Tag: mario

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Game Ramblings #57 – Super Mario Odyssey

More Info from Nintendo

  • Genre: 3D Platformer
  • Platform: Switch

TL;DR

  • Another great entry in the Super Mario series, with great platforming mechanics, a predictable but fun story, and great world locations to explore
  • Collectathon-style worlds didn’t work as well for me as the more focused Mario 64/Sunshine style individual stars, but the story moons in particular were great
  • New core mechanic of taking over enemies and using their abilities was a great focus for the design, and works fantastically
  • Theme song of the year – go buy it on iTunes or Google Play Music

I’ll be perfectly honest from the start here; I still think Super Mario 64 and Super Mario Sunshine are better games.  While Super Mario Odyssey is definitely a fantastic game on its own, the change to the star collecting mechanic into something more akin to Banjo-Kazooie often felt weird to me with a strange mix of really good focused moons alongside completely incidental ones that you can find in things like piles of leaves.  That said, once I get beyond that change the rest of the game was fantastic and is as good as any Mario game we’ve seen before.

Flick a hat at an enemy and more often than not you take them over, gaining their abilities and strengths.

Since it is the core difference in the game, let’s start with the takeover.  For various story reasons, your hat is now alive and can bind Mario to the soul of his enemies, or something to that effect.  The end result is that you can now become your enemy.  Take over a Goomba, and you can now build stacks of goombas and stop sliding around on ice.  Take over a Cheep Cheep and you can now swim under water without needing to breathe.  Hell, take over a T-Rex and stomp the shit out of everything around you just for laughs.  This even extends to seemingly mundane things like the little traffic cones in the city that you can use to catapult Mario around.

This new core ability and the set of enemy mechanics that come out of it are used to great effect.  A large portion of the boss fights use specific environment and enemy combos to change things from just being your standard 3 butt stomp affairs.  Almost any puzzle solving segment will involve finding the nearby enemy type to use their skill set.  Even just for changing up gameplay a bit, it’s nice to be able to warp into an enemy and use a completely different set of skills than Mario on his own can do.  There’s even a surprise at the end that leads to one of the most bombastic finishes to a Mario game that I can remember.

While most bosses are typical scale for a Mario experience, that wasn’t always the case.

On the boss front, there really was a much wider variety than normal.  There’s a recurring set of bosses that act as this game’s substitute for the Koopa kids, and they’re the normal 3 hit to kill with minor mechanical changes.  However, there’s definitely a few much larger bosses in place.  For example, the New Donk City segment has a large centipede boss that can warp in and out of buildings, and the only way to defeat it is to hat-possess a tank and shoot its weak points.  A later fight pictured above has a very non-Mario dragon boss that ends up being more about attack avoidance than offense, with distinct cooldown segments where Mario can land his damage.

The end result of all this is that both by sheer quantity, as well as mechanic variety, this is the widest set of boss fights that Mario has ever seen, and the game’s pacing greatly benefited from it.  At a typical rate, I was seeing a boss every 30-45 minutes, giving me a nice set of pseudo-open world collecting, followed by a high intensity battle.  The consistency of this pace and the mechanical variety allowed for the game to pump up the action when needed to avoid the slow pace trap that other heavy collection platformers have fallen to.

Little touches like the 2D segments gave a lot of life to the world, and some fun hints at the past.

However, it was that collection aspect that ended up being the strong low point for me in an otherwise fantastic game.  The amount of collection just didn’t make sense, and often times felt like fluff to me.  In a typical world, you’d have 3-5 moons that were mandatory per-story, then the need to collect an additional 15-20 just to power up the ship and leave for the next kingdom.  Out of those, I’d estimate about half were purely incidental; a glowing stump may be a hint at a hidden moon, a music note starts a 10 second run to collect all notes, or hell, just a moon floating out in the open that you have to climb a tree to collect.  Among the ones that required a bit more effort, you’d typically see a segment similar to a simplified hidden shines in Super Mario Sunshine, where some quick platforming or single-mechanic enemy would grab you a guaranteed obvious shine and loosely hidden shine.  While there were certainly a lot of shines to get, it often didn’t really feel like there was much point to a lot of them, and I’d have rather seen a larger focus on expanding the story or hidden-area shines into something more meaningful.

There’s definitely a few other minor things there that didn’t really hit.  The motion controls in particular are pretty terrible, but purely optional.  On the hardware front, I’d recommend playing with a Pro Controller over the Joycons, as I had far too many deaths caused by the signal loss that is effecting them.  Some weird mechanical bugs, such as an unintended quick pivot when using fire flower boosts also killed me too many times in some tight movement areas.  However, they’re not really the types of things that kill enjoyment of the game, at least beyond some grumbling at the time problems came up.

What kind of Mario game would it be without Bowser’s Castle? It’s seen some upgrades this go around.

That said, while the collectathon may prevent me from ever doing a 100% run, it certainly didn’t stop me from really enjoying the hell out of what I did play.  End of the day, the core mechanics of the game are just too good to miss out on.  The platforming is as fun as it’s ever been and for the moons that push for depth, it’s more important than ever to be on top of my game.  Even just the act of running around the worlds to get to the next objective is fun to do due to the much larger inclusion of vertical elements and enemies to takeover to traverse them.  While it may not hold up to me like 64 or Sunshine, this is still a game worth getting a console for, and that right there says a lot about the quality that’s in place.

