Mario, despite himself, has diversified his income over the years. In addition to master plumber, he’s become a championship series go-kart racer, a tennis superstar, a baseball MVP, and he’s even thrown a few massive parties. This drive to explore as many professional avenues as possible has even split Mario’s platforming into two distinct areas of expertise: 2D side-scrolling adventures and 3D worlds we’ve come to know and love. Unfortunately, the expansive, free-roaming trial-by-fire style that gamers expect of Mario and Nintendo on every new home console wasn’t present at launch.
Super Mario 3D World may seem a tad simplistic from the beginning when compared to the epic Super Mario Galaxy 2. It’s a feeling which is no doubt caused by the game being a successor to handheld title 3D Land rather than any of this console Super Mario games or a new offshoot for the series.
But the first simplicity is perhaps one of the game’s greatest strengths, as it allows players to jump in with the new co-operative gameplay and not feel too confused for early few hours, before it ramps up the innovation and new features as the game progresses with a smooth difficulty curve, leading the game towards a hardcore, proper Super Mario title as you reach the end with this last world.
There’s tons to do, but the main focus as ever is on the plethora of stages throughout the worlds. Each one of these is distinct, never letting repetition settle in and never having the same segment twice. It’s fantastic level design, which incorporates new mechanics as much as it takes from the classic Super Mario formula, and even more recent games such as Galaxy 2 or even the New Super Mario Bros. series, though it’s still very different to those both.
Mario’s tried-and-true equation acts as a double-edged sword in 3D WORLD. With the mascot's games consistently dictated by a world-to-world structure, you can feel like Nintendo’s developers continue treading the same ground by fault of design, but a couple of key differences between NSMBU and 3D WORLD help the overarching map stay fresh. In 3D WORLD, you and up to three friends can run around the world map together, bounce your heads on item blocks, and uncover secrets. Further, the structure is less inspired by SUPER MARIO WORLD than NSMBU’s map.
Obviously, if you’ve played SUPER MARIO 3D LAND on 3DS, this new Mario game on Wii U will feel all too familiar, but whether that’s good or bad is up to you. Entering any given level drops Mario and friends into a fully explorable 3D space, but “shoebox design” (as I like to call it) still reigns on Wii U. What I mean by shoebox design is that often 3D WORLD’s levels belie their actual size by putting players on a set roller-coaster track. There’s a specific path through every level, even if it might seem like these 3D worlds offer more freedom than a 2D level. Players still have to start at the same point and end up at the goal pole In spite of whether they discover secret items and hidden pathways on the way.
Where 2D and 3D games diverge is in the sheer volume of hidden secrets waiting for you. It’ll take curiosity and a few errant bounces to reveal every hidden item block or alternate path to the end of a level or a treasure trove of golden coins. Mario games have always had mysterious stuff like this, but 3D WORLD goes out of its way to help you actually discover its best secrets. A misdirected fireball might reveal a Question Mark box by casting a box-shaped shadow or a purposefully placed power-up will encourage you to head in a direction you weren’t able to seconds prior.
It’s not the almost-third person, complete the objective to collect the stars in each world adventure of the Galaxy series, and it’s not two-dimensional like a Mario Bros. title. Instead, the camera is often positioned much higher or isometrically, allowing enough screen room for up to four co-operative players, with the game featuring Luigi, Toad and Peach alongside Mario.
Peach being present rather than kidnapped means which the threat and plot structure is a bit different this time around, but there’s very little to go on here – you’ll still be fighting Bowser and his allies, and there isn’t much of a attention to an actual narrative. That’s fine though, if less engaging – the focus is purely on the gameplay, which is as top-notch and refined as Super Mario games always are.
It’s fun. That’s how you’d describe 3D World. Just pure fun, at its best, and still enjoyable at its – for lack of a better term – worst. As mentioned before, each level brings a lot of variety, and as well as different visual styles and platforms, this is achieved through the various power-ups which you can collect throughout the game. These are reminiscent of classic Mario, and along with the health-restoring Mushroom and projectile-expelling Fire Flowers, there are some brand new powers.
