The 'Shroom:Issue XXIX/Review Corner

Review Corner by

Hey, this is Luigifreak, back with a rushed review. This month is one I start a new school, had to work like crazy on my wards, but enough of my rant and onto another. This game really made me angry. It just wasn’t appealing at all. Ready for it? Get ready to put on your shocked face for it is…… New Super Mario Bros.! Yes, the wildly popular DS game is one of my least favorite Mario games ever. Why? Well…… READ THE REVIEW!!!

Story
Bad even for a Mario Platformer. Lightning strikes the castle and Mario goes to look. Bowser Jr. steals Peach. At least there was a small story in every other platformer. Graghhhhhh. VERY disappointing.

Music/ graphics.
Music: Horrible. Search “New Super Mario Bros. Theme” on YouTube. The theme that you here is 100 times better than the music in the game. I’m serious, my head hurts thinking about the music. Every song in the game has annoying little vocal blurbs that sound like “DUH DUH”. It sounds like mentally challenged people made part of the music. Worst part? NO classic tunes in the game. Graphics: Okay. Mario, objects, and enemies are in 3-d, background is in 2-d. No complaints.

Gameplay
Here we go….. So, of course it’s a platformer so expect to do platformer stuff. For those poor souls who haven’t played a platformer, basically you jump on enemies while jumping over gaps and other obstacles. This game adds a few new moves: The triple jump, which you never use, and the wall jump, which you use once. I question why they added these moves, but they didn't really bring down the game. Of course they have to change the power-ups. They take away very good ones like the flower/cape and the hammer suit, put in way too many fire flowers, and add 3 useless ones. The first one, the Koopa shell, limits Mario’s jumping ability and makes him go super fast when he runs. Yay. However, when he goes superfast you have no control. This power-up is VERY rare. The next one is the Mini Mushroom. It turns Mario mini, giving him better jumping and let him enter the 4 places only he can enter. The catch? He goes down in one hit. Again, super rare. The last one is a Mega Mushroom that turns Mario invincible and crushes everything in his path for a few seconds. This makes the toughest levels a joke. In other games I enjoyed that they had a few common powerups, so in this game, just having fireflowers as a common item really brought down part of this game for me. Bad powerups, bad moves, what’s next? You had to ask. Well, when I saw screenshots and thought “YAY! They added cool new platforms for you to navigate!” I was wrong. The ones they do have are only used once, and they only add about 5. Very boring. The obstacles are very easy to navigate, so no challenge. I think I’ve said enough. One last thing: many people really like the "nolstalgia aspect" of this game. I felt like the purpose of this game was pure nosltagia, and I thought that they could have done so much gameplay wise.

Difficulty
The easiest Mario Platformer. I had trouble with two levels. TWO! Another thing that ruins it? You have to EARN two of the worlds. So I had to go back and redo levels several times to get something that should have been there all along? The levels weren't difficult, but I was dissapointed they left out something to make it a bit easier.

Diversity of Enemies
Bad. They have the basic Koopas and such, keep that, and add new enemies every 6 levels. The new enemies appear once. So you’re stuck with the same enemies OVER and OVER.

Diversity of Levels
Meh, okay. Not really many new things, but not extremely boring. I’m done.

Characters
Mario and Luigi. Doesn’t need any more than that.

Replayability
Okay. Replayability: Unlocking the two world and collecting the three star coins for each level (there are roughly 64 tedious levels)

I’m not gonna do Pros and Cons as there are too many cons.

So here are the ratings for each section.
 * Story: 3/10
 * Music: 1/10
 * Graphics: 7/10
 * Gameplay: 3/10
 * Difficulty:1/10
 * Diversity of Levels/Characters:4/10
 * Replayability: 6/10
 * Overall: 3.5, F-
 * Overall without Story: 3.6, F-
 * Overall without difficulty: 4, F-

Okay. I know that this game is very contriversial. But to me, this game is bad. I just really was disappointed when I got it. I know it’s really popular, but in my opinion,this is THE WORST Mario platformer to date. Well, see you with, hopefully, a better game next time.