It strips the game of the little bit of tension that comes from sometimes losing your abilities, but makes up for it by mostly giving you the ability to run loose on stages unfettered. There are some changes, such as being able to carry a variety of power-ups you can cycle between at pretty much anytime. You go around and collect shines to power lighthouses and the whole game doesn’t veer too far from the established formula of Mario titles before it. What follows is an open world Mario game that doesn’t reinvent the wheel, and that’s pretty damn fine to me. It’s almost as mysterious, too, at the beginning of your time there, but eventually the game gives way and provides not only literal structure (islands emerge from out of the water upon completing goals) but direction too. This new setting isn’t one Mario’s ever been to before, and the whole place is so sparse it nearly feels like the End of the World from Kingdom Hearts, to be honest.
#Super mario 3d world switch series#
to stop the latter’s raging, kaiju-sized dad from destroying a series of islands. In Bowser’s Fury, Mario teams with Bowser Jr. Booting up Bowser’s Fury, I had the vaguest notion of what I”d be getting myself into, I just didn’t know how well it’d work. This is especially true of the latter half of the equation in the game’s title. While going through some of the more difficult levels with a friend was a blast, what wasn’t fun was losing control of our jumps due to lag, even if our internet connections were as sturdy as could be.ĭespite this minor setback, and because of quite literally everything else, Super Mario 3D World + Bowser’s Fury sunk its claws into me immediately and refused to let up.
And the game’s a joy whether you’re playing solo or not, though Nintendo’s comical online infrastructure does rear its ugly head in online play in sometimes detrimental ways. Its most devious tricks are reserved for the very end and by then you’ll be so well versed in the platforming language they should only be a slight bump on the road. Since the game is not nearly as excessive as the game after, nor as gimmicky as some of the titles preceding it, it has an unusually calming vibe for a Mario game. The levels are almost comparable in scale too, just reimagined to fill the new dimensions, and the ways in which the space feels like it can breathe in 3D feel miraculous.īecause of all this, Super Mario 3D World is just straight up a joy to play-and replay. I guess it is, since it’s essentially a 2D installment where the worlds are 3D instead. Instead of the excess that bogged down Odyssey in the long run, Super Mario 3D World feels like it has the restraint of a simpler game. The way it approaches world design immediately brought to mind Super Mario Odyssey, the last mainline Mario entry to release, and its immediate successor. What I’m ultimately most struck by are the ways in which this game feels so integral to the series progression.
I won’t spend much time on the finer details of Super Mario 3D World, because they’ve existed in some way shape or form for the better part of a decade. Before we look too far ahead, though, we should look back at the game that makes up the bulk of this package, and which introduced Cat Mario to the world. But this recent release of Super Mario 3D World isn’t just a reissue, featuring a brand new smaller Mario game called Bowser’s Fury that proves to be an exciting experiment and a look at what may be in store for the series. With the success of the Switch, though, Nintendo has seen fit to unearth many titles that may have otherwise been forgotten on the Wii U, giving them a much needed second lease on life.
Regrettably, the title was stranded for the longest time on an unsuccessful system I’ve come to understand was great but very obviously maligned. Having never played the initial release on the Wii U, I was struck by how much I’d obviously missed. Before I knew it, I loved Super Mario 3D World + Bowser’s Fury for a million different reasons.