shrimblo_male2
2019
I replayed the original on Xenia, I take back everything I said, sonic 06 was an incredibly designed game with a lack of polish, this takes what I now consider a great game and makes it amazing, can't wait for when this is fully finished
2006
I'm not a coward, unlike the rest of you. Just to be clear, I played this on xenia without any patches or mods
1997
There are two types of people in this world, people who like Sonic R and cowards
Silent Hill is not coming back
2012
I was playing this and there was this person who was playing with me and was showing me all the secrets and helping me throughout the game, by the end they left and I genuienly felt an air of saddness overcome me.
2015
Very cool and interesting game that kinda gets worse the more you play but its something different and still benefits from being a game instead of a short film series. I think some of the acting and writing can be all over the place even if its intentional, it didn't have an emotional connection with me in that sense but this is mostly well done, pretty interesting and the beginning of the game is genuienly incredible.
2022
Fuck 'polished games', I want games that feel like they're made by people and not sticking to some book of rules that makes every game feel the same
This and gravity bones just feel like people messing around and doing something they thought would be cool with limited resources and theres something endlessly endearing about that like you can really feel the marks of people making this rather than something super polished its something that feels uniquely human even if the games aren't super engaging
2019
Sonic 06 is perhaps the most unfortunate game ever made. I don't think its the worse game ever nor do I think its the worse sonic game and at one point I thought maybe if the game was more polished then maybe the game would have been good but I came to the realisation that no, sonic 06 was a very flawed game because it had flawed design, sure making it more polished definetly helps matters but sonic 06s level design is what made the game bad. Of course this is a miracle project and the team behind this should be commended for the immense amount of effort and time that clearly went into this but there was not much fixing in 06 without changing the core design of the game which is unfortunate. Glad people love this but I didn't get much out of it. I may change my thoughts when this is fully complete but for now I think this is an average game and thats me being generous considering this is a fan project
2018
Gris should be a home run for me, its a game with incredible animation and a beautiful artstyle thats trying to tell an emotionally driven narrative through interaction and visual story telling but in the end i came away thinking of it in very average terms as it was never able to elicit any type of emotion out of me, maybe this was due to the lack of creative visual story telling and the fact that the game will never let you truly take in an emotional part because the music is telling you how to feel instead of being used to enhance an emotion instead it is the emotion. In terms of telling a story through the gameplay, I guess you could argue that the powers are to represent growth and a step forward in gris' journey to overcome grief but outside of that I can't really think of how the game tried to say something through its gameplay, maybe this is due to the game trying to be a fun expirence instead of trying to make you feel how the character feels. As mentioned, the game is still trying to be fun and enjoyable to play but I think this is to the games detrement since I don't really feel much for the character because nothing in terms of interaction is telling me how she feels, I think if the was trying to be less fun and focused of trying to portray an emotion more then maybe I would have thought more highly of the game or maybe if the game was more fun then I think I would have came away more positive even if I think its to the games detriment since the game is also just average in terms of design, never evolving or playing with its concept in interesting way both narrativly and from a gameplay perspective.
2023
I can't wait to play on a different planet in which I walk into a industrial factory thats the same on all the planets instead of one and have a guy on comms say "uhhh go left, no right, no my right. Okay now go left" and then be chased down by the worse most unthreatening monsters and then run into yet another dead end and repeat. This game is best enjoyed when fucking over all your team mates and trying your best to sabotage them, thats the only way this game is fun but then the game isn't fun for the people who like this for some reason that I'll never understand
2019
I want shorter games with worse graphics made by people who are paid more to work less and I'm not kidding
2023
Although Im yet to make my way through all of remedys portfolio, I can see a clear progression from the games I've played starting off with the poorly written and poorly designed slog that is the original alan wake to the much more competent and interesting control to the even more competent and interesting alan wake 2. While I havent loved any of these games and think one of them is just bad i still think they are intersting games and a interesting studio especially with alan wake 2 which feels like it has a singular cohesive vision rather than a lack of one as is the case with most games and the previous two games I've played from remedy. I know the main creative force behind all these games is sam lake but I fail to see his voice in alan wake and control which I think was a result of sam lake not being the main director for either of those games but with this it feels like sam lake is having a conversing of ideas and themes which is refreshing considering the general landscape of gaming. While I definitly appreciate this aspect I still don't think this is amazing but it is very good and has some super interesting ideas and at some points feels very personal mainly the stuff revolving around alans sections and how he reflects on his past work and how they've been handled throughout the years. The game is also ligitimatly scary and tense mainly due to the excellent sound and fantastic art direction and enviromental design with competent level design with tight narrow paths not much room to move making for tense and ligitimatly scary moments. Sam Lake has improved as a writer, instead of copying and making worse versions of much better work it feels like sam lake has found his own style and voice and has been able to distiguish himself. Of course there are still elements from other works such as twin peaks but it feels more like inspiration than Pastiche unlike the other two remedy games I played.
