The 'Shroom:Issue LXII/Review Corner

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Mario Super Sluggers (New Super Mario)
I have been playing Mario Super Sluggers recently, so I am going to review it.

Gameplay
Mario Super Sluggers is the second baseball game in the Mario series. The baseball played here follows most baseball rules, with much added Mario gimmicks.

Challenge Mode is great fun for when playing alone. While playing, Mario must recruit members for his team, by asking people, using special abilities to locate them, and beating characters in challenge. These characters are all throughout Baseball Island, and you will need the help of other captains, Peach, Yoshi, Wario, and Donkey Kong. Once you have recruited your team, you must challenge Bowser. By winning it, helps you gain Star Power, allowing you to make certain players even better than they were before.

There are nine stadiums in the game. Mario Stadium is a field with no gimmicks, just what you would find when you watch a regular baseball game. Peach Ice Garden is a field with ice floors. Because of this, the field team, especially the outfield, will tend to slip a lot while going after the ball. There are also Freezie]s in the outfield that trap the outfielders in a block of ice, preventing movement. It will be broke after a while, but you can manually break it with a shell or the ball. The short fence at the end also makes it good for Ground Rule Doubles. Peach Ice Garden is an average course in my opinion, but I can see how it could get annoying for some people. Yoshi Park is a very cool field. At the edge of the fence in the back, a Yoshi Train (Or a [[Wiggler one at night) rides in the back, which can make the outfield hit it and make catching the ball harder. There are also warp pipes in the field which can teleport the ball to a different pipe. The next field, Wario City I enjoy as well. Set in a concrete field, there are manholes and arrows on the field. If the ball lands on an arrow, it will push away in the direction the arrow points, making it harder for the fielder to get the ball. The manholes shoot out water, sometimes hitting players. DK Jungle is an ok field. In the field, barrels roll and can hit the players. There are also flowers that release fragrances that stun the player. These are all the starting fields, I won’t talk about the unlockable ones.

There are a lot of playable characters in the game. I like most of them, but I won’t talk about them since there are so many. The captains are Mario, Luigi, Peach, Daisy, Yoshi, Birdo, Wario, Waluigi, DK, Diddy Kong, Bowser Jr., and Bowser. Each Captain has their own unique special powers for pitching and hitting. Mario’s are pretty average powers. For pitching, he throws a fast fireball, which can screw up some people with late reactions. For batting, he does the same thing, just sending it out in the field at the players. It burns the player it hits, but it can easily be avoided and caught by botching it to another teammate, eliminating the flame, and having them catch it. Luigi’s powers are terrible in my opinion. Both involve tornadoes, and are the same as Mario’s, but with a tornado ball. His pitch is usually inaccurate, and the hitting isn’t very effective. Peach has great powers! For her pitch, she covers the ball up with many hearts, making it hard to see the ball. For batting, it is even better, and it stun all of the male players. It is effective when playing all male rosters, but don’t use it if you have females in the infield. Daisy’s pitch involves sending a flower ball at the batter, which, if it is hit, usually makes the ball go really high, making it an easy out. He batting power is good. Where ever the ball is supposed to land, a garden of flowers will be put around it, making it unreachable to the fielders. There are many other good Captain powers, but you can check those out yourself.

The final thing I will talk about it Chemistry. When characters like each other, they have chemistry. By placing these such characters in different spots can help your game a lot. To use an example, I will take Baby Mario, Baby Luigi, and Baby Peach. Let’s say these players were all after each other in the batting order. Because they all have alliance, it will allow them to use items. Items are a good way to screw up fielders, good ones being the shell, POW ball, and banana peels. They are key to helping home runs, so always do this! It is also good to put alliance characters in the outfield together. Let’s say Baby Mario was in center field, Baby Luigi in right, and Baby Peach in left. Now, let’s say the ball is hit between center and right. Then Baby Mario and Baby Luigi can run to the ball, and do a Buddy Jump to jump up and catch the ball! It is a good way to prevent home runs from the other team. Buddy Throws are also common. Let’s say King K. Rool is on 3rd base. Pianta is up and hits a ball in front of Baby Peach. Because Baby Peach and Baby Mario have alliance, they can perform a Buddy Throw, by having Baby Peach botching it to Baby Mario. It will result in a SUPER fast throw, which is likely to get King K. out considering he is so slow. Chemistry is key to winning games in Mario Super Sluggers.

