My power hour review game for this month shouldn’t be much of a surprise if you’ve listened to the last podcast. I finally blew the dust off of my Wii U last month when I bought a copy of the latest Mario game. My Wii U hasn’t really gotten much use (read none) since Pea grew bored with “making humans” in the Miiverse so it was good to be able to finally use it again. With it being Christmas break not only did Pea have a little more screen time than usual, but she also had her grandmother around who has, to my knowledge, never played an actual console game in her life. So we all sat down together and Pea forced a controller into my mother’s hands with the directive, “Play!”.
I’m going to cheat a little bit in this review and tell you about a bit more than one hour of actual playtime because of the time that it took my mother to get used to the controls (not that they were at all difficult). To begin with, one of the best things about Super Mario 3D World is the ability to play as Princess Peach. Other character choices are Mario, Luigi, and Toad. Each of the characters has different attributes, i.e. Peach floats longer when she jumps, Luigi jumps higher, and Toad runs faster. They feel a lot like an RPG party and at first I was afraid that it was going to be necessary to switch back and forth between characters in order to complete levels, but luckily that was not the case because there was no way that I was going to get Pea to relinquish control of Princess Peach.
Co-op play in this game is just really well done. You can drop in and drop out as you need to without dooming the remaining player(s) to failure on that run through. The game has also made it much more difficult to sabotage or accidentally throw another player off of the field of play. In fact what this game does is require co-op players to play together and coordinate their efforts in order to get the best outcome. Something that Pea and I learned when we caught Nana trying to slack off during one of the more difficult levels that involved riding a dinosaur through rapids. If all players are not actively guiding the dino in one direction or jumping when everyone else it your chances of success diminish greatly. And while this isn’t the case when players are guiding their characters through levels separately, getting left behind the field of vision makes your character “bubble up” and costs you one life and lives are shared by the whole party. So if you start a level with 10 lives and one of your co-op players runs off of a cliff 10 times, you are going to be duck out of luck if you find yourself needing just one extra life to complete the level. But I didn’t find that as much of a PITA as the fact that if one player is in a bubble and the other gets knocked out then it’s pretty much “Game Over” for the entire party. But that is just par for the course when playing with kids and newbies, right?
The game makes things a lot more equitable with a series of cute, specialized power ups (like cat suits, cloning cherries, and giant mushrooms) and an “easy mode” that presents itself after you fail a level several times. At the beginning of the level you have the option of donning a white tanooki (raccoon) suit of invincibility that stays with you throughout the level (as long as you don’t walk off of the edge of the platform). Playing certain levels with Pea gets a lot easier when she can walk right through the baddies while Mama jumps over/on them. Nice inclusion there. All in all, I have to admit that it was a blast watching Pea teach her grandmother have to navigate the course in one breath and then blame her for pushing her off of a cliff in another. And as she often reminds me (with a little pat on the shoulder) in moments of frustration with a boss or with myself…”Mama, remember it’s not about winning or losing, it’s about having fun!”. And you know what? She’s right and this game is fun.
I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the controller options for this game because it’s important if you are playing with lots of folks or with small children. You can play Super Mario 3D World with the gamepad, a Wii controller with nunchuk, the new Pro controller, or the classic controller (but there are certain levels that you must use the gamepad for). I make specific note about the controllers in this game because Pea for it easier and more intuitive to use the classic controller than to use the Wii remote turned sideways and the Pro controller is just a little unwieldy for her. If you have a Wii U this Mario title is definitely a must buy. If you don’t have a Wii U this game is the one to make you consider buying one. It feels like Nintendo may finally be hitting their Wii U stride and next month is bringing us the release of the new Donkey Kong so there is much to be excited for.