While i really liked this game I do also have problems such as the brain place feeling kinda unecessary since there is no penelty to getting the answers wrong bascially playing itself if you do get on of the connections wrong. Could've been pretty cool if the story could be impacted from your judgments but I do understand that this would be hard to implement while retaining the linear narrative so it was probably a good call but then I think the mind place needed to be reworked to be something more interesting. Also I think the alan sections are much more interesting when compared to the saga parts mainly due to the more creative levels and more abstract story elements that arent featured in saga parts. It feels like the alan sections is a worse version of silent hill and the saga parts feels more like a worse resident evil not featuring the solid level design of the resident evil games and not featuring the incredibly effective level design in silent which tells the story through the levels. Also I found the story got less interesting as the game went on especially with the ending of the game which features some uneared introspection for saga and only lightly touches on the themes that I found interesting and were well presented and the live action elements actual feel purposful to the story and what the game is trying to communicate. Also, interms of game design, this just feels like a ripoff of resident evil in terms of most of the way it plays, the ui is similar, the camera function is similar, the level design, most things except for the story and style but it doesnt mean that its bad just feels more like a pastiche than its own beast. I think that some concepts could be taken further such as the usage of music, the part that everyone is talking about is cool but it more of you just walking and watching rather than intergrating the music into the gameplay. Also, the game is somewhat unpolished, with animations sometimes being janky and collision detection with the ground can be janky as well and there was a point at the end of the game that i fell through the floor and it happened twice in a row, not a huge problem but still kinda annoying. Its not a huge problem and Im willing to not put much effort into it due to the developer being smaller when compared to other AAA developers. Also, the pc port is kinda bad, I have a 3080, 32gb ram, AMD Ryzen 9 7900X and the game is struggling which it honestly should not since the game doesnt look too demanding, its definetly looks good very good in fact but noting mind blowing or spectacular.
I really liked this but there are still problems here from being a game that I loved but I do think remedy can do it and make a game thats super interesting and something I love. I think sam lake and the devs at remedy have the ambility and ambition to do something truley special but this is a really big step up from the original alan wake and control. I really appreciate the fact that this exsists and that there is a high art AAA (maybe AA) game thats getting a lot of attention, hopefully this will inspire more big developers to take artistic risks instead of leaving all the interesting games to indie developers.
While i really liked this game I do also have problems such as the brain place feeling kinda unecessary since there is no penelty to getting the answers wrong bascially playing itself if you do get on of the connections wrong. Could've been pretty cool if the story could be impacted from your judgments but I do understand that this would be hard to implement while retaining the linear narrative so it was probably a good call but then I think the mind place needed to be reworked to be something more interesting. Also I think the alan sections are much more interesting when compared to the saga parts mainly due to the more creative levels and more abstract story elements that arent featured in saga parts. It feels like the alan sections is a worse version of silent hill and the saga parts feels more like a worse resident evil not featuring the solid level design of the resident evil games and not featuring the incredibly effective level design in silent which tells the story through the levels. Also I found the story got less interesting as the game went on especially with the ending of the game which features some uneared introspection for saga and only lightly touches on the themes that I found interesting and were well presented and the live action elements actual feel purposful to the story and what the game is trying to communicate. Also, interms of game design, this just feels like a ripoff of resident evil in terms of most of the way it plays, the ui is similar, the camera function is similar, the level design, most things except for the story and style but it doesnt mean that its bad just feels more like a pastiche than its own beast. I think that some concepts could be taken further such as the usage of music, the part that everyone is talking about is cool but it more of you just walking and watching rather than intergrating the music into the gameplay. Also, the game is somewhat unpolished, with animations sometimes being janky and collision detection with the ground can be janky as well and there was a point at the end of the game that i fell through the floor and it happened twice in a row, not a huge problem but still kinda annoying. Its not a huge problem and Im willing to not put much effort into it due to the developer being smaller when compared to other AAA developers. Also, the pc port is kinda bad, I have a 3080, 32gb ram, AMD Ryzen 9 7900X and the game is struggling which it honestly should not since the game doesnt look too demanding, its definetly looks good very good in fact but noting mind blowing or spectacular.
