🟢[4/5]︱New Super Mario Bros Review
Preamble
New Super Mario Bros. is one of those kinds of games that I like coming back to play for the minigames, and stay for a bit before shelving it. After finishing Cave Story and getting into this one, I gotten myself to do a playthrough of such, and after finishing it, I thought of making a review to share my thoughts about the game. I hope you enjoy!Story (0.5/5)
You can guess the story for this game.Gameplay (4/5)
The last original Mario game that came out before New Super Mario Bros. was Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins for the Game Boy. Since I've been recently going through that game consistently with Archipelago Multiworld, I can safely say that throughout the series progressing with ideas to share, copy, and innovate from, NSMB feels more not like SML2, but more like a combination of Super Mario Bros. 3 and Super Mario World, withn some original ideas sprinkled in.To start, the powerups have been switched around: You still got your mushroom, fire flower, and star powerups, but new to this game is the Mega Mushroom, and the Blue Shell. The Mega Mushroom was the main highlight of this game's advertising, saying that its a staple mechanic to stomp your foes really hard, and I gotta say, even if they sounded like it was revelant and crucial to the gameplay itself (to even have dediacted houses just for you to have it in your slot bar), I didn't really use it much in my playthrough to even have some stages where I think that getting it from a random item (or a Hammer Brother) was more lethal and pointless than using it on the stages that actually have it, which I think the only one was the first stage? I can't remember, but I'm sure its not a lot of them.
As for the Blue Mushroom... It's quite broken. So broken that they actually limited it spawning in the pool of random item boxes inside of some stages that featured it in every world from the fifth world onwards. To put it simply, you can turn into a koopa with the abillity to slide your shell across stages if you have enough running space, and its the second fastest horizontal mobility option you have in this game, with number one being the star. You're able to destroy your enemies, and go through water fast due to it being quite a heavy shell, but its at the cost of not being able to do anything else until you let go of the run button. It's a very fun powerup to use (and it does have some special use cases where you can unlock extra paths), but I managed to not use it much by the time I gotten to the halfway point on what this game offers.
POST EDIT: a friend of mine read my review and had me realized after posting this that I haven't talked about the mini mushroom. I think its one of the worst items in Mario games and it makes dealing with the bosses a lot harder than it needed to be.
If there's one compliment that I can give to NSMB, it would be its enemies. You got your basic goombas, koopas, and all the other staples, but this game beings in enemies that were exclusive from Super Mario 64 as well as having enemies that are brand new to this game, as well. Enemies such as Sushies, Skeeters, Scuttlebugs, Whomps, and even Moneybags. Some of the new enemies are radical and AWESOME sauce. I love me some Spike Bass, Deep Cheeps, Broozers, Balloon Boos, and Snailicorns. They remind me of the unique enemies found in Super Mario Land 2, which is kind of another reason why I've menntioned it. They really made this game feel like a mix of Super Mario 64 and even Sunshine, but I feel more references with its feeling has been done better with the former than the latter, but luckily Super Mario 64 DS made this weird thing I got better, to it having its own remix of Delphino Plazza somewhere in the game. (I haven't played them myself personally to know)
The bosses, too, also are some of my favorites in regards to not only this game, but part of the other platformer entries that I've played thus far. They're still extremely easy to defeat (save for the Mummy Pokey and Petey Piranha), but they're unique to this game and to this game only. Like, I've never sen Thunder Lakitu come back from another game before, or the Monty Mole Tank--they're awesome bosses, and the final boss with Bowser Jr and Bowser fighting each other (with the former using his harder, neckerchief variant) was a bit anticlamatic, but still liked it regardless.
If there's one takeway that I'll mention through, is that this game was way too easy. Like, before I started seirously playing this game, I was kind of horrified that this game might be as hard as Super Mario Bros 3 especially with the final castle being a labryinth to solve, but I only died to it once, and it was thankfully more straightforward than what I hoped. New Super Mario Bros boils down to more of the easier Mario games, with a polethora of ways to give the player as many 1-ups as they can. And as I said this, I remember one important thing that I remember fans critisizing about Mario games: The fact that the rest of the 2D platformers becoming way too easy. While I don't think these need to be Dark Souls level of difficulty, they do need to provide a better challenge for players and especially veterans who know what to expect from these series. As a person who isn't a veteran but is more experienced with other mario games, I feel that this one was a bit too easy, reminds me of the difficulty that I had with again, Super Mario Land 2.
Replay Value (4/5)
After finishing the game, the end screen hints at unlocking Luigi, which is by holding L, R, and A when starting a new save. Once you do that, you can hear a chant of his, and you play the entire game as him. I do have to mention that he plays exactly the same as his brother, so you're getting the same experience even if he's more goated than Mario. You also can 100% the Star Coins and the available stages, and at the end, you can purchase every single Star Coin post at the end of it all. I didn't do this for my playthrough, but you can even have a separate file where you can go off on the latter.There's also the minigames: One of which is a dedicated two player exclusive mode known as Mario vs Luigi. This one has you and your opponent (via Download Play or Wireless Play) going through select stages to collect as many stars as you can before the other has more than you. It features all of the items from this game, as well as enemies that can get in your way. This was one of the most popular multiplayer modes on the DS to the point that it would get an online version complete with more features later down the road. As for the other sets of minigames, they're mostly the same collection as Super Mario 64 DS, but with some that are unique to this game and whatnot. However, there's the option to play them with 2-4 players for more combined fun and the goal is to get 500 points total. I have a bunch of nostalgia playing this mode with my family, and its anoter one of the games that I wish to play with other people other than that, provided that I have the right kind of people to play this with, as y'know, doing these is quite difficult.
Graphics (3.5/5/5)
I think the graphics for this game are alright. Honestly, in my perspective, its hard for me to really critique the graphics of a Mario game since they mostly are cartoony and simple but jolly enough to keep the brand's theming intact, but for this game, I do like how they made a nice mix of both 2D and 3D graphics for the enemies. Although there's some moments where I wonder why they made some of the enemies 2D sprites when there's obviously 3D versions of them. Stuff like the koopas being 2D but the ones that are climbing on the iron bars 3D, and the giant goomba fight in world 4 being 3D when the standard ones are 3D. And the Thwomps are also 3D for some reason when they could've been perfect as 2D sprites. However, even if I've said this, these are minute details that I'm not complaining about too much since I do like the mix at the end of the day.The minigames alsom feature the same kind of graphics as not only the ones that were from Super Mario 64 DS albeit with some specific changes, but they also are a nice, splendid mix of 2D and 3D like NSMB.