Screenshots :.
New Super Mario Bros Wii
Wii
Matt
09-12-2009
"Movember is over now, guys."
"The action often becomes very hectic"
"More evidence of this here."
"Like a Nintendo Christmas card, eh?"
"The Great Escape: Mario style"
I never thought I would be sitting here reviewing a Mario game that could possibly cause major trust issues between friends. Straight up – never saw it coming in a million years. We’re used to the big old fatso wombling around jumping on turtles, eating mushrooms and riding a dragon with a giant tongue; now he’s back, and he’s set to cause you and your chums a whole bunch of slightly awkward apologies and protestations of innocence.
See, New Super Mario Bros Wii attempts to do something that no other Mario game has done to date by implementing a multiplayer aspect to proceedings. The general idea is that you and a bunch of chums can pelt around your standard Mario 2D platform levels in one of two ways: helping each other out, or battling it out for coins or the fastest level completion time. On paper it sounds pretty intriguing and in practice it proves very entertaining, but there are issues that do crop up now and again.
Before we discuss those, I’d best explain that it is still a riot to play with your mates, and most impressively the implementation of a four-player mode has had very little impact on that certain Mario Bros feel that you’d expect. You find yourselves still hurtling toward the right edge of the screen leaping over shells, bouncing on the top of enemies and leaping into power-up boxes to be sprinkled with whatever joyful treasure they hold, and at times it can be utterly hilarious when your chums are desperately faffing around trying to keep up with each other.
This rings true for both the supposed co-op multiplayer as well as the point and race modes. I say ‘supposed’ co-op multiplayer as, perhaps unintentionally, Nintendo have stumbled upon that basic human instinct when it comes to actually playing it: the need to be a complete and utter bastard to other people. Yeah, sure, you might start off with the intention of helping each other conquer the levels whilst playing through either the proper ‘story’ mode or the free play mode in which you can play any level passed in the main playthrough, but pretty soon things will start to come unstuck at the seams.
There are two main reasons for this. The first is that, as mentioned above, other peoples’ misfortunes are always entertaining no matter how much you protest otherwise. Gone and ‘accidentally’ knocked Luigi off the edge of a platform to his doom? Oh dear. Picked up one of the Toads and misplaced your throw so that instead of the safety of yonder floating platform he plummets into a lava pit? Golly. Problem is, it’s just far too funny for the first dozen or so instances and hence you can’t help but grin when it does happen.
After a while this might begin to wear a bit thin, and although you can still carry on as your erstwhile dead buddy is bought back to life in a magic bubble you will start to want to actually attempt to work together to whiz through the game’s many levels. This is where the issue of confusion strikes, and you find yourself blundering into other folks more often than not, or being distracted by what someone else is doing. With a bit of co-ordination (this usually involves lots of loud shouting) it can be done reasonably smoothly, but it’s not as enjoyable as the single player mode.
On the other hand, playing against each other for coins or racing against folks to the end is an utter boon, and it benefits immensely from actually encouraging you to sabotage others to your own gain. Instantly all the clumsiness and accidental deaths are forgiven amidst a tidal wave of battering people into oblivion and hurling them at things and other people in order to get a competitive edge. The best bit is that the game allows you to form fragile alliances with one of your chums as you work together to battle ahead of others, yet in one glorious moment nearing the finishing flag all of this could come to an end with a tactical bunt off of a ledge. Simply flicking the Wii-mote upward and holding the 1 button allows you to pick up anyone else scuttling around the screen (and items, for that matter), and knowing the right time and place to do this takes a bit of practice. In effect, you have to learn your opponents’ tendencies and exploit their faffing. Oh, and you can gobble people with a Yoshi and spit them out too. Excellent.
If you are one of those chaps who takes a great deal of care and concern over your friends’ blood pressures then luckily there’s the single player mode to work through too, which offers up eight themed worlds packed with a selection of levels. It’s classic Nintendo stuff with plenty of leaping about across floating and moving platforms, and at times the level design throws a rather clever little section at you that, whilst not exactly offering anything new to 2D platforming or the Mario 2D series, are beautifully judged and really rather enjoyable. It’s also refreshingly challenging, although that’s balanced out somewhat by a handful of levels being designed around giving you chances to constantly run through and pick up extra lives should the need arise. Ninty have eased the pain further with a rather clever guide system that allows you to watch a video of Luigi completing a level or section if you fail it enough times.
There are a couple of things added into the mixture to freshen it up a little from its older cousin on the DS (review here) – the most obvious is the loss of the gigantic mushroom power-up in favour of a propeller hat, an ice hat and a penguin suit that not only allows you to freeze enemies like the ice hat, but gives you better control in water and on ice. The levels are designed in a manner that reminds you of the Kirby games in that certain power-ups are needed at certain points to allow you to collect the game’s 3 giant gold coins per level, although a lot of the time these aren’t available at the particular point you are at and you must revisit later on to successfully snag the gold. Whether this appeals to you or not will pretty much rely on how patient you are.
Still, it’s an entertaining package whether you be going solo or battling it out with buddies. The niggles with co-op play rankle a little and can’t be ignored, but there’s still a Bowser-sized portion of chuckles to be had along the way. It’s also a rather pretty game too, with the pseudo-2D look of the DS game making a pleasant leap from the small screen to the big packed with all the usual vibrant Mario colour palette and hum-along tunes. Oh, and while we’re mentioning the familiar, yeah… Peach gets kidnapped again. Can’t really complain again I guess, as if you’re buying a Mario game for the story then you’re sillier than a man who tries to build a house out of Weetabix.
