In Super Mario Wonder, the SECOND LEVEL has piranha plants singing a musical number. In a 2D platformer, the mechanics of how the level obstacles function, how enemies move, is done via the telegraphing power of a MUSICAL NUMBER.
This is the second level of the game. They ALL do stuff like this. They have gone even further beyond what Donkey Kong Country Tropical Freeze level design did.
It... it's the best one. It's the best 2D Mario game.
I got it too. I'm in world two so far. It's good, but mostly easy. The Wonder flower sections are often way too short, I was expecting more... like, sure a lot of them have cool effects, but when it's over in like 30 seconds I feel disappointed, the most clever section of the stage isn't much of a thing. Those singing flowers? That section was very low challenge and short... meh, it was kind of neat I guess. There are some harder levels which are almost entirely a Wonder effect though, those are pretty cool. The side level in the first world where you're on a herd of creatures was interesting conceptually, challenging, and fun.
So far, I'd say that Super Mario Bros. Wonder is a good game, but its certainly not one of my favorite Mario games. I know there are harder levels eventually, but so far I'd put this a bit below Kirby and the Forgotten Land and definitely below 3D World. It's probably better than any of the NSMB games, though... or the ones I've played, I've never actually played NSMBU and don't own it. The only NSMB game I actually finished was the first one for DS, I lost interest in them after that. (In comparison, I have over a thousand hours played in Super Mario Maker 2 now. It's easily one of the best games ever made.) SMBW does a good job of being more interesting than NSMB, I like how the world map and such mix in some 3D World style, but no way is it as good as Super Mario World. That game is nearly flawless, the sometimes low difficulty is its only possible issue.
This one? It's fun. I like going to it and playing a few levels. The graphics have a lot of variety, the new enemies and design elements are interesting -- the way Wonder does trees is entirely new, they are floating platforms now essentially -- and the character variety is very welcome. Every playable character from past Mario platformers is here except for Rosalina, and Daisy is playable for the first time in a platformer. That's a good surprise. There's a lot to like about Wonder, but sorry, I'm on a 'it's a good probably A grade game' position right now, not 'wow it's the best thing ever'. Issues include usually low difficulty, the often short wonder sections (the one on the bubbles in world 2 was pretty weak for instance, so short... the idea looked cool but actually playing it? not so much.), a somewhat forgettable soundtrack, and such.
[And also, I know why the game uses 2.5d graphics and they do a great job with variety and such, but sorry Japan, I don't like this look quite as much as I do sprites. Sega apparently said they would not make a second Sonic Mania game because they don't want to make another sprite-based Sonic game, if it's not at least 2.5d they aren't interested. The new Sonic game that just released, Superstars, is 2.5d, like Wonder but by all accounts nowhere near as good particularly because of obnoxiously long boss fights. I haven't bought Superstars yet and won't for full price. There is a general trend in Japan towards all classic remakes using 2.5d graphics even when the results look worse than the sprite-based originals. Of course among 2.5d platformers Super Mario Wonder's got some of the best visual variety around, and there are a few bits where you go into pipes in the background, but still this is an interesting issue. Western developers are much less liekly to make major sidescrolling platformers so most of the ones we get are indie, but still you do not see this 'sprites are over' thing from western games nearly as much as you do Japanese in recent years. I'm sure Mario Wonder was always going to be 2.5d since all of the NSMB games are, and as I've said it well beats out those games' bland look, but in general it's a shame that Japanese developers usually seem to think that major releases cannot use sprites. They are wrong about that.]
On the one hand, I just played some SMBW levels and thought 'this game is great!', because if often is. I do like this game a lot, it's quite good. There are a lot of new enemies and obstacles, it's great how the dev team mixed things up from the Mario standard. Mario Wonder is really good!
... and then I ran into an instant boo Mario Maker trash side stage full of hidden blocks that you must find. You can either randomly jump around and find them or play as certain (unspecified in the game) characters, certain characters cause a few blocks each to appear. Absolute garbage... this is one of the worst levels ever in an official Mario game, this is the kind of thing that's worst about Mario Maker.
Thing is, New Super Mario Bros, as a series, also lowered the difficulty across the first few worlds compared to older entries. My expectation based on past experience is for that difficulty curve to rise as the game goes on, and only truly become challenging in the ever-present hidden "Special World". We'll see!
Heck I fully understand that "new shine" may be blinding me to flaws, but so far I'm loving it. Even the sections that don't involve magical fruits and their devilish effects are all filled with a unique charm that they couldn't have gotten away with back in the "New Super Mario Bros" series.
In fact, the only thing I can really complain about is Mario's new voice actor. I don't know nor is it my business what happened with Charles Martinet, but I think it would have been wise for the new VA to come up with a brand new approach to the Mario voice instead of trying and failing to imitate Charles. We've had unique Mario voices multiple times before after all. Captain Lou still stands out as one of the best interpretations of the character and it's the one all us 80's children grew up on, back when the U.S. also called the evil turtle king "Koopa" (and his servant in the turtle tribe were "Koopa Troopas", Koopa as an adjective, not a noun). No I'm not asking for Chris Pratt of course, just a talented VA to put their own spin on the character.
I've been playing the game off and on here and there, so I'm still not at the end. I did finally finish world four yesterday, so I'm getting farther, and certainly will finish this game. It is good.
