Hm. Maybe (as always) I come out too strong. It's not that I hate this game. I will play till the end. (My favorite level was the Zelda throwback btw ).
I'm just a huge fan of the Mario series, and I played the old games again and again and again (I've probably beaten Super Mario Land 2 and Super Mario 64 around 15 times each, from start to finish), but this game just feels like something I will beat once, and never come back to. It's just....a shame, cause I know Nintendo can do much better.
And everyone here was praising it so much, I thought that maybe my first impressions were wrong and I'll be pleasantly surprised....it's just that....that wasn't the case. It's an average game (average by normal standards, not by gaming industry standards where 7 is a bad score), but Mario is not supposed to be average he's supposed to be all time classic.
BoneSnapDeez wrote:The success of a console is determined by how much I enjoy it.
There are very few modern games that provoke the desire to replay multiple times. That said, I fully enjoyed playing and re-playing this game. You essentially play it through twice (after you acquire Luigi) even the first time you play through it! Then you can re-play many levels again to reach the gold flag. Then maybe replay some again to compete with streetpass time trials.
Zing wrote:There are very few modern games that provoke the desire to replay multiple times. That said, I fully enjoyed playing and re-playing this game. You essentially play it through twice (after you acquire Luigi) even the first time you play through it! Then you can re-play many levels again to reach the gold flag. Then maybe replay some again to compete with streetpass time trials.
Is it so bad I just consider this game a 7/10? (with normal, non gaming review score scales)
But it's not about modern games vs retro games about replayability. I've already beaten Super Mario Galaxy 4 times...heck I've beaten FFVIII 3 times which is way too many times for a JRPG xD
I just find this game above average, but not in the 9/10 range that I would score most Mario games
BoneSnapDeez wrote:The success of a console is determined by how much I enjoy it.
Ok I completed the game. Beat all the special worlds, got all the coins, played the game to 100% completion.
And....ok first the bad: All my criticisms still stand. 60% of the levels are boring, the game is too easy (even the special levels feel more like what the "normal" difficulty should have been), the music is just the same Mario tunes without anything new thrown in, and it just made me want to play Mario Galaxy. And in no way can it compare to Super Mario Land 2
but.......
I still fucking enjoyed the game so much. Some levels are boring, but the core mechanics remain fun, and in the levels that are more creative the game REALLY shines. The boomerang power up is one of my favorite Super Mario power ups, and much better than the fire or ice flowers.
Shadow Mario provides for an interesting game mechanic. At first it annoyed me, cause in my head if I was the game's designer I would have made it so shadow Mario is killable from the environment, so you'd have to trick him into death. Instead the game designers chose to make the levels that include him about planning your route and moves. It's a good mechanic, just not how I'd have wish it was. Yet still a solid gameplay feature.
Is this the best handheld Mario game? Of course not. But god damn it, if it isn't second. When I forced myself to get all the gold coins on a single playthrough of the level it finally gave me the challenge I was looking for. And even though I don't like many levels, the good ones are just AMAZING. Kudos to Nintendo, and I really wish there's a second game in the series (or I can find enough money to afford a Wii U).
Also Ziggy....unfortunately the Mario Kart level is in Super Mario 3D World, not in this game.
BoneSnapDeez wrote:The success of a console is determined by how much I enjoy it.
ZeroAX wrote:Also Ziggy....unfortunately the Mario Kart level is in Super Mario 3D World, not in this game.
Some one finally caught it!
My first post, I was talking about SM3D Land. In my second post, I guess I was confused and continued talking about SM3D World. I noticed it the next day and decided not to say anything.
Hey, I just finished this game! Even played through the entire game again with Luigi and got all the gold flags to see the "true last level" or w/e.
Overall, it was a fun game. I do agree with some of Zero'S complaints though. The game is far too easy, and some of the stages do feel like throw-ins. I was a bit bummed to see that Special World 8 was actually just more remixes of the stages that already had mixes, making it the 3rd time I had seen said stage with Mario, and the 6th time with Luigi. Minor complaints though, as the stages overall were fun... at least the first time though.
