Saturday, November 28, 2009

New Super Mario Bros



New Super Mario Bros was originally released on the DS and was an instant hit!



Why wouldn’t it be, it’s Nintendo, and it’s Mario? The series has now found its way to the Wii, the classic side-scrolling game has great feelings of nostalgia, great visuals despite being 2D and wonderful gameplay. Yep, if there’s one Nintendo game you’re getting this holiday season, it should definitely be New Super Mario Bros Wii. That is, unless you expect to play online.
New Super Mario Bros Wii (NSMB) goes back to the roots, to the 2D side scrolling action that made Mario famous, this time with revamped visuals (doh) and 4 player support. It’s safe to say that the multiplayer is the best part of the game, but we’ll get back to that later. The core gameplay hasn’t changed much since the original Super Mario debuted on the NES — you run around, jump around, solve puzzles and deal with tons of enemies, like those pesky brown mushrooms. However, if you get stuck, the game has a “Super mode”, which automatically plays through the level, giving you an example on how to complete the level. The mode can also be used to show hidden coins, passages etc. It’s a great feature, but it sort of takes away some of the “exploring” feel of playing, and it does feel a bit like cheating.
The multiplayer is where the game shines. At any point in the game, up to three friends can join you and help you through the level, which is great fun, as you might imagine. However, while one of your buddies plays as Luigi, the other two are generic Toad characters. What happened to Yoshi? Kirby? The dozen other Nintendo characters? There’s also a competitive multiplayer option, where you play against each other in a race to collect the most coins.
But, quite stunningly, and quite as expected, the game doesn’t support online multiplayer. This is really getting annoying from Nintendo’s part, as online multiplayer obviously would have made the game even better. But alas, it seems that Nintendo has pretty much given up on online gameplay on the Wii, and the console is hopelessly trailing its competitors. Nintendo seriously needs to get their act together and realize there’s a thing called “online gaming”.


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