It's-a Super Mario time!

Sometimes, when I hear Nintendo being shouted down the loudspeakers in Mario’s obnoxiously overenthusiastic voice, I just wanna to turn off whichever Nintendo console I'm sitting in front of. But here I am, reviewing two Mario games I've recently played! And enjoying them!

Okay, so maybe, just maybe, that voice is a bit charming.

Review

Played on: Wii
Released: 2009

The first Nintendo game we have here, 
a Wii version of a DS handheld title, is a sort of reinvention of the old 2D Super Mario games. A trip back to when Mario was 2D. My favourite Mario game of all time is Super Mario Bros. 3 on the NES, and this New Super Mario Bros takes me down memory lane and recaptures some of the glory the old 2D titles had.



There's a lot of visual variety in each of NSMB's worlds and each level within offers some sort of new element. Be it a new type of enemy, obstacle or gameplay style. Every level feels unique and you never get the feeling of a copy-paste function being used during the development of level layouts. You’ll play through all the levels without repetition or boredom. The challenge of getting through each level progresses in a perfect learning curve too.

I played this game coop and it is indeed a game that's developed with coop in mind. Remember that the old 2D Mario titles never had two characters at once. NSMB actually supports up to four players simultaneously! Playing cooperatively adds an element of trying to work together to help each other out. Depending on who you're playing with it's very entertaining, opening up for a lot of laughs. I'd actually recommend people to play it with at least with one other friend.



Overall, NSMB is a solid release, it doesn’t reinvent anything groundbreaking new and has some small nuisances, like the freeze frame each time a player dies or gets a power-up. However, it will give you a great 2D platformer experience, a genre long gone for many young gamers today.

The colourful graphics, the varied level design, combined with responsive controls, definitely warrants this title as a must-buy for any 2D platformer fan.




Review

Played on: Wii
Released: 2008

The second game I recently played on the Wii, is Mario Kart. I have fond memories of Mario Kart 64 on the Nintendo 64, I must have clocked up tens of hours in it, and furthermore in the entertaining coop karts in Mario Kart Double Dash on the Gamecube. In other words, a series I love and so my expectations were high.

First the controller, a plastic steering wheel with tilt control. Well it’s shit, and you should play it with a Wii remote and a nunchuck, or better still, a Gamecube controller. The precision with an analogue stick far surpasses tilt controls. Once you play with this setup, and activate manual drifting, is when Mario Kart really gets going. The serious amount of boost you can gain with manually drifting adds a whole extra element to the experience and lets you really challenge your competitors.



There's  a generous amount of tracks in Mario Kart Wii, over 30 in fact. The design of them vary, and while environment elements such as a pirate ship firing grenades onto the track, or mine carts running freely, add a real challenge, they end up more annoying than serving any addition to the gameplay. The tracks are a bit too crowded, with these environmental hazards going on, resulting in races becoming annoyingly unpredictable.

More comparisons with MK64 and MKDD are to be made, and thus, more negativity becomes more apparent. When we discovered that the double kart element, from Double Dash, is abandoned, we ask ourselves, why? This continues into the battle mode, where it’s overcrowded with mandatory A.I., split into teams, you can’t simply have a free-for-all battle against only human players. I stress the question again: why?

The new powerups are too numerous, and many serve only to annoy rather than add anything to the gameplay. Mario Kart 64 had this perfect setup for the amount of powerups, MK Wii has too many variations, only serving to confuse. Even the combination of characters and their special power-up combinations, from MKDD, is gone.



The online part should be mentioned, it works smoothly and ends up being a nice relief from playing against the cheating, rubber band A.I.!

Can I recommend this MK? Well, it's entertaining enough to play through, but MK64 is available for download and a far better balanced title. Even MKDD can be bought and played on a Wii with the backwards compatibility for Gamecube.

MK Wii needs to stop cutting out features from previous releases, tighten up the power up system and focus more on player skills rather than random encounters. Casual gaming doesn’t need to abandon fans by making the game simpler. Add a quick game mode for casuals and a more in-depth mode for fans with options to customise races.




Back next time with a sci-fi special, where I review Mass Effect 1 & 2!