The best thing about this game is something I've mentioned already, how great some of the level concepts are. With new enemies, new things in the levels to interact with such as the green flowers that cause some kind of change near you in the stage, and more, a lot of stages in this game are inventive and quite fun to work through. Are they challenging, a bit, but the difficulty here is mostly moderate. Even so, though, it's fun enough that that's alright most of the time. There are some levels that I wish were harder, but by this point in the game more of them present enough challenge, and the new ideas you see in so many stages are great. I like returning ideas we haven't seen in a long time, too, such as the levels in the cave stages with those sticky zones that you can move through, like the sap in Mario Land 2. It's really cool to see those back. I'm quite liking the game for sure, it's one of the better games this year.
On the other hand, the worst thing about this game so far is something that some reviews rightly criticize: the boss fights! What happened here, how did they actually publish this game with the boss fights as absurdly awful, or ENTIRELY ABSENT, as they are?
Because yes, of the five worlds I've seen in the game so far -- worlds one through four and the hub world which has a bunch of levels in it too -- only two have had bosses. The other two don't have a boss at the end, after the last regular level in the level it just randomly ends and says "hey you win here's the reward item!" even though you didn't fight any kind of boss. At all. I know that 2d Mario games don't usually exactly have the best boss fights -- Mario is the best platforming series for its platforming, not for its great boss fights, that's for sure -- but at least all previous 2d Mario games HAD a boss at the end of each world. This one does not, and it's a meaningful flaw in the game.
As for the two worlds that did have bosses, both are Bowser Jr. I know that's not the last fight with BJR either, he will appear again later. This game has very few bosses and the few it has are, such as BJR and Bowser, re-used from previous games with minimal change. How do you fight Bowser Jr.? You jump on his head a couple of times. After each hit he spins around and sometimes throws stuff at you, exactly like previous games. They try to mix things up slightly with a 'corrupted' version of him on the last hit, but it doesn't change much. Sure, there sometimes is some kind of modification to the space, but the few boss fights I have seen in this game are every bit as bad and unoriginal as the regular levels are good. It's disappointing that this otherwise quite good game puts in so little effort in its boss encounters. And I thought previous 2d Mario bosses were weak, at least those existed!
As for the voice acting, it is disappointing that they removed Charles Martinet and replaced him with some random new person who isn't as good, but as much as I am unhappy with Nintendo for that, I've never been one to care much about voice acting in games, honestly. As long as it's done decently, or alternately is entertainingly awful, I'm fine with it. I've almost never cared about the names of videogame voice actors. Even so though, Mario's voice is one of the few that I think does matter, and yeah, this guy is a definite downgrade.
I got the game. I call it super mario drugs.. Because.. that game it is..
Yeah, that's pretty accurate. The Wonder flowers sure are something...
It's bringing back the Wonder to the Mario universe, so of course it's going to bring back the same jokes we made back in the 80's and 90's when the Mushroom Kingdom was new.
Quote:In Super Mario Wonder, the SECOND LEVEL has piranha plants singing a musical number. In a 2D platformer, the mechanics of how the level obstacles function, how enemies move, is done via the telegraphing power of a MUSICAL NUMBER.
oh mah gaaawwwwddd more of these :3 they gave me tingly vibes in places hard to reach, if ya get what I'm scratchin' at.
That felt like peak SMBW, though it was early on. I've only played a dozen or so levels. As far as pure game mechanics, I think I prefer moving in three-dimensions. I loved how SMW3D mingled both short levels (old school) with 3D worlds (new school, as new as Mario 64 can be, anyway). It really hit on a combination that was the best of both Worlds.
But I don't want to sit here and talk about another game. Wonder has thus far been very impressive, and a very good entry into 2D Mario series. Possibly the best one. I played a bit of NSMB I think, back in the day... that was the one where up to 4 people could play, right? And you could get trapped in a bubble if you spazzed out too much and whipped the controller around, as I am wont to do?
SMBW feels precisely like the four decades of tinkering and refinement that's made Mario Bros games great. This might sound weird, but I feel like this game is from a vision that's been perfectly realized. It's a well-crafted cartoony world where everything makes sense within its own universe. You don't bat an eye at something so absurd as Bowser gleefully integrating himself with a castle, because somehow that kind of silliness seems as baked in and indisputable as classical physics. To *not* see some kind of tomfoolery like that is like bouncing a rubber ball and watching it rocket up into outer space.
The Wonder segments are innovative, fun, and crank up all the sensory dials. The singing flowers felt god damn mesmerizing, and I'm sad it only lasted a few seconds.
Re: Mario's voice actor. I suppose I'm mixed. I didn't even notice that Martinet had been replaced, though I remember hearing of his retirement (probably from here). I feel like anything that diverges from the legacy Mario voice is going to inherently feel... I don't know... alien? But at the same time, I'm a big believer in mixing things up and not just retreading old ground.
Hoskins and Captain Lou did the voices just fine, but trying to picture them coming out of a cartoony mouth is just... weird.
I haven't, and refuse, to listen to that douchebag Pratt perform the Mario voice, on pure petty principal. I hate that actor to begin with, and the idea of a big budget Mario movie is gross, so combining the two is the same kind of revulsion I reserve for watching a performance artist eat literal dog feces. BTW, don't watch the movie Pink Flamingos.