<edit> Wall of text, I know... I didn't know it was going to be this long. But it's worth the read, I assure you.</edit>
Okay. So last night I went to a friends house, and instead of just visiting, we stayed up into the wee hours of the morning and played NSMBW (on a completely unrelated note, I'm so tired right now that I'm about to pass out on my keyboard only to leave a stream characters of whatever my face lands on).
I didn't start from world 1, but I did play through mid-way all the way and beat the game last night. Having now played the game, I think that a bit of my biasness has passed.... because it is a good game.
BUT... I do have a few things I'd like to bring up:
All this talk about new powerups is kind of bollocks. The penguine suit is nother more than just a different graphical representation of the shell suit from NSMB DS. The same for the copter suit. And I remember being able to freeze enemies in other games too... though it might have been rom-hacks of other Mario titles. But yeah, nothing new is brought to the table as far as powerups. In fact, this game feels nothing more than the DS version with newer levels. It's nice to have a bigger screen and better graphics, but that's generally it.
One thing though... through out the night, there were quite a few times I was playing by myself. And I'm telling you right now... getting this game for single player is a huge injustice. This game was MADE for multiplayer. It's the only thing it has going for it over it's DS predecessor. And what's sad is that the multiplayer was SO good, that I'm even more convinced that this game absolutely NEEDED online. (And on that note, Dray, you asked if you needed multiple people to get all the secrests: Well, unless there were invisible blocks I didn't know about... yes. Yes you do.)
Level design was actually bumped up a notch from the DS as far as difficulty, which is good. But you litterally have infinate lives. You can't lose. If you life counter hits 0, you just go back out and start the level over with 5 lives and your "continue counter" goes up by one. This takes a good deal of fun out of the game. Kind of like playing through Fable 2 when you found out you can never die there too... it kind of takes the wind out of the sails of the game. But some people prefer that, I guess. I don't.
The only other complaint is that the two toads really felt forced. Specially when the one to save Peach was a yellow colored toad and not one of the bros. But that's just me...
Now on to the good things:
Everything I played was fun. I played it with some friends, but these friends will only be around durring the holidays. So I'm only going to be able to play this game the way it was ment maybe 3 times a year at best. It was fun and challenging trying to find all three star coins in each level... and you are rewarded for finding them all (what you get in spoilers).
One really neat feature is that you can go to Peach's Castle in World 1 at any time and buy videos. These videos are one of a few things: Hints how to get star coins in levels you couldn't, hints to secret exsits to levels, hints to farming a crap ton of 1-ups (which they call infinate, but not so much. Besides, you can't lose anyway, it's kind of pointless... but fun to watch never the less), or skill based videos of levels with someone blazing through a level doing some very technical and awesome stuff (I'm calling out save states on this though... because some of that stuff is just damn right impossible unless your japanese).
They tried really hard to make this kind of a shout out to the original Mario. And they did it fairly well. Bringing back the koopa kids and having an inventory like in Mario 3 was nice. The airship levels were awesome too. And the final battle? Epic. Just epic.
So enough with the foreplay, I guess. Is the missing online really so important as to if you are going to get this game or not. If you don't have friends that come over often... aboslutely. I can't tell you how much fun and how many times I was currled over in laughter at some of the things happening. Things that, alone, wouldn't have happened at all. Here's an example:
In game, if you are about to die, you can hit A and put yourself in a bubble (as if having infinate lives wasn't enough). While in it, you are floating past everything to the nearest player who isn't in a bubble. Once he touches it you are out and safe. If all players are in a bubble at one time, no one is there to pop anyone out of it and it counts as death all around. I was playing with one other person. And she was small. I kicked a shell into a row of goombas, and I warned her to jump. And she did... into another goomba and died (which was kind of funny to begin with). But I ran after the shell trying to get a few more goombas on screen to score a few 1-ups (don't ask me why). Well, she was coming back in a bubble... but at that moment, the shell reached the edge of the ledge and popped her bubble and she fell to her doom before she ever hit the ground. We were laughing about THAT one for a while. And there were many many moments like that.
So yeah, while I'm convinced this is a good game... I'm also convinced that online is manditory for this game. And without it, people without a constant flow of company to their house needn't waste their money7y6uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu
Arcade
FAQ
Search
Chat
Site Admin
Rank 10: Cute Lil White Mage
Rank 7: Learned Black Mage
Rank 11: Sexy Black Mage
