A game that's as challenging as you want it to be
I've always been a Mario fan. When I got an NES and Super Mario Bros, I played the hell out of that game, finding all the secrets and glitches. It was one of those things I could play and enjoy again, no matter how many times I played it. The same thing happened when I got my hands on Mario 3, and Mario World. I played and enjoyed the 3d Mario games too, but to me, Mario has always belonged in 2d.
So here we are, finally receiving a new home console 2d Mario game, the first since Super Mario World (or Yoshi's Island, depending on how hardcore you are at defining a 'Mario' game). This nostalgic old school gamer is pleased to report that New Super Mario Bros Wii manages to do its legacy justice.
On the surface, this isn't a deep game. You go left to right, you've got run and jump buttons, and your only main goals are to get to the end of the level and not die. There's a new addition to Mario's moveset in the airspin move, which is performed by waggling the Wiimote while in mid-air. This will cause Mario to do a quick spin that will give your jumps a little bit more hang time. Powerups are standard Mario fare, and there's a couple new additions in the Penguin Suit and Propeller hat.
All told, there isn't all that much 'new' in NSMB Wii. So why bother? What makes Mario great is it's a game that's as challenging as you want it to be.
Sure, you could pop this game in, play three levels, hit a warp zone, play about four more, warp again to the last world, and have Peach saved in under an hour. But what fun is that? Nearly every level of this game is filled with cool stuff a skilled player can do to barrel through the entire level without stopping, stylishly defeat enemies and get 1-Ups, grab every coin in sight, etc. And then there's Star Coins.
Star Coins! This is where things get interesting. It would appear that there isn't much of a reason to grab them at first. You can spend them to buy gameplay videos, which can be fun to watch and will sometimes show the locations of hidden level exits or Star Coins (the Star Coin location videos are free), but they aren't needed to unlock anything else, unlike New Super Mario Bros DS. Until you beat the game that is, and World 9 is unlocked. To play any of the eight levels in World 9, you need to grab all the Star Coins in the corresponding world 1-8. This is basically NSMB Wii's version of the Secret World in Super Mario World. Those levels tend to be pretty difficult and lack midway checkpoints present in most other levels in the game.
Getting those Star Coins is the real challenge in this game. They tend to be put in locations that are tough to get to or tough to find, but rarely both, and you can figure out the relative position of Star Coins you're missing in a level because they are displayed on the HUD in order. Then you've got the aforementioned hint videos to help. All this means Star Coin hunting is rarely a tedious process. Besides, this is 2009, so you can just look up their locations on Gamefaqs if you really want to. My point is, while they aren't exactly necessary, if you play this game without at least trying for Star Coins, you are not getting the full experience.
I do have one big complaint. This game features some automatic scrolling levels, maybe ten or twelve total, and almost all of them suck. The problem with them is that the scrolling moves so slow that these levels become boring and time consuming to play. My drive to grab every Star Coin was seriously threatened by a level in world 9 that had auto scrolling. Now that I've got 100% completion on the game, whenever I go back to run through it again I always avoid those levels, because unlike everything else in the game, they just aren't fun.
Bottom line, this is just a great game. The controls are simple and responsive, the graphics are good for the Wii, the level design is excellent and a die hard fan will find many reasons to keep coming back. It's not hard to play, but it's hard, and fun, to try to play well. If you have a Wii, buy this game. You will not regret it.