Not quite sure where that came from, but in any case you’ll probably be wanting to pick up New Super Mario Bros. Concerns about the multiplayer aspect aren’t completely swept under the rug, but when it comes to competing against your chums rather than the awkward co-operation mode it eventually shines through and is as good a local multiplayer experience as you’d want. Added to an unsurprisingly well-designed single player offering it gives players something familiar and yet at the same time pretty fresh to work through. Just make sure you’re out of punching range of your chums and everything will go just swimmingly.
See, New Super Mario Bros Wii attempts to do something that no other Mario game has done to date by implementing a multiplayer aspect to proceedings. The general idea is that you and a bunch of chums can pelt around your standard Mario 2D platform levels in one of two ways: helping each other out, or battling it out for coins or the fastest level completion time. On paper it sounds pretty intriguing and in practice it proves very entertaining, but there are issues that do crop up now and again.
Before we discuss those, I’d best explain that it is still a riot to play with your mates, and most impressively the implementation of a four-player mode has had very little impact on that certain Mario Bros feel that you’d expect. You find yourselves still hurtling toward the right edge of the screen leaping over shells, bouncing on the top of enemies and leaping into power-up boxes to be sprinkled with whatever joyful treasure they hold, and at times it can be utterly hilarious when your chums are desperately faffing around trying to keep up with each other.
This rings true for both the supposed co-op multiplayer as well as the point and race modes. I say ‘supposed’ co-op multiplayer as, perhaps unintentionally, Nintendo have stumbled upon that basic human instinct when it comes to actually playing it: the need to be a complete and utter bastard to other people. Yeah, sure, you might start off with the intention of helping each other conquer the levels whilst playing through either the proper ‘story’ mode or the free play mode in which you can play any level passed in the main playthrough, but pretty soon things will start to come unstuck at the seams.
There are two main reasons for this. The first is that, as mentioned above, other peoples’ misfortunes are always entertaining no matter how much you protest otherwise. Gone and ‘accidentally’ knocked Luigi off the edge of a platform to his doom? Oh dear. Picked up one of the Toads and misplaced your throw so that instead of the safety of yonder floating platform he plummets into a lava pit? Golly. Problem is, it’s just far too funny for the first dozen or so instances and hence you can’t help but grin when it does happen.
After a while this might begin to wear a bit thin, and although you can still carry on as your erstwhile dead buddy is bought back to life in a magic bubble you will start to want to actually attempt to work together to whiz through the game’s many levels. This is where the issue of confusion strikes, and you find yourself blundering into other folks more often than not, or being distracted by what someone else is doing. With a bit of co-ordination (this usually involves lots of loud shouting) it can be done reasonably smoothly, but it’s not as enjoyable as the single player mode.
On the other hand, playing against each other for coins or racing against folks to the end is an utter boon, and it benefits immensely from actually encouraging you to sabotage others to your own gain. Instantly all the clumsiness and accidental deaths are forgiven amidst a tidal wave of battering people into oblivion and hurling them at things and other people in order to get a competitive edge. The best bit is that the game allows you to form fragile alliances with one of your chums as you work together to battle ahead of others, yet in one glorious moment nearing the finishing flag all of this could come to an end with a tactical bunt off of a ledge. Simply flicking the Wii-mote upward and holding the 1 button allows you to pick up anyone else scuttling around the screen (and items, for that matter), and knowing the right time and place to do this takes a bit of practice. In effect, you have to learn your opponents’ tendencies and exploit their faffing. Oh, and you can gobble people with a Yoshi and spit them out too. Excellent.
If you are one of those chaps who takes a great deal of care and concern over your friends’ blood pressures then luckily there’s the single player mode to work through too, which offers up eight themed worlds packed with a selection of levels. It’s classic Nintendo stuff with plenty of leaping about across floating and moving platforms, and at times the level design throws a rather clever little section at you that, whilst not exactly offering anything new to 2D platforming or the Mario 2D series, are beautifully judged and really rather enjoyable. It’s also refreshingly challenging, although that’s balanced out somewhat by a handful of levels being designed around giving you chances to constantly run through and pick up extra lives should the need arise. Ninty have eased the pain further with a rather clever guide system that allows you to watch a video of Luigi completing a level or section if you fail it enough times.
There are a couple of things added into the mixture to freshen it up a little from its older cousin on the DS (review here) – the most obvious is the loss of the gigantic mushroom power-up in favour of a propeller hat, an ice hat and a penguin suit that not only allows you to freeze enemies like the ice hat, but gives you better control in water and on ice. The levels are designed in a manner that reminds you of the Kirby games in that certain power-ups are needed at certain points to allow you to collect the game’s 3 giant gold coins per level, although a lot of the time these aren’t available at the particular point you are at and you must revisit later on to successfully snag the gold. Whether this appeals to you or not will pretty much rely on how patient you are.
Still, it’s an entertaining package whether you be going solo or battling it out with buddies. The niggles with co-op play rankle a little and can’t be ignored, but there’s still a Bowser-sized portion of chuckles to be had along the way. It’s also a rather pretty game too, with the pseudo-2D look of the DS game making a pleasant leap from the small screen to the big packed with all the usual vibrant Mario colour palette and hum-along tunes. Oh, and while we’re mentioning the familiar, yeah… Peach gets kidnapped again. Can’t really complain again I guess, as if you’re buying a Mario game for the story then you’re sillier than a man who tries to build a house out of Weetabix.
Not quite sure where that came from, but in any case you’ll probably be wanting to pick up New Super Mario Bros. Concerns about the multiplayer aspect aren’t completely swept under the rug, but when it comes to competing against your chums rather than the awkward co-operation mode it eventually shines through and is as good a local multiplayer experience as you’d want. Added to an unsurprisingly well-designed single player offering it gives players something familiar and yet at the same time pretty fresh to work through. Just make sure you’re out of punching range of your chums and everything will go just swimmingly.
8/10
