It feels wrong to rate a game I know better than the back of my hand this low, but it just isn't an exciting experience.
I'll always have a place in my heart for this game, it was the 2D Mario game I grew up on after all. But once you've familiarised yourself with the back catalogue, this reads as nothing less than a flaccid and personality-less reduction of its predecessors.
Stack this game up against any of the SNES-era 2D platformers, the Donkey Kong Countrys the Super Mario Worlds, it's not even close. The precision is gone, the speed is gone, the exciting aesthetics are gone, the ingenious soundtracks are gone. I'd say it's an unfair comparison, but it really shouldn't be, and this game needn't feel so much like the corporate tested product it ultimately does.
You know what the most sickening part of it all is (other than that until I play Wonder in the next few days, I'll have only experienced iterations on this game as new 2D Mario releases in my lifetime), Nintendo's baseline competency and level design ability is so high, that this game is still fun. Running around, picking up any one of the lazily recycled powerups, finding the star coins, incessantly getting kicked out of the level on every death. It's all, for some godforsaken reason, still a bundle of fun.
I'm certain I could get behind this more if it didn't have the weight of Mario's legacy on it's back, but it simply does. That problem compounds even more with this game's sequel on the Wii U, which is better in virtually every way but I like it even less because it didn't even have the decency to come up with any of its lame aesthetic ideas.
I've spent the last few days chipping away at this to pregame for Wonder, and it's really enlightened me on what I find is missing from modern 2D Mario. Here's hoping Wonder has some solutions.
I'll always have a place in my heart for this game, it was the 2D Mario game I grew up on after all. But once you've familiarised yourself with the back catalogue, this reads as nothing less than a flaccid and personality-less reduction of its predecessors.
Stack this game up against any of the SNES-era 2D platformers, the Donkey Kong Countrys the Super Mario Worlds, it's not even close. The precision is gone, the speed is gone, the exciting aesthetics are gone, the ingenious soundtracks are gone. I'd say it's an unfair comparison, but it really shouldn't be, and this game needn't feel so much like the corporate tested product it ultimately does.
You know what the most sickening part of it all is (other than that until I play Wonder in the next few days, I'll have only experienced iterations on this game as new 2D Mario releases in my lifetime), Nintendo's baseline competency and level design ability is so high, that this game is still fun. Running around, picking up any one of the lazily recycled powerups, finding the star coins, incessantly getting kicked out of the level on every death. It's all, for some godforsaken reason, still a bundle of fun.
I'm certain I could get behind this more if it didn't have the weight of Mario's legacy on it's back, but it simply does. That problem compounds even more with this game's sequel on the Wii U, which is better in virtually every way but I like it even less because it didn't even have the decency to come up with any of its lame aesthetic ideas.
I've spent the last few days chipping away at this to pregame for Wonder, and it's really enlightened me on what I find is missing from modern 2D Mario. Here's hoping Wonder has some solutions.