Top 10 Games of 2009 -- #9. New Super Mario Bros. Wii (Wii)
By transience 1 Comments
I have a lot of complaints about this game -- so many that people like to say that I'm overly critical of this game or view Mario 3/World through rose-tinted glasses -- so I'm going to start with the positives here.
Let's get the most important thing out of the way: Mario Wii (worst name ever, by the way) (crap, I'm being negative again) is a single player game. Yeah, you can play it multiplayer and that's the big advertising draw. And yeah, multiplayer is fun -- or at least, it *can* be fun unless you're trying to actually play it seriously. That's a whole other matter that will likely frustrate you. But anyway, multiplayer is a fun little diversion and an interesting twist on the definition of classic games, Mario. That said, this game is clearly designed to be played a single-player Mario game. This isn't a cheap party game, there's a real honest-to-god Mario game underneath, and it's pretty good. The level design stands out bigtime here. Each level is unique and you can tell that people that really like Mario made it. It's probably the most 'atmospheric' Mario game in that the game can trip you out or make you jump or laugh or whatever it's going for. It does a great job of immersing you into the game, probably moreso than any other Mario game. From a design standpoint, this game stands with some of the best 2d pure platformers ever.
Now comes a "but", and it's a pretty big one. The physics on this game are all jacked up. I was listening to a game designer give an interview some time ago and he had this to say about Mario: "Mario has the perfect jump. the trajectory just feels perfect. You run at just the right speed, you jump at just the right angle. It just feels so good to jump."
Mario Wii doesn't feel good to jump. It's slippery as all hell and the whole game is slowed down. You can outrun turtle shells!!! I can understand why they did this -- multiplayer and whatnot -- but I love just flying through a level at warp speed in old Mario games. I love jumping off a high platform and just flying blindly, hoping to adjust in mid-air, not really knowing what's coming. The level design, while good, is more focused on precise jumping than momentum.
The powerups are completely mediocre. The propeller suit is the best of the bunch, but that's because the rest are completely pointless. You've got a fire flower, an ice flower (kinda cool, but not really all that great), and a Penguin Suit that is just an ice flower + a slide. The penguin suit only exists in like one world too, it's like the frog suit in Mario 3. There's Yoshi, but he's only in like 6 or 7 levels total. What a ripoff. I think my biggest complaint with the powerups, though, is the way the game implements them. In previous games, you could choose to use the frog suit or you could swim through the level small. You could fly with the cape or shoot enemies with fireballs. In Mario Wii, the game forces certain powerups down your throat. You'll get to a level where you need to freeze enemies and you'll get an ice flower every two steps. It allows the designers to make more specific challenges, but ultimately I feel like I'm being led around by the developers without having the freedom to do it the way I want. You can still be unconventional, but it feels more like you're being stubborn than doing anything legitimately exciting.
And that leads me to probably the biggest complaint I have -- it's just uninspired at times. It borrows so heavily from Mario 3 that it forgets to be its own thing. It doesn't feel like it has any new ideas outside of the multiplayer. It sometimes feels more like a tribute album than an exciting new game.
So yeah, despite all that, this game is pretty good. A solid 2d Mario game is something that's actually pretty rare these days, and because of that, it feels refreshing. Too bad it also feels kind of.. complacent, for lack of a better word.
Kind of a negative review for the #9 game of the year, huh?