Last game you finished and your thoughts

Another Mario game, eh?  Sigh.  Well, the story's obviously the most important part of such games, so what have we got?

Hey, Peach doesn't get kidnapped this time!  Instead it's a bunch of fairies called Sprixies, which Bowser imprisons in a bottle, and unlike a certain other Nintendo character is considered a baddy for it.  So Mario, Luigi, Peach and that blue Toad from NSBMU hop through a transparent pipe into Sprixie Land to bring a halt to these shenanigans.


f he had a green tunic and blond hair, there'd be nothing wrong with this.

Fatuous first question over, that title reminds me a lot of another game's...

Yup, this is truly Super Mario 3D Land's younger but bigger brother.  You can tell it from the controls, which are far and away the worst part of the game.  Analogue movement is swapped out for eight-way movement and a dash button, which you'll be holding down for about 60% of the game anyway.  The initial dash is far too slow, because there's another dash that kicks in after about three seconds of running, which is how fast the normal dash should be.  Mario and friends do have some familiar jumps, with the wall-kick, long jump and side somersault all making a return, but it's their movement on the ground that frustrates.

And the camera barely moves, and can't at all in multiplayer, which necessarily hinders the level design because you can't have stuff getting in the way.

But I thought Mario games always have good level design!

They do, but up until now, home console 3D Marios have had great level design; be it SM64 or Sunshine's sprawling explorable land masses, or the Galaxies' spheroid obstacle courses.  SM3DW is... not like that.


Bang some cuboids together, put some fancy textures on them, and Satoru's your uncle.

Like its predecessor, SM3DW's stages are mostly 2D Mario levels dragged into 3D.  They're definitely not sprawling land masses - the 2D Marios' time limit and a flagpole at the end shoot any possibility of sprawling explorable levels in the head, apart from in a few cases that dump you on a mostly flat plain and ask you to inspect every inch of it.  But nor are they like the Galaxies either, eschewing the space games' organic, planetoid level design for a more blocky and cuboidal feel.  Levels feel like they've been put together out of geometrical shapes rather than allowed to grow, very much "game levels" rather than "worlds".

You're not selling this very well, you know.

I know, I know.  Maybe it's that my last 3D home console Mario was SMG2.  But most of my moaning is now done, and I can now go onto why SM3DW is still a very good game.  

For a start, it's a Mario platformer, which means that despite everything I've said above, the platforming is good and solid and enjoyable.  Utterly par for the course, but it bears repetition.

What elevates it above "par for the course" is just how bursting with ideas this game is.  Blocky though it may be, SM3DW isn't lacking on the imagination front: it takes the Galaxy approach of chucking as many ideas at your head as possible, and benefits from it.  When you're not dodging the ant things in the picture above, you might be skating around in a giant shoe (an idea which immediately improves the usually tedious ice levels immeasurably), bolting down a train while missiles come at you from the background, pelting away from an oncoming tide of purple death, hopping over platforms that appear and vanish with the beat, or guiding Mario by his shadow, trying to figure out how the 3D level is actually arranged from its 2D projection.


Spoiler: it's not actually Bowser.

When the game moves away from its standard cuboidal obstacle courses, it finds the opportunity to really spread its wings.  Mario rushes across the gangplanks of a rickety galleon.  Japanese bath house doors can be opened by touching them on the screen, while gongs activate in the same way to shower you with coins.  An attempt to replace Yoshi with a swimming dinosaur doesn't quite work, but is a hoot in multiplayer (more on that later).  Not to mention the courses based on Super Mario Kart and... well, Space Invaders.  The Captain Toad puzzle levels (his backpack is too heavy for him to jump, see) could be an entire game on their own.  Here, they're just a throwaway.

The power-ups show the same variety.  While the new Cat Suit, allowing you to scrabble up walls and scratch foes in the most adorable manner, is frequent (and very useful), Raccoon Suits, Boomerang Suits and Mega Mushrooms are handed out for one level, then whisked away.  It's a shame that the new Double Cherry, which clones your character, isn't as explored as it could be, and that the overused Fire Flower is so often at the forefront.  But even the boring fireballs are greatly appreciated when it comes to getting all four collectables (3 Green Stars and a stamp for use on Miiverse), some of which are bastards to find (pardon my French) in true Mario style.


A hat which fires missiles, even more so.  Get up there, damn it!

That's more like it, Nintendo fanboy.

Just a shame about the difficulty, really.  It's pathetic up until world 7, at which point the game seems to remember that it was meant to be maintaining a difficulty curve and brings the difficulty back up to where it should be, so hard it gives you whiplash.  Even then, though, the bosses are still pathetic (apart from a surprisingly epic final confrontation).  And repetitive.  Yep.

How about the aesthetics?  Which you don't care about, of course, being a Nintendo fanboy.

I never said that!  I care very much for aesthetics.  I even care about graphics a bit.  I just said that they're not as important as gameplay.  The two together are obviously best, and that's exactly what SM3DW delivers.  

If there are two things this game loves above all else, it's lighting effects and water.  Look at the light reflecting off the ants in the picture above, or off the clear pipes.  Bullet Bills have a metallic shine, flaming enemies and lava give off a warm radiance, Dry Bones' eyes glow a malevolent green.  Mario's even shinier when wet (behave), which Nintendo like to do, because rain dripping down the screen looks gorgeous.  Mind you, they've been good at water since Wave Race, so this is no surprise; but it's nice to see that HD upgrade from the Wii being put to use.


It'd all be a lot prettier if he wasn't about to get jawed to death, though.

I should mention the music here, but honestly I can't remember much of it, apart from that it butchers Gusty Garden in one level near the end.  Like the NSMB games, the soundtrack is largely good with the occasional standout, which in this case would be the savannah theme and one of the castle themes.

You said you were going to get onto the multiplayer, like, ages ago.

Oh yes, that.  As mentioned above, you can play as four different characters - Mario who is boring, Luigi who jumps high but skids around like he's on greased rollerskates, Peach who is slow as treacle but can float for a bit, and Toad who is fast but has no jump.  It's nice to have, but really they're there so that in multiplayer, nobody has to get stuck with Yellow Toad.

Maybe it was just that I was playing with incompetents (my family are lovely but not too good at gaming), but the multiplayer wasn't all that.  Everyone's stuck on the one screen, and when someone goes too far away the others float helplessly in bubbles for a while.  It's easy to get further away with the extra dimension, meaning that there was a lot of helpless floating.  It's telling that the most fun levels in multiplayer stick you all on Plessie, don't let you split up, and have everyone contribute to her movement.  They're hilarious, especially with bad players.


Let's push her off the side.  We must be next in line to the Mushroom Kingdom throne by now.  Nobody needs to know.

So, should I buy a Wii U for it?

Ehhhhh...  It pains me to say this, but no.  It's a good game, often great, bursting with variety and things to do; but it has too many niggling flaws, that niggle through the whole game, to be a console seller on its own.  It doesn't make much use of the screen either, apart from the Japanese bath house level (and off-screen play is always nice).  If you pick up a Wii U for other games, do buy this - it's worth it at full price.  But it's not worth two hundred-odd pounds.

You've rambled for long enough.  Sum it all up for me in a couple of bulleted lists and a ratio.

+ More variety than you can shake a Wiimote at
+ Cat power-up is great
+ An advertisement for the Wii U's graphical grunt
+ Gets hard at the end (and afterwards)

- Controls are subpar for Mario
- 2D Mario in 3D, rather than "true 3D Mario"
- Most of the main game is terribly easy
- Multiplayer doesn't always work

8/10


"Only eight out of-a ten?  We're-a coming for you, a-Balladeer."