Review: Super Mario 3D World (The WiiU Game)

(also meant to be published sooner... again, stuff happened) 

It’s-a me, Aaron! And I’m here for another review for a game (we’ll get a movie in here again at some point). This week it’ll be Super Mario 3D World for the WiiU and the WiiU alone. Haven’t done a WiiU title in a while.

SM3DW is your standard Mario affair. Mario is minding his own business when Bowser shows up with some new plan to conquer the world or universe or whatever. This time, however, he isn’t kidnapping Peach, which I supposed threw Mario for a loop. This time Bowser kidnapped these new fairy creatures with magic powers to do… well that’s kind of vague, but I imagine they’re like little God-level powered imps that do just about anything. So Mario must save the fairies to save the world. 

He’s not alone. This time, much like usual, Luigi is along for the ride. But, breaking tradition in a way we haven’t seen since Super Mario Bros. 2, Peach and Toad (a single toad) will join the fray. Each one of these characters offering slightly different abilities which may make navigating certain levels or areas of levels easier for some. I played the entire game as Peach because hooray for gender equality and the ability to float. Meanwhile my girlfriend played Luigi because why not? Throughout the course of the past two months (or so) we’ve spent hours playing through SM3DW various levels and challenges. So now it’s time for my review of all of that.

Let’s start with the premise of the game (the “story”). Much like most other Mario games, there isn’t much of one. Anymore I’m starting to think the actual story of Mario bares more similarities to Alice in Wonderland in that it’s all just a drug induced hallucination. The events of Mario games don’t actually happen because, in reality, Mario is just some strung-out addict plumber in a back alley who is just mentally unable to grasp reality anymore. Bowser’s his purple dragon and he’s constantly chasing it and trying to kill to maintain his high. But Nintendo will never admit to this because Mario is the video game equivalent of Mickey Mouse in that he can do no wrong and must always be shown in a 100% positive light under their owner’s (Nintendo) control. 

But if you want the story being presented, fuck if I know who the fairies really are or how Bowser came about them. Fuck if I know why Bowser wants to do anything or how gets his affairs in order like he does. All I know is that he is capturing the fairies and making Navi (from Zelda) cry. Peach and company then must go and save these new characters they have no actual attachment to because they have nothing better to do, I guess. I really don’t understand the motivations or logic at work here. Which is why I go back to my addict plumber concept making more sense than whatever bullshit Nintendo is willing to shovel us this time.

But Mario games aren’t about the story. Never have been. That’d be like complaining about David Cage games for the lack of gameplay. Or complaining about a novel for the lack of pictures. We don’t expect these things and we shouldn’t. Mario’s all about the gameplay and this time around things have been shaken up a little bit. Not to the degree we’ve seen indie developers take the series, but enough to make Mario feel less stale than the New Super Mario Bros games have in recent memory. 

In SM3DW, we get a slew of new items, most notably, the cat-suit power which allows Peach, Luigi, and the other two to climb walls, do a jump attack that has no real purpose, and attempt to look sexy in a way that only furry fans will actually appreciate while the rest of us slowly back away in terror. We have other upgrades such as boomerangs, cherry-clone power-up, ice-skates, base balls, cannon-blocks, and a few others. I can’t remember them all, but they must have just thrown all the ideas in their bucket on the table during the design meeting for this one in hopes at least ONE of these would catch on.

Much to their credit, the power-ups do make this game come alive in some good ways. Climbing walls is certainly a fun little trick to do and multiple players trying to keep track of their multiple clones is actually entertaining in of itself. But there are some glaring issues with this game that make it difficult to call it excellent, and keep it more in the “fun, but just okay” level of quality. 

For starters, this is the first co-op Mario we’ve had that isn’t solely 2D side-scrolling adventure. On one level, this works great because it allows the level design to flex its muscles and do a variety of things the 2D games were starting to run out of. On the down side, this makes navigation a pain in the ass because the controls still basically function like their navigating on a 2D plain, which makes certain areas that require diagonals a load of bullocks unless you bring a joystick to the party (so WiiPad, Nunchucks, and ProControllers are the recommended input methods here).

There’s also the fact that even though we have a screen in one of the controllers, we all have to still remain in the same area because going too far will force players to bubble up and follow whoever the game decides is in charge of that decision (which is sometimes rather random). You’d think that the WiiU gamepad would allow players separate more in order to explore levels at their leisure rather than forcibly keep them in the same tight group the entire time (which causes most of the chaos to happen on its own). I’d ask if we could make it Gauntlet Dark Legacy style where players just have to remain on the same screen at all times, but given how some levels are designed, such a limitation would be impossible in some areas without killing players. 

But the bubble-up feature has also been hampered in this game in the most depressing of ways. Before in the NSMB games, you could bubble up as you fall into a pit (because sometimes you get forced into one not under your own power) and it would be a free lifesaver you could rely on. In SM3DW, this feature has been taken away, making it impossible to really recover from death drops in a game where they’re more likely to happen accidentally given the 3D nature of the game on how some of the powers require you to aim where you’ll propel your body.

SM3DW also does two things which I chastised Sonic Lost Worlds for and I’m not going to insult one without the other. In SM3DW, the lives-system returns (as it always does in Mario games) but continues to remain just as pointless. You gain five lives once you’ve lost all of them without any real punishment other than time being wasted. Why bother having lives in the first place? It adds further insult to injury when the game gives you the “White-Leaf of God” power-up which makes you invincible to most any traps other than death drops and kills any enemy upon contact when you lose enough lives in a level. Thanks game, but fuck off because taking that power-up prevents me from using other ones that might actually be crucial to beating the level. 

Then there’s the “collect X amount of horse testicles to unlock this level” nonsense that Sonic Lost Worlds felt was necessary to gameplay. I hate it when games do this. You speed run through levels or ignore the bonus stars because you just want to play the game with friends and enjoy the levels when you suddenly come across a gate in front of a castle stating you need some arbitrary number of stupid bullshit before you can keep playing the game proper. Then it asks you to scoot back to older levels you already played in an attempt to arbitrarily lengthen gameplay.

In a large group this would immediately end the game because you and your friends aren’t going to be co-operative enough to collect all the necessary stars to pull that off. You’ll be lucky to collect them just playing the game normally. In pairs, it’s doable, but with my girlfriend and I, I spend extra time outside of our play sessions to find and collect them because our time together is somewhat limited and I’d rather not spend it replaying shit looking for shit to unlock more shit in an exercise of insane frustration at times. I like playing the game and I like playing with her, but we’re adults with lives. We have things to do other than replay the same fucking levels to get this shit, Nintendo. I’ll at least give you the prize for being less retarded than Sonic on this one, because they were asking for thousands of birds which were hidden throughout levels in various amounts. With Mario, at least it was a consistent 3-stars per level, making them easier to find reliably.

 In the end, yes, it’s still fun to jump on the heads of turtles in a cat suit. Is it the best game ever? Of course not. But it’s fun to play with friends and likely a game I wouldn’t play on my own (though I could probably say that about Mario as a whole at this point). If you have a WiiU, I’d give it a recommend since there’s bloody nothing else out for the damn thing right now. Maybe once Hyrule Warriors or Tropical Freeze comes out you’ll have options. For now, I guess back to PC for me.