When I first got wind of this game I was giddy like a Yoshi in a Piranha Plant factory. Cooperative 2D Mario platforming. Brilliant. Oh to my dismay as the reviews flooded in slating the failings of the game’s pinball mechanics. Assuming it to be a poor investment the game was never bought. However! Low and behold an opportunity arrived to bang Mario in one sitting and find out for myself if this game play decision nails the coffin on this addition to the franchise. So I gave it a chance to woo me with my fingers crossed it wouldn’t let me down.
So what else is this new Mario game giving us apart from the obvious cooperative play? Graphically you’re looking to compare it to Super Mario Bros DS, a polished 2D look with a semi top down map screen for choosing levels. You can’t fault this decision, the game has a nice shiny look to it with catchy appropriate melodies as you’d expect.
Aesthetics aside, game play rules all in Mario games. Looking back to the SNES oldies we should be expecting secrets aplenty, addictive, progressively harder levels and the potential to master each of them, jumping through them with ease. Also we’re gonna want to see some new stuff too and this comes in the form of new items with a penguin costume and helicopter hat amongst the bunch.
So if we’re thinking single player here then the game really delivers. Admittedly you won’t be able to reach every secret as some have been specifically designed for cooperative play but you will get everything aforementioned. But I know what you’re thinking, if I wanted that I might as well of picked up a copy of Super Mario Bros DS. True but we don’t all own DSs so this might be an opportunity for a Wii owner to get their hands on some 2D platforming fun. Nevertheless the multiplayer needs some attention.
Try two player simultaneous gaming and you will quickly discover the issue of bumping into another player. Any connoisseur of the Mario brand will know the importance of well timed jumps and therefore frustration will ensue when you bump into another character and consequently plummet. Straight off you will realise the importance of working out a system between you and your fellow player to avoid this scenario. With a bit of teamwork in the first two thirds of the game the pinball mechanics aren’t so much of an issue. However the last third of the game is a different story.
The lives system is typical of a Mario game but having more than one character on screen gives you some insurance. If you perish the other person can keep you going and even bring you back into the game. Both perish and its a level restart. The later levels of the game require a more accelerated pace. So much so that taking it in turns to execute jumps isn’t an option. Your best option would be to carry the other person through the level or kill them off at the start and don’t bring them back. Rendering the whole point of cooperative play a bit pointless.
Having certainly struggled towards the end of the game with two players I can only imagine four would be a complete impossibility. It may even make some of the earlier levels completely unmanageable. I cannot help but feel sympathetic towards the difficulty of the decision though. Without being able to interact with the other characters you boycott some of the fun cooperative play that made Little Big Planet so successful. The different depths in LBP eliminated this issue and perhaps Super Mario Wii could have benefited from this. The graphics would of required a serious rethink if this was the case though.
So inevitably the main premise of cooperative 2D Mario is deeply flawed. Maybe it was doomed from the start. Nevertheless the game isn’t a total loss so I’m actually going to give it three different ratings for single player, two player and four person simultaneous play.
Single player gets 4 mushrooms out of 5, another glorious 2D Mario platformer:
Two player gets 3 mushrooms out of 5, two thirds of fun but one third of pointlessness:
Four player gets 2 mushrooms out of 5, marvelous idea but fundamentally flawed, a great shame:
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