I really liked this but there are still problems here from being a game that I loved but I do think remedy can do it and make a game thats super interesting and something I love. I think sam lake and the devs at remedy have the ambility and ambition to do something truley special but this is a really big step up from the original alan wake and control. I really appreciate the fact that this exsists and that there is a high art AAA (maybe AA) game thats getting a lot of attention, hopefully this will inspire more big developers to take artistic risks instead of leaving all the interesting games to indie developers.
Insomniac have proven themselves to be the pinnacle of the corporate developers. Their games aren't interested in being rewarding and interesting expirences or works of art rather they are mass consumer products designed to be as inoffensive as possible to appeal to lowest common denomenator, this has been what they've excelled at during the ps3 era and perfected in ps4 era with their ratchet and clank remake and their spiderman games which is reinforced here tenfold. I wouldn't call any of their more recent works bad but I would say they lack any voice and soul with the main direction to make something that looks presentable but nothing artistically interesting and create mechanics that look cool but arne't interesting on mechanical level. Spider-man 2 may be the product that insomniac has strived to make for all of this period of the developers history and I can't blame them, people like the game and its selling well but if you were to look at the vastly more interesting space of games as a whole and not just the AAA space then you'd see that spiderman 2 isnt very interesting and is just fine, average, completly inoffensive struggling to improve on previous entries instead adding more but not improving on much at all and unlike the similar approach nintendo took with the legend of zelda: tears of the kingdom, the original spiderman ps4 game was not a very interesting base to build on.
This review contains spoilers
Nintendo has succeeded in creating a promising first step to what could be a fantsatic series of 2d mario games that is already miles more interesting and ambitious than anything present in the new super mario bros franchise. However, while I'm happy to see nintendo taking mario in a more creative and expirimental route this game still comes to a very safe and mechanical design philosophy that platformers in recent years have endlessly expirimented with and come to some incredible outcomes while nintendo are fine with resting on their laurels and sadly don't do much to play with what mario level design can be in 2023.
Mario Wonder is a fantastic looking game with so much charm and personality bursting at the seams with fantastic new models and gorgeous animations to accompany those new models. They have a almost clay like quality to them which really makes them pop and mario seems to have inherhited some of that confiedent snark that his spikey blue friend making for a mario with more personality than featured before. Enemy designs are also fantastic perfectly communicating their function through the use of soft and sharp shapes while also being full personality and charm. While I think the presentation of this game is far beyond anything the 2d series has ever seen and feels like a natural progression from the snes games rather than the stagnation of the new series, I still have problems here namely with the music which the most bland boring and generic slop they could've possible come up with especially considering how creative the game is. The OST is just more of the same stuff from the new series failing to expand the musical world of mario in any exciting or interesting way, there are maybe two songs I thought were pretty good those being the special world overworld theme, which is fantastic, and the music promiant in the fungal world. The soundtrack also just has a lack of songs, several songs are reused throughout the game and they become stale fast making for maybe the worst soundtrack I've heard all year due to its lack of interesting ideas. There are so many directions you could take the music of mario be it big band jazz, funk, rock, electronic, orechestral, advant gard, all of these would be interesting directions for the sound of the franchise and have been used in the 3d games namely games such as mario galaxy and 3d world but it seems koji Kondo and his fellow composers want to keep the 2d series music stale and forgettable which is a shame, even sonic superstars had some absolute bangers in there such as speed jungle, pinball carnival, lagoon city, even that game with as mixed bag a soundtrack had a different song each act and had some variety this just feels bland especially when compared to some of the better soundtracks this year such as pizza towers and tears of the kingdome both having fantastic music that fit each of their games respectivly. Also, this is a minor point and doesnt really affect my opinions on the game but the voice acting for mario and co is actually pretty good for the most part but their are times when mario sounds off especially his mama mia which is actually bad and the talking flowers fucking suck, they're not funny or charming just annoying with dialog just going 'woah that just happened, wow man that was crazy' which sucks, Im fine with voice acting in a mario game but the flower is just annoying and barely helpful. Also, I think the level themes are super uninspired and boring, I'm sick of seeing grass world, sand world, lava world, forest world. Why can't we see some truley weried shit like a level in a crystalised mosolium, or a level in a mario rendition of rome or paris, why can't we have level that takes place on a circuite board and the world map could be little city with each part of the circuite borad acting as a city in and of itself. Why can't we have something visually distinct and cool instead of the same themes regudated over and over again. The only one I can think of that was different was the dounut level that is something that has been done better in other games like sonic colours where it took the whole desert gimick and made it appart of the level instead of deligating it to the background.