Good Features: Challenge Mode, Good fields (for the most part), Great roster, Gimmicks, Special Powers, Chemistry, Items Bad Features: Long time to unlock everything, minor character and field flaws. NSM’s Rating: 9.5/10

Got any suggestions for what game to review? PM me, New Super Mario, on our forums!

Super Mario Galaxy 2 (Nabber)
Good morning, MarioWiki! It’s your friendly neighborhood Nabber here with a review of a much-loved game: Super Mario Galaxy 2! It’s the sequel to what many remember as one of Nintendo’s finest works - but does it hold up to the legacy? Let’s find out!

Review
I’ve often said that I don’t judge a game by its graphics. I still stand by that, but on of the problems with Super Mario Galaxy 2 it that it just completely ignores every aspect of a game besides the gameplay. There’s just no atmosphere. You can clearly tell from the box art that Mario’s adventure this time is filled with bright, happy colors, but that’s as far as the mood goes. Remember the original’s touching story, how we found out exactly how Rosalina created the Comet Observatory? Nintendo decided that the best way to follow up to that is to have as little story as possible. Bowser’s grown to the size of Peach’s castle, kidnapped the princess, go save her. And speaking of Rosalina, she appears in the game, but it’s easy to tell that her only purpose it to please her large fanbase that she had amassed.

But what about the gameplay itself? Well, I can definitely say that Super Mario Galaxy 2 has some really neat concepts. The cloud flower is especially cool - you can create your own platforms in midair!

Shame that’s the only thing in the game that appears for more than three levels.

Because Nintendo just had too many ideas. They just couldn’t perfectly fit it all into one game. So instead of seeing a variety of uses for an item, you’ll only see a couple of levels - separated far apart from each other, mind you - that actually use that item. So you may first encounter a Blimp Fruit in the beginning of World 3, but that’s the only level you’ll see it for until the end of World 4. Let me make a small chart for a few power-ups and how many galaxies they appear in:


 * Rock Mushroom - 3
 * Bee Mushroom - 2
 * Boo Mushroom - 1
 * Spring Mushroom - 1
 * Rainbow Star - 4
 * Dash Pepper - 3
 * Blimp Fruit - 4
 * Bulb Berry - 2

See what I’m getting at? There’s 122 missions in this game, and many of them are repeats with an extra requirement or condition. While it’s fun to use these power-ups, I just wish we would get more experience with them.

Speaking of experience, that’s one of the things I loved about Super Mario Galaxy: the galaxies themselves. They were all unique, with their own inhabitants and quirks. Between the 6 or 7 missions you would spend in them, plus the rerun with Luigi, you would spend quite a while learning the ins and outs of these places. But in SMG2, the galaxies only have 2 or 3 missions. So you would only really be spending half of the time in these places as you would in the prequel. And considering that the biggest difference in these galaxies is their look, you’re not going to be able to tell the Sky Station Galaxy from the Space Storm Galaxy. It really takes away the great feeling you got when playing SMG1.

Am I done with my rant yet? Nope. Galaxies in this game now resemble solar systems instead of actual, full-sized planets. So each galaxy is really just a string of challenges connected to each other by a launch star. Yay. And the biggest insult is that despite the many planetoids you’ll be running on, most of the challenges in this game are really just simple platforming challenges that don’t use gravity at all. It’s just not fun anymore.

Okay, I’ll concede that this game is fun. To an extent. There’s a good difficulty curve here, and some of the later levels are genuinely challenging. The final level will take actual skill to beat. Unfortunately, you have to rack up 9,999 Star Bits in order to unlock it, something that wasn’t exactly needed.

You also need to get all of the Green Stars to unlock. These are 120 stars that are spread out through the galaxies, doubling the amount of missions in them. They’re just placed in random spots, so it isn’t really a new mission, but it’s a good incentive to go back and review the galaxies.

Super Mario Galaxy 2, sadly, was not better than its predecessor. It’s a fun time-waster, but it lacks the elements that made the original the mind-blowing game that it was. SMG2 receives an 8/10 from me. It’s cool to play, but if you had to choose between this and Super Mario Galaxy, then you should go with the the prequel.