While I think ultimately Mario vs. Donkey Kong has a great premise, I am not sure how well it plays out from start to finish. On one hand, when the game actually plays into your limited movement, and designing fun PUZZLES around this idea, the game is extremely rewarding and fun. But when it uses your limited movement to combine these puzzles with obnoxious action sequences, I feel like I am getting mixed messages.

Introducing a timer, and multiple mechanics that require to precisely time and platform with a character that is only slightly precise and cannot really platform just feels like a missed opportunity.

However, I really enjoyed most of the boss battles, as they focus solely on this action, instead of quick thinking puzzles. Due to the combination of these aspects, there were many levels where I figured out the puzzle pretty quickly, but then did not beat the level for six or seven minutes, because I was struggling to actually perform the solution. It strips a potential "a-ha" moment away from the player, in favor of meaningless challenge.

Also, where is the pizzazz? These animations, character designs, and world designs are some of the most barebone and yawn inducing I have ever seen in a video game. Also, the ability to put fancy lighting into a cutscene does not mean that you should do that, these are goofy looking cartoon characters, not Red Dead Redemption character models.

Overall, I didn't really hate Mario VS. Donkey Kong. I had fun with a few of its puzzles and I enjoyed a lot of the late game content, but so much of this game can feel like a slog to get through, and there's not a whole lot in the art department making up for it.

how the hell did that donkey kong feller fit through that fucking keyhole

the definition of adequate. no levels are too hard, and the game functions exactly how you'd expect. i never played the original version, and i did have some fun with it, so what more can you really ask for? i beat all the main levels with stars and might come back for the bonus levels later, but i don't really feel driven to at the moment. Mario vs. Donkey Kong (2024) is nothing special, nor anything to cheer about, but it's a game and you can play it and it's decent.

Wow, I did not expect to enjoy this as much as I did.

I’ve always been a Nintendo first guy. The most mediocre Nintendo titles are still a league above all other competition. I thought this would just be a serviceable remake of a GBA game from 2 decades ago, but it’s more. It’s a celebration of what makes Nintendo so great in the first place.

My man Reggie said it best; “If It’s not fun, why bother?” Words to live by. Mario Vs. Donkey Kong is just that. It’s fun. It’s fun without being mindless, it’s fun without being overtly challenging, it’s fun without sacrificing the other quality aspects of a first party Nintendo IP.

It eases you into its maze-like environment one baby step at a time. World 1-1, 1-2, 1-3. etc. As most Mario titles do. Getting progressively more challenging as you progress, so it’s not just a time test of how quickly you can run through it.

This soundtrack is just fantastic. World 1-2 hits you with the flutes, 1-3 hits you with the trumpet, just when you think it can’t possibly get better they throw out this relaxing jazz mimicking a detective at work, and it doesn’t stop. World 2 takes the soundtrack of World 1 and shoves it even further down your throat, with a combination of that classic jazz feel in the first world and adding a faster tempo piano and extra drums to make you feel like you need to think faster. My man, my man… they added… the xylophone.

That’s just the first two worlds, what do you think happens in the next 6? The same thing. It’s reminiscent of the Tropical Freeze soundtrack where every level had its own unique sound to express what that level would sound like.

As for functionality, it’s fine. Works how it’s supposed to, plays how it’s supposed to. Mystic Forest sucks though. 8/10.

This is the most boring Mario game I've ever played. I've played previous Mario vs. Donkey Kong games, they were a lot more challenging and the level design was more creative. This feels like Nintendo dug out rejected levels from past games and slapped a fresh coat of paint on them.

You know what's the best sign of how uninspired this game is? It's not the fact that the second player character is a nameless Toad instead of Luigi or Pauline, it's how the cutscenes are the same action of Mario chasing after Donkey Kong instead of the varied actions in the cutscenes in Donkey Kong '96.

Depending on your perspective, this is either a puzzle game where it’s actively tedious and frustrating to implement a solution, or a Platformer where Mario feels like dogwater to play and dies in one hit.

This game is fine, if underwhelming for the most part until you hit the last couple worlds (normal worlds, I didn’t even bother with the extra content), where the game just becomes a bullshit fest with projectiles everywhere. The thing about the difficulty in this game is that it’s not really hard. The problem is that Mario dies in a SINGLE HIT. And in a PUZZLE GAME, having the punishment of a minor mistake like a misinput or mistimed jumped being having to REDO THE LEVEL, you can see why this game’s indecision on whether it’s a Platformer or a puzzle game becomes a huge problem.

Donkey Kong’s boss fights are the opposite of fun. If you want the star, you have to take no damage, which means you hit him three times no problem, and on his last life he throws ten thousand projectiles that you can’t react to because Mario controls like a four-wheeler in the arctic, and you die repeatedly. It’s annoying when the hardest part of a fight is at the end, because then you have to go through the monotony of the rest of the boss fight again to even try to fix your mistake.

This game ranges from being mind-numbingly boring to being actively frustrating, and I didn’t have much fun playing it after the first couple worlds. It is at least a cute time for a little while, pick it up for an hour and drop it. Stop the second you hit the ice world.

But seriously, $50 for this shit?? A remake of a subpar GBA game with some bonus content? Embarrassing.

This was a game I remember always wanting to play as a kid and with the release of this remake, I figured it was finally time to give it a try. Overall, I thought it was a nice time killer and provided some simple fun. I liked the music in this game. It gave off a very comfortable vibe. This is one of the Switch's best looking games, which I did not expect at all. Admittedly, I did get burnt out from playing this pretty early on. Mario's movement would annoy me when I'm trying to adjust my positioning. The boss fights were not fun when trying to beat them without getting hit.

Antes de mais nada, NÃO, eu Não fiz tudo que o jogo me propôs após a descida dos créditos. Para mim, um jogo é zerado assim que eu me senti satisfeito e os créditos tenham descido, no fim fiquei com 64 estrelas e fiz os mundos principais ate a queda definitivamente do DK fazendo com que os mundos extras apareçam

Eu encarei os novos mundos que surgiram como um pos-game, assim como Pokémon, mas esse jogo nn foi engajante o suficiente para me manter nele, ainda que tenha sido uma baita surpresa, nos trailers realmente não da pra ter a base do quanto esse jogo consegue ser divertido, relaxante (ate o penúltimo mundo)
E bem tranquilo de ser jogado, recomendo muito para aqueles que estejam jogando jogos mais densos, para da aquela quebrada, que eh sempre recomendando, no fim é um jogo legalzinho

I never played much of the original GBA game, but now I'm considering going back and playing some other games in this strange little miniseries (no pun intended).

I think I actually prefer when Nintendo leans heavier on the puzzle side of the puzzle-platformer, like in this game or something like Captain Toad. Something about having a more stripped-down design that requires you to stop and think appeals to me more than the everything-and-the-kitchen-sink approach that mainline Mario games like Wonder go for. Also, the soundtrack for this game kinda goes, in a way that I'm not used to hearing in a Mario game.

I'm not saying this game is perfect. The handstand/triple jump feels kind of extraneous - the only uses I found for it were to just completely bypass parts of levels in a way that didn't feel intentional. And of course I don't know what we're doing with a lives system in the year of our lord twenty-twenty-four, but that's Nintendo for ya.