In terms of gameplay I have some thoughts. Controls are fantastic and tight, super responsive and fun to use, I think its a testiment to how good this game controls that when using the invisibilty badge that despite not seeing mario on the screen I still have a very good idea as to where he is on the screen. Now in terms of level design, this is just bogstandard mario level design with very little done to evolve what a mario level can be in 2023 outside of the wonder flower abilities. Each level follows basic standars of level design that being showing a level mechanic in a safe enviroment, showing how the mechanic interacts with the enviroment and continuously evolving it until the level ends. This is not the problem, the problem is that mario wonder does a poor job of actually evolving the mechanics in each level making each level feel underwhelming and unsatfisfying to play through. I love that the game doesnt throw away the mechanic after one level like mario galaxy does and instead evolves the mechanics throughout the game but I still don't think it does a good enough job of doing that for example the game has these pulley ropes that are initally used for coins but later are used to show plaforms in the level and are used for two enemies, this is fine but it never goes beyond that, never showing anything I havent seen in different platformers and done more creatively. What about using the rope pulleys to unpeal different parts of the level and hiding secrets in those, this could be used in conjuction with the background and foregrounds, peeling away different parts of the level to go into the background or foreground and bouncing between them to complete the level, maybe using the pulleys to shift the level around playing with perspective. Maybe there could be a level that is tied to the pace of the music and the pulleys could be used to determine the pace of the song and therefore changing the level. These are just some ideas I came up with that, I think, really could've achieved the sense of wonder that I was really expecting from this title and had while playing mario growing up in both 3d and 2d games but sadly I don't think this game ever achieve this. I've seen a lot of people saying this feels like a 3d mario game but in 2d and while I can see they're coming from I don't because if this was a 3d mario game then the mechanics would be used in much more creative ways and would be used to their fullest but wonder is fine with not trying this and instead using its selling gimick to fill that void. The wonder flower is the part that is supposed to make the game feel as if it full of wonders and it does this... Ocassionally since the many times the wonder flower is used it almost feels like a slight detour or its something thats completly seperate from the level making the game feel somewhat unfocused and divorced from the main part of the game, the level design. There are few times where I was pleased with the implementation such as the second to last level in the special world and the level with the ship in it, I also like the marching parade and the ninja hideout but even the music oriented ones get old as they are repeated constantly throughout the game, the first time was really cool and charming but after that it got kinda stale like it was treading old ground constantly which is a shame because there are really awesome ideas here such as the one where mario is walking on the background of the stage but even that is only a surface level of enjoyment because it only lasts a couple of seconds and before it really starts to feel like something really cool and awesome it ends which is unfortunate. I'm not saying the game is lacking ideas that are interesting becasue it definelty does not, this is probably the most creative mario game yet but I just wanted it to go further in its creativity. Reading an interview with the developers, it says they came up with over 2,000 ideas, that is staggering but it seems the ones that were the most wacky or funny were cut out such as the idea of having a sports commenting track while playing the level and having a Tsundere option or the idea for there to be a live action mario in the background whistling to the song playing. These are amazing ideas and I would've loved to have seen these and others like them in the game because they would've actually made me feel something which the game just didn't do much. When I finished wonder I felt kinda hollow, I didn't really feel much while playing if anything I was getting annoyed at how much better this game could've been and I'm so confused by the response to this game making me wonder if this is enough for most people, a standard mario game with a new visuals and the minute long detour, is this it, is this good enough when compared to incredibly creative and engaging plaformers out there such as pizza tower, sonic mania, celeste, donkey kong torpical freeze, rayman legends, shovel knight and many many more. Shouldn't we be expecting more from the face of gaming, the pinicle of the medium showing off how amazingly creative our medium is and can be. I don't know if I think this is good enough for mario when compared to the sea of more interesting platformers out there that push their gimicks and are branching and expirimenting with the form instead of settling for the stausque of game design. I was hoping mario was going to reinvent and shake up the platformer but instead it still feels like its trying to play catchup. Like I said there are cool ideas here but they kinda just come and go kinda like the new badge system, they're cool, offering a way for different playstyles in the levels but your probably only gonna stick with one or two because the levels don't offer enough expirimentation for you to want to play around with them and levels that are built with them in mind are some of the best in the game since they do push what they can do and it shows that they can be cool but why would I not use the one that gives you a double jump or why not use the one that makes water levels actually fun. Also, mario continues to have the most uninspired and boring bosses in gaming history with bowser junior bosses feeling increibly samey and lacking in difficulty and the final boss and general ending being incredibly underwhelming and honestly unintersting.