3D platformers, or at least the Mario variety, just don't have the tight feeling that 2D platformers generally do. If I see something in 3D Land that looks dangerous.... its likely that I can just jump over it. None of the coins require finesse to snatch, the gold flags are all really easy to get, and the tanooki tail basically breaks the game, making anything that was even remotely challenging just a joke. Compare this to getting the KONG icons in DKCR, which requires near-perfect play with no shortcuts or powerups making everything super easy. I mean, the game is so strict and hard that there is a built-in superplay via the little pig dude at the booth! This is more getting into the differences of 2D and 3D, though, so its not really fair to knock 3D Land on this too much. A liiiitle bit of challenge would have been nice though.
My biggest gripe is:
... the requirements to unlock that last stage were ridiculous. I get requiring coins. Gold flags even makes sense. I do not see why I should have to play through the entire game (That I JUST finished playing through) to unlock the challenging stage. Unlocking a challenge should require accomplishing a task, not playing the game you've already proven you are perfectly capable of clearing.
And, after all that, at least 3 hours doing nothing but running and grabbing poles, I got the Challenge Stage.... and beat it in 3 tries. It was not a good level, it was not well-designed, it ddin't even have anything that I could say, "Oh, ha, thats cool at least".
If I had walked away after finishing World 8, I would still be giddy about how cool this game was, even with its flaws. If I had walked away after Special World 8, I would have been a little jaded, but still would have been mostly positive towards the game. Having done everything, though, I am walking away mostly sour.
For example: I liked Epic Yarn, but would not have played through it, played through a remix of it, played through a world with remixes of those remixes, swapped color pallets on my character, played the game again, played the remixes again, and played the remixed remixes again, all in my first session with the game, just for a 3 minute stage with nothing interesting going on. If I had, I probably wouldn't have liked Epic Yarn so much.
Once I get over that giant waste of time, I'm sure mostly the fun, positive memories will stick around, but... all that just felt so unnecessary. All coins and all flags should have done it, and playing through the game with Luigi should have been.. you know, a thing to do when you feel like replaying the game at some point. (Which I would have eventually done, if they hadn't forced me to play it twice already.)
So, overall, It would fall somewhere in the 7 or 8 range. It is better, to me, than the Galaxy games, but if we are comparing all platformers, I would still take DKCR any day of the week.
dunpeal2064 wrote:
So, overall, It would fall somewhere in the 7 or 8 range. It is better, to me, than the Galaxy games, but if we are comparing all platformers, I would still take DKCR any day of the week.
Agreed with most of your complaints, but I just couldn't see someone saying that this is better than Super Mario Galaxy . Ah well, different tastes I guess.
And one more thing.....there's a secret level? Which I have to get ALL golden flags with both characters to see?.....for a single level?.........oh dear....yeah I'll just youtube it to see if it's worth it.
EDIT
1) Yes tanooki suit just breaks the game. Try playing the game without using it to get some extra fun out of the game, like I did.
2) Maybe the guy I watched play it on youtube was really bad (as in: he kept saying the level is so difficult, specially in the 1 block platforms part (cause he's stupid and he didn't know you can sprint past 1 block empty spaces between platforms)), but to me it didn't seem hard (nor interesting).
Yeah, I think I'll just replay Super Mario Galaxy 2.
BoneSnapDeez wrote:The success of a console is determined by how much I enjoy it.
I think I liked it just a bit more than Galaxy because it was such a throwback to the older Mario games. The fixed camera was nice too, being a fan of 2D platformers. They are pretty close, though. Both do things right and things wrong. One point I have to give to galaxy is that, with time-limited powerups, I never found myself going back to a stage to get a broken powerup, or abusing one power throughout the game.
I haven't played Galaxy in a while, and 3D Land is fresh.... so its possible that I may indeed like Galaxy more. I just have to give 3D Land some time to settle.
Yeah, that last last level, imo, is not worth the effort to unlock. I didn't even run over the single blocks, I just used the tail to pass up all but the last one, landed, and jumped off. The section right after, where you are supposed to have to jump off goombas consecutively, you can just wall jump, float, and land on top of the wall, and pass all that up.
Everything in the stage: The fuzzies on the green moving platform, the fire wands, everything is made moot by the tanooki tail.
).
Some one finally caught it! 