SUPER MARIO 64 and SUPER MARIO GALAXY offered players a hub world connected to many different thematic worlds that offered several challenges in exchange for stars, but 3D WORLD sticks to select levels, each with three hidden stars to collect. Mario and company are guests in the Sprixie Kingdom, but this new locale seems a lot like past Mushroom Kingdoms. There’s a desert world, an ice world, and a cloud world. Some levels are set on trains; others, on lakes of ice or of fire. Move around the world map and you’ll be able to check off every item on the list of places Mario likes to jump, almost to the title’s detriment.
If it weren’t for the inventive level design and power-ups, 3D WORLD would feel too similar to very recent Mario games, like the designers have run out of creative juice. Power-ups that clone Mario and company to double, triple, or quadruple stomping power, power-ups that give all four heroes a cat-suit and versatile attacks and climbing abilities, and even new classic power-ups like the Mega Mushroom or Boomerang Flower keep levels exhilarating and fresh. Notwithstanding retreading ground, this new Mario presents a wealth of fresh ideas, especially for Nintendo fans who don’t have a 3DS and haven't played 3D LAND.
3D World constantly ramps all of this up, and by the end some with this levels are fantastic with how they use the combination of ideas, and the past boss battle in particular is an absolutely incredible culmination of mechanics, put together perfectly to deliver one of this best end-game experiences of recent years.
And then you’re able to play all of this co-operatively, which works rather well, even when the camera can be a bit off at times. It borrows from New Super Mario Bros. with bubbling if you die, though it’s great to finally see a proper local multiplayer Super Mario game with 3D environments. It’s sure to be a blast for families, and having four players able to join in the action – and collect any of the power-ups – is obviously the focus. It are typically quite unforgiving should you choose to play alone, but the stress is alleviated by an extremely precise control scheme.
There’s plenty to do and collect across the world map, which you can now roam around freely, making for a lot of secrets and bonus levels in corners which you may have not been able to reach before. It’s smartly designed, though perhaps not fully realised and nothing as impressive as the open worlds of Super Mario 64 or Sunshine. Still, this opens the way for some mini-stages, the best of which involve guiding Treasure Hunting Toad around a puzzle level without the jump ability, or quick-fire ten second mini rooms where you have to collect increasingly difficult to reach green stars.
If you have played that 3DS Mario game, then multiplayer will provide the innovation you seek in graduating to Wii U. The shoeboxes Mario and company explore are wide enough to accommodate four players, but the same challenges you find in the NSMB series rear their head when turning friends into frenemies in 3D WORLD. Playing as Toad with two friends as Mario and Luigi, I wanted to shout at them to get out of this way before I died or got attacked by a large fish in a underwater level. I wanted to steal valuable stashes of coins before they could get to them.
Some levels seem more appropriate for single-player, like dinosaur-sliding levels, while others seemed tuned specifically to competing with others, like race levels that give you just 100 seconds on the clock compared to the 400 seconds levels typically start with. Thankfully even these co-petitive levels provide challenge to lonesome single players too as 3D WORLD adds ghost times from players around the world after you've beaten a level once. I also appreciated that even in single player you can choose the character that plays to your strengths.
At first, I figured classic Mario was the best way to play 3D WORLD, but after trying the others I settled on playing as Peach for the rest of this adventure. It sounds like a small thing, but I have to applaud Nintendo for allowing us to forgo Mario and rescue a foreign kingdom as the Princess. I haven’t mentioned the secret world, the hidden characters, the warp pipes, the hidden bonus levels, or Captain Toad whose levels play out in puzzling 3D fashion. I also haven't gushed about the incredible soundtrack.
While I’d still like to see a proper 3D Mario game on Wii U, 3D WORLD does so much right that it’s hard to bash the formula, especially when it veers off course so often. There’s a big, satisfying adventure for fans young and old in this package and multiplayer, replayability, and the possibilites for DLC down the line make it a worthy piece of software for prospective Wii U buyers. Sure, this Mario game has claws, but it’s plenty friendly so don’t worry about getting scratched.