I feel like I could write about this game forever and why it dissapointed me but with all this said I still recommend mario wonder. It's an above average game that I did enjoy playing but I never loved playing outside of a few examples. A game I wanted to love but ultimatly came up short. Who knew that my two favourite frachises would come out with games that ended up dissapointing me within the span of a week. I'm glad people are loving this game but I just couldn't. This may be the best 2D mario since super mario world but thats because nintendo tried to put the franchise in a state of perpertual staggnaiton until poeple started to complain. I'm happy nintendo is being more loose with mario but I don't expect them to let mario go crazy ever which is a shame. I'll say that if this game was filled with the type of stuff it gives you when 100%ing the game then I think it would've been better.
Mario Wonder is a fantastic looking game with so much charm and personality bursting at the seams with fantastic new models and gorgeous animations to accompany those new models. They have a almost clay like quality to them which really makes them pop and mario seems to have inherhited some of that confiedent snark that his spikey blue friend making for a mario with more personality than featured before. Enemy designs are also fantastic perfectly communicating their function through the use of soft and sharp shapes while also being full personality and charm. While I think the presentation of this game is far beyond anything the 2d series has ever seen and feels like a natural progression from the snes games rather than the stagnation of the new series, I still have problems here namely with the music which the most bland boring and generic slop they could've possible come up with especially considering how creative the game is. The OST is just more of the same stuff from the new series failing to expand the musical world of mario in any exciting or interesting way, there are maybe two songs I thought were pretty good those being the special world overworld theme, which is fantastic, and the music promiant in the fungal world. The soundtrack also just has a lack of songs, several songs are reused throughout the game and they become stale fast making for maybe the worst soundtrack I've heard all year due to its lack of interesting ideas. There are so many directions you could take the music of mario be it big band jazz, funk, rock, electronic, orechestral, advant gard, all of these would be interesting directions for the sound of the franchise and have been used in the 3d games namely games such as mario galaxy and 3d world but it seems koji Kondo and his fellow composers want to keep the 2d series music stale and forgettable which is a shame, even sonic superstars had some absolute bangers in there such as speed jungle, pinball carnival, lagoon city, even that game with as mixed bag a soundtrack had a different song each act and had some variety this just feels bland especially when compared to some of the better soundtracks this year such as pizza towers and tears of the kingdome both having fantastic music that fit each of their games respectivly. Also, this is a minor point and doesnt really affect my opinions on the game but the voice acting for mario and co is actually pretty good for the most part but their are times when mario sounds off especially his mama mia which is actually bad and the talking flowers fucking suck, they're not funny or charming just annoying with dialog just going 'woah that just happened, wow man that was crazy' which sucks, Im fine with voice acting in a mario game but the flower is just annoying and barely helpful. Also, I think the level themes are super uninspired and boring, I'm sick of seeing grass world, sand world, lava world, forest world. Why can't we see some truley weried shit like a level in a crystalised mosolium, or a level in a mario rendition of rome or paris, why can't we have level that takes place on a circuite board and the world map could be little city with each part of the circuite borad acting as a city in and of itself. Why can't we have something visually distinct and cool instead of the same themes regudated over and over again. The only one I can think of that was different was the dounut level that is something that has been done better in other games like sonic colours where it took the whole desert gimick and made it appart of the level instead of deligating it to the background.
