New Super Mario Bros Not For Hardcore Fans

Dominion Post

MARIO UNDOUBTEDLY APPEARED on many Black Friday shopping lists a few days ago, as "New Super Mario Bros. Wii" debuted Nov. 15. It even comes in a bright red box so it won't upset the holiday color scheme. But does it deliver something new, worth buying, while satisfying the unbridled nostalgia we all feel for this video game icon? It does, and it doesn't. For Mario first-timers, this title has all the fun one would want to discover. We have here the standard save-the-princess plot, as Mario and pals chase her trail through eight worlds filled with every earthly environment imaginable.

But Mushroom Kingdom veterans have seen all that before, ad nauseam. So, Shigeru Miyamoto, Nintendo's dungeon master, decided to make this hop-and-bop platform adventure a multiplayer one. This is the new: A traditional Super Mario Bros. adventure in which four gamers can battle Bowser and his minions at the same time. Players can control Mario, Luigi or a blue or yellow Toad.

While it's the main selling feature of the title, I don't think Miyamoto had it in mind when he put the basics of the game together. You can consume this one by yourself. This sequel takes many of the best elements from previous 2-D Mario games, and puts them together for a greatest-hits experience. We can ride Yoshi ("Super Mario World") visit Toad houses and collect items for use on the world map before entering a level ("Super Mario Bros. 3") and jump about levels designed more for their moving platforms than menacing baddies ("New Super Mario Bros.").

That said, the multiplayer element seems like its own entity. I got the chance to play this game with two, three and four people, and the effect can be equally frustrating and fun. Designers realized having four players bouncing around a platform level would be hectic, so they've bent the rules to compensate. When you're playing along with friends, your character can die and come back again and again, provided there's another player still running around and you've stocked up enough extra lives. Note: when players run out of extra lives, game play continues without them, but the controller transforms into a sound effects sampler with agogo bells, applause, bicycle horns and drums to annoy whoever's left standing. It's a delight of a detail. Players can also press a button to put a bubble around their character to float through the tougher parts of any level. This can come in handy, especially when Mario falls down a pit, but use it with caution. If all of the active players are in a bubble, everyone loses the level and a life. In-game interaction also has its benefits and pitfalls. Players can pick up and throw one another's characters and bounce on top of each other. Both moves prove effective for finding goodies, but you'll also end up in each other's way.

That happened more often than not when I played with 3 friends. Super Mario games involve a lot of jumping, and we jumped on top of one another, sometimes bopping one another into pits or danger's way. Game play goes along much slower with four people too, as we could only make our way through puzzles one at a time.

On the plus side, it took complete and total failure not to finish a level, as we all died often but rarely died at the same time, so someone was alive when it was time to slide down the iconic flagpole at the end.

Further aiding players, Nintendo has incorporated a "Super Guide" into the game, which appears after failing to complete a level after multiple tries. Once you hit the "Super Guide" block, a computer-controlled Luigi can take over, showing players how to make it through the given level. It came in handy for this review, but felt a bit like cheating -- probably because it is.

This somewhat counters fun of video games: To frustrate yourself until steam shoots out your ears. But when you succeed, the reward and emotional relief is worth the high blood pressure. Reading into the press releases, it looks like the "Super Guide" might be a regular feature in the future. But what's the reward without the achievement?

There's some content exclusive to multiplayer on "New Super Mario Bros. Wii," in the form of "Free-for-All" and "Coin Battle" modes. Players can go head-tohead in these modes, battling for various stats and money among specially designed courses and the game's regular levels.

With the "Coin Battle" in particular, I saw much potential for gaming party antics, as I tossed my opponent into lava and he threw me off a moving boat in the midst a spirited money-grabbing romp.

But who will like "New Super Mario Bros. Wii," and who will gripe?

This game isn't for the hardcore set who left Princess Peach to defend herself long ago for gory first-person shooters and sports games. "New Super Mario Bros. Will" can't deliver the competition of other multiplayer titles.

Kids 12 years and under will definitely savor this adventure, though. There's plenty of cute silliness and difficulty to hold their attention. I can especially see this title working well in families with multiple children, as everybody playing at the same time will prevent a few fisticuffs.

But for the rest of us in the middle, this one's a bit of a toss up. I liked the Mario nostalgia and the ability to get wacky with friends, but I kept getting the feeling that I've played through all of this before; like I could visit one of the original Mario titles on Wii's Virtual Console and find equal satisfaction.

This one feels too much like "New Super Mario Bros.," for Nintendo's DS, so if that title's already in your library, decided carefully whether adding "New Super Mario Bros. Wii" will provide a new flavor of mushroom to enjoy, or just another all-you-canstomp trip to the Goomba buffet.

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Copyright 2012 by Dominion Post