 8 level within my first 2 tries. This level of difficulty is just inexcusable for a 2D Mario Bros. game. Some web sites, like MTV Multiplayer for example ( http://multiplayerblog.mtv.com/2009/10/07/new-super-mario-bros-wii-is-as-hard-as-contra&a=2), even went so far as to say that this game "Is as hard as Contra" in their previews. This kind of talk made a huge amount of joy rise-up within me before the game’s release. Reading more and more articles like this, across the web, kept confirming these ideas. But alas, they were all wrong, so very wrong (most probably still blinded by their love for Mario, even in their final reviews). Adding to the problems with difficulty, the game just feels very empty and "spacious" in many of the levels. Instead of filling them with enemies and death defying traps, it’s almost like Nintendo was required to do this to fit in 4 players, thus hurting the single player experience immensely.
In regards to the multiplayer, it just feels tacked-on. Nintendo was just checking the "party game" checkbox and shoe-horned this feature in as fast as they could. Playing with multiple people is just not the way this type of game is meant to be played, as far as Nintendo’s implementation is concerned anyway. If another player dies or gets a power-up, all players must pause while the animation is occurring. This is slightly jarring, but worst of all gets very annoying after a short while.
Since this game has multiplayer, the other hugely glaring omission is that there is no online multiplayer. Actually, there is no online anything in this game. It’s the year 2009 and Nintendo still doesn’t know that there’s an internet out there. Even if it couldn’t have been possible, from a technical stand-point, to support all 4 players in online multiplayer (which I doubt) it would have been nice to have some kind of other online features. Since this game is so all about making you spend all your easily earned Star Coins on watching lame movies, why couldn’t Nintendo could have also including a player movie recording and sharing feature online? This game is practically just begging for this kind of feature, yet Nintendo completely dismisses online. I would have loved to be able to download speed run ghosts of other random top players, or just share some movies and ghosts online with my close friends. Something like this would have giving me more to strive for and play with, besides what little you can do after beating the game.
Moving-on, what else is annoying is the waggle control. This again feels tacked-on just so that Nintendo could check another checkbox on the list of line items they felt to include in New Super Mario Bros. Wii. Picking-up items by shaking the controller just feels wrong to me, but the worst part has to be the completely useless spin jump that you can make the Mario Bros. (and Toads) perform. I don’t know how many times I accidentally triggered this move; when all I meant to do was reach down to scratch my leg while playing. The only really useful move that comes from the waggle control is the mid-air float maneuver. Unfortunately, mastering this move makes the game even easier than it is already and can, more often than not, mean the difference between getting 8,000 points or a 1up at the end of each level. Lastly, the waggle makes Mario and friends dismount Yoshi, which can prove useful (maybe) the 3 times you can actually ride him through-out the game. Regardless, the waggle control again feels tacked-on and the player should have been giving the option to use the GameCube or Classic Controllers and remap the waggle actions to actual buttons! Seriously, this is the first Mario Bros. game ever to have non-perfect controllers.
In conclusion, New Super Mario Bros. Wii just feels like a collection of references to past Mario games and is one big mess of tack-ons. It’s definitely the worst, most uninspired and disappointing 2D Mario Bros. game that I have ever played on a console. Personally, I feel that Nintendo really should have spent more time on New Super Mario Bros. Wii. Tuning the difficultly and reworking what simply doesn’t work about the game. I wish that they would have taken the Blizzard Entertainment approach of not releasing a game until it’s actually finished. New Super Mario Bros. Wii stands-out to me as just an unfinished game, rushed out the door to meet the holiday shopping season, with things tacked-on just for the sake of checking a box on a list. It "references" the past games in almost every way imaginable, but does nothing more with the concepts than just showing them to the player briefly and moving-on… all the while Nintendo forget to actually make the game good as well.
Nintendo can no longer win me over with nostalgia and trick my NES loving heart. With every passing release, they are slowing losing my trust that they can actually deliver good games anymore. I’m very disappointed with this game and with Nintendo. New Super Mario Bros. Wii is not the Super Mario Bros. 3 killer I was hoping for, which Nintendo tricked the media into thinking; which in-turn tricked the gamers like me.