In terms of gameplay I have some thoughts. Controls are fantastic and tight, super responsive and fun to use, I think its a testiment to how good this game controls that when using the invisibilty badge that despite not seeing mario on the screen I still have a very good idea as to where he is on the screen. Now in terms of level design, this is just bogstandard mario level design with very little done to evolve what a mario level can be in 2023 outside of the wonder flower abilities. Each level follows basic standars of level design that being showing a level mechanic in a safe enviroment, showing how the mechanic interacts with the enviroment and continuously evolving it until the level ends. This is not the problem, the problem is that mario wonder does a poor job of actually evolving the mechanics in each level making each level feel underwhelming and unsatfisfying to play through. I love that the game doesnt throw away the mechanic after one level like mario galaxy does and instead evolves the mechanics throughout the game but I still don't think it does a good enough job of doing that for example the game has these pulley ropes that are initally used for coins but later are used to show plaforms in the level and are used for two enemies, this is fine but it never goes beyond that, never showing anything I havent seen in different platformers and done more creatively. What about using the rope pulleys to unpeal different parts of the level and hiding secrets in those, this could be used in conjuction with the background and foregrounds, peeling away different parts of the level to go into the background or foreground and bouncing between them to complete the level, maybe using the pulleys to shift the level around playing with perspective. Maybe there could be a level that is tied to the pace of the music and the pulleys could be used to determine the pace of the song and therefore changing the level. These are just some ideas I came up with that, I think, really could've achieved the sense of wonder that I was really expecting from this title and had while playing mario growing up in both 3d and 2d games but sadly I don't think this game ever achieve this. I've seen a lot of people saying this feels like a 3d mario game but in 2d and while I can see they're coming from I don't because if this was a 3d mario game then the mechanics would be used in much more creative ways and would be used to their fullest but wonder is fine with not trying this and instead using its selling gimick to fill that void. The wonder flower is the part that is supposed to make the game feel as if it full of wonders and it does this... Ocassionally since the many times the wonder flower is used it almost feels like a slight detour or its something thats completly seperate from the level making the game feel somewhat unfocused and divorced from the main part of the game, the level design. There are few times where I was pleased with the implementation such as the second to last level in the special world and the level with the ship in it, I also like the marching parade and the ninja hideout but even the music oriented ones get old as they are repeated constantly throughout the game, the first time was really cool and charming but after that it got kinda stale like it was treading old ground constantly which is a shame because there are really awesome ideas here such as the one where mario is walking on the background of the stage but even that is only a surface level of enjoyment because it only lasts a couple of seconds and before it really starts to feel like something really cool and awesome it ends which is unfortunate. I'm not saying the game is lacking ideas that are interesting becasue it definelty does not, this is probably the most creative mario game yet but I just wanted it to go further in its creativity. Reading an interview with the developers, it says they came up with over 2,000 ideas, that is staggering but it seems the ones that were the most wacky or funny were cut out such as the idea of having a sports commenting track while playing the level and having a Tsundere option or the idea for there to be a live action mario in the background whistling to the song playing. These are amazing ideas and I would've loved to have seen these and others like them in the game because they would've actually made me feel something which the game just didn't do much. When I finished wonder I felt kinda hollow, I didn't really feel much while playing if anything I was getting annoyed at how much better this game could've been and I'm so confused by the response to this game making me wonder if this is enough for most people, a standard mario game with a new visuals and the minute long detour, is this it, is this good enough when compared to incredibly creative and engaging plaformers out there such as pizza tower, sonic mania, celeste, donkey kong torpical freeze, rayman legends, shovel knight and many many more. Shouldn't we be expecting more from the face of gaming, the pinicle of the medium showing off how amazingly creative our medium is and can be. I don't know if I think this is good enough for mario when compared to the sea of more interesting platformers out there that push their gimicks and are branching and expirimenting with the form instead of settling for the stausque of game design. I was hoping mario was going to reinvent and shake up the platformer but instead it still feels like its trying to play catchup. Like I said there are cool ideas here but they kinda just come and go kinda like the new badge system, they're cool, offering a way for different playstyles in the levels but your probably only gonna stick with one or two because the levels don't offer enough expirimentation for you to want to play around with them and levels that are built with them in mind are some of the best in the game since they do push what they can do and it shows that they can be cool but why would I not use the one that gives you a double jump or why not use the one that makes water levels actually fun. Also, mario continues to have the most uninspired and boring bosses in gaming history with bowser junior bosses feeling increibly samey and lacking in difficulty and the final boss and general ending being incredibly underwhelming and honestly unintersting.
I feel like I could write about this game forever and why it dissapointed me but with all this said I still recommend mario wonder. It's an above average game that I did enjoy playing but I never loved playing outside of a few examples. A game I wanted to love but ultimatly came up short. Who knew that my two favourite frachises would come out with games that ended up dissapointing me within the span of a week. I'm glad people are loving this game but I just couldn't. This may be the best 2D mario since super mario world but thats because nintendo tried to put the franchise in a state of perpertual staggnaiton until poeple started to complain. I'm happy nintendo is being more loose with mario but I don't expect them to let mario go crazy ever which is a shame. I'll say that if this game was filled with the type of stuff it gives you when 100%ing the game then I think it would've been better.