I apologize to Pikmin 4 in retrospect because as much as I loved that game, I gave it a lot of hell for adding in features that made the game way too easy. I'm about to shamefully admit that the only Mario game I've played before this one is Mario Galaxy and as a new player to this series, I was sweating, shitting my pants, and throwing up in just about every level. The only thing preventing me from crushing Prince Florian with a boot was the fact that he always gives you 5 1-Ups upon Game Over. The Bounce Badge saved my life way too many times to count. My friend basically carried me through some of the Special Worlds.
I'm not sure really what it is with the Mario series. I just never got into it as a kid and the 2D entries never seemed to entice me enough to try later in life. I have to say that I probably wouldn't have bothered with this one either if I hadn't committed to playing all 6 of the GOTY nominees this year. It's not that I didn't know what to do per se. You hop on the enemies and use the Koopa shells to kill others. Don't fall off the ledge. Dome your head into bricks for gold schmeckles, etc, etc. A ton of stuff that is so obvious in my mind, but yet I kept tremendously fumbling in execution. I'm happy to say though that while this was a WILD game to basically begin the series with, it was still a pleasantly fun experience that will haunt me when I try to sleep at night from now on.
I mean, I don't really have anything to compare it to but I stand pretty firm in believing that it's just a creatively done and well made game overall. Anything that really annoyed me was more likely caused by skill issue-itis, so I don't have many criticisms to air out. It was fun to enter a level and never truly know what exactly you were walking into until you slapped the Wonder Flower and transported yourself into a new torture chamber. While some mechanics were re-used here and there, there was a much larger variety than I was expecting. To top it off, the levels had fantastic music, doubled by the fact that the Elephant form has it's own soundtrack as well.
I think the only thing that I truly did not like was the online multiplayer functionality. Your friends are wildly de-synced from you and aren't tangible, which means that they'll be witnessing your ghost basically skate across the map in the middle of the air. What you see isn't the same as what they see and therefore they're reacting to something that you're not. The ability to revive your friends with a standee is a good feature on paper, but it doesn't take the auto-scroller levels into consideration by any means. Some levels are just so FAST that if your friend is even slightly ahead of you, you're basically screwed. If they finish the level before you and you die, you're doomed to burn in Hell. I just didn't see a point in that. It's just weird that local co-op works normally, but because I am an adult who lives miles away from my friends, we're subjected to this awful disjointed experience instead.
The other thing is the lack of boss variety as well. For a game that has such wacky level design at every turn, it's pretty disappointing that there aren't any cool boss fights that even slightly differ from each other. There are some levels that just hand you the Royal Seed upon completion with no real sense of conflict as well. I know I'm bad at the game, but it still would have been nice to have a greater sense of challenge aside from the Special Worlds. They took the time to create all these new monsters we've never seen before but that never bled into the bosses. You'd think that with all the badges the game hands you, they'd have some sort of purpose in the big battles, but you really only get some of them and then never need to use them again. Literally when did you ever use the Dolphin badge.. like ever..?
Anyways, this game was fun and I played the whole thing with my friend using an Ouija board. You don't really see level design like this, so I'm hoping that this one doing so well will encourage other companies to take note. Have I been Mario-pilled? I think I've been Mario-pilled.
Oh and uh... the talking flowers? Ok.. a few of them made me laugh... .. . ... .
Edit: Used to be a 4.5 star rating, but I stopped doing halfsies.
I'm not sure really what it is with the Mario series. I just never got into it as a kid and the 2D entries never seemed to entice me enough to try later in life. I have to say that I probably wouldn't have bothered with this one either if I hadn't committed to playing all 6 of the GOTY nominees this year. It's not that I didn't know what to do per se. You hop on the enemies and use the Koopa shells to kill others. Don't fall off the ledge. Dome your head into bricks for gold schmeckles, etc, etc. A ton of stuff that is so obvious in my mind, but yet I kept tremendously fumbling in execution. I'm happy to say though that while this was a WILD game to basically begin the series with, it was still a pleasantly fun experience that will haunt me when I try to sleep at night from now on.
I mean, I don't really have anything to compare it to but I stand pretty firm in believing that it's just a creatively done and well made game overall. Anything that really annoyed me was more likely caused by skill issue-itis, so I don't have many criticisms to air out. It was fun to enter a level and never truly know what exactly you were walking into until you slapped the Wonder Flower and transported yourself into a new torture chamber. While some mechanics were re-used here and there, there was a much larger variety than I was expecting. To top it off, the levels had fantastic music, doubled by the fact that the Elephant form has it's own soundtrack as well.
I think the only thing that I truly did not like was the online multiplayer functionality. Your friends are wildly de-synced from you and aren't tangible, which means that they'll be witnessing your ghost basically skate across the map in the middle of the air. What you see isn't the same as what they see and therefore they're reacting to something that you're not. The ability to revive your friends with a standee is a good feature on paper, but it doesn't take the auto-scroller levels into consideration by any means. Some levels are just so FAST that if your friend is even slightly ahead of you, you're basically screwed. If they finish the level before you and you die, you're doomed to burn in Hell. I just didn't see a point in that. It's just weird that local co-op works normally, but because I am an adult who lives miles away from my friends, we're subjected to this awful disjointed experience instead.
The other thing is the lack of boss variety as well. For a game that has such wacky level design at every turn, it's pretty disappointing that there aren't any cool boss fights that even slightly differ from each other. There are some levels that just hand you the Royal Seed upon completion with no real sense of conflict as well. I know I'm bad at the game, but it still would have been nice to have a greater sense of challenge aside from the Special Worlds. They took the time to create all these new monsters we've never seen before but that never bled into the bosses. You'd think that with all the badges the game hands you, they'd have some sort of purpose in the big battles, but you really only get some of them and then never need to use them again. Literally when did you ever use the Dolphin badge.. like ever..?
Anyways, this game was fun and I played the whole thing with my friend using an Ouija board. You don't really see level design like this, so I'm hoping that this one doing so well will encourage other companies to take note. Have I been Mario-pilled? I think I've been Mario-pilled.
Oh and uh... the talking flowers? Ok.. a few of them made me laugh... .. . ... .
Edit: Used to be a 4.5 star rating, but I stopped doing halfsies.
DuChomp
6 months ago