Maybe I'm being overly critical. I'm not sure. Am I just salty after being so enthused by Donkey Kong 94? Or is this game genuinely a disappointing successor to that game? Well, to be honest, I don't even think Mario vs Donkey Kong succeeds at being a very interesting puzzle platformer in its own rights.

The game feels so sluggish; not just control wise but also in terms of level design. Plenty of puzzles; primarily later on required me to wait around so much without anything interesting to keep me entranced.

I wouldn't even mind the puzzles being slower paced if they weren't so piss easy. There were very few instances where I felt like I had to think to solve these puzzles. The colored switches are certainly interesting but manage to streamline the puzzles even further. It doesn't help that solutions feel so railroaded and straightforward.

I could have written an entire essay all about how this game is the antithesis to Donkey Kong 94's bitesized and fast paced yet challenging puzzle platforming, but I don't even need to compare the two games to find Mario vs Donkey Kong painfully average. To be fair, I enjoyed it when I was much younger (although I never made it past world 2). I think both my perception with its predecessor and puzzle platformers in general has spoiled me from enjoying this game nowadays, though.

(Oh, and what the hell is going on with the art direction? The backgrounds, enemies, and set pieces are, like, all completely different styles that constantly clash with each other. It's yucky.)