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Game Ramblings #55 – Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga + Bowser’s Minions

More Info from Nintendo

  • Genre: JRPG
  • Platform: 3DS
  • Originally Released on: GBA

TL;DR

  • Faithful remake with the right mix of visual polish without losing the soul of the original
  • Battle system still holds up, particularly against the newer entries that went more experimental
  • Bowser’s Minions portion of the game well made, but feels more suited towards mobile

I suppose the TL;DR really should have read – If you enjoyed the original, you’ll enjoy the remake – because that’s really all there is to it.  The fact that this game is enjoyable is not a mystery.  In its GBA form it was well received for funny dialogue, a great battle system, and a visual style that brought the world to life.  All of that moves itself to the 3DS perfectly well, with some enhancements to the visuals and audio that make this feel a lot more modern.  In addition, the new Minions mode does add a particularly nice tie in to what happened to the typical enemy cast of the game while the Mario Bros were out adventuring, even if the mode feels more suited to a mobile device.  All in all, this is a solid remake that folks holding onto their 3DS will find worth playing.

For anyone that hasn’t played these games before, like any JRPG the battle system is really the core of what made the gameplay so special, and it’s standard turn based with a twist.  Like Super Mario RPG on the SNES, button inputs at the right time can provide both offensive and defensive capabilties, in this case tied to A and B for Mario and Luigi respectively.  The combat in place here was probably as simple as the series had, but the simplicity was also its strength.  The core moves were easy to pull off and strong (jumps, hammer attacks, and fire/ice ball attacks).  Moving up in complexity and strength, the brothers can combine to do Bros Attacks, involving more intricate combo and timing segments to pull off large damage.  This pattern of A and B for each brother then goes into the entire game, whether it’s character-specific actions during combo attacks or actions taken in the overworld for traversal purposes.

Speaking of which, the overworld actions are still a lot of fun to use, and end up being the big puzzle push for the game.  Most puzzles tend to be fairly basic, and generally involve whatever the latest power the bros gained, but they provided a nice break in the action that wasn’t just straight battle grinding.  By the end of the game the brothers had a set of 10 traversal abilities, giving the inevitable Bowser’s Castle run a huge amount of flexibility in the use of different powers.

As far as changes go, there were some dialog changes, a few additional side quests, and the more obvious sound and visual upgrades.  However, the big addition was the Bowser’s Minions portion of the game.  Within the first couple hours, this mode is unlocked, and then runs as a separate independent mode with its own new (and entertaining story).  From a gameplay perspective, it’s a simple mode of assembling a squad of minions and having them faceoff against an enemy squad.  They can be one of three types, giving us an advantage triangle not too dissimilar to Fire Emblem.  The fight then automatically goes, with the player really only occasionally interfering, whether to block special attacks or do a timed input for a damage bonus.

In general, the mode is mechanically solid, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that it would have worked out a lot better as a phone game, and that’s the biggest problem I had with it.  Each battle is a generally quick hitting segment, with maybe a few minutes of story the first time you play, then combat lasting maybe a minute or two per battle.  Given the size and number of units you can get, it then encourages you to keep replaying the battles to level up units.  Victory grants more units, as well as beans used as a type-specific XP boost, allowing for even more growth of the party.  In general, this feels perfect for a phone where you’d fire it up to play a couple levels then be done, and less perfect for the 3DS where it’s still just a sub mode to the much deeper main game.  And I’m being serious when I say I’d absolutely play this on my phone because it is a lot of fun.

There’s really not much to say here.  If you liked a previous Mario & Luigi or enjoyed the original release at all, this is still a great game.  The battle system is really solid, the writing is often times hilarious, and there’s a ton of content to be had here.  It also shows that the gameplay of the first couple games in the series is likely what I consider the pinnacle of the series, with a couple of the more experimental entries on the 3DS perhaps going a bit too far away from the core.  Hopefully this means Nintendo is considering a more traditional entry looking forward to the Switch, but if the worst we get is another remake then I suppose we’re still doing pretty good.

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Game Ramblings #49 – Mario + Rabbids: Kingdom Battle

More Info from Ubisoft

  • Genre: Turn-based Tactics
  • Platform: Switch

I hope you’ll pardon my pun here, but Ubisoft has managed to pull a Rabbid out of a hat.  This game seamlessly blends the Mario and Rabbid IPs into a single game, throws it into a turn-based game with some fantastic use of the Mario universe for its move set, and popped out a game that is one of the best I’ve played this year.  While there’s a few things that I’d have liked to see improved in the overall mission structure, the end result is still a fine example of what developers can do with the Switch, and an interesting example of a team making a Nintendo quality experience, without being Nintendo themselves.

The visuals would be at home in any of the recent 3D Mario series titles.

The biggest surprise to me is that this feels like a Mario title through and through.  While the gameplay is obviously different, the little details are all there.  It’s the sound of a coin when you pick it up.  It’s the vibrant and varied environments across four main worlds (and the Peach’s castle hub).  It’s the inclusion of red and blue coin challenges scattered throughout hidden areas.  It’s Mario’s jump attack straight out of the Mario series RPG titles.  Everywhere you look, there’s little details that make this feel extremely familiar, despite the huge differences in gameplay.

The nice thing about all of that is that it’s worth exploring every corner.  Scattered throughout the environment are series of small challenges, puzzles, and hidden crates.  While most of them contain little bonus art or music pieces, a number of the crates also contain weapons or power orbs.  Make no mistake, the underlying systems of this game are very traditional to the tactics genre.  Weapon upgrades for primary and secondary weapons are here, giving you obvious damage upgrades, but also adding secondary hit effects, bonus damage to specific enemies, and more.  While there’s no direct XP for killing enemies, the power orbs you earn in battle or find throughout the environment act as a functional replacement, being used to purchase upgrades in character-specific skill trees.  These skill trees act as a way to build out each character’s skill set, as well as provide more obvious passive bonuses like increased health and damage.

The facial animations in cutscenes are universally good, and usually play up the more slapstick comedy aspect of both series.

All of the skill upgrades compound into what ends up being a fantastic battle system.  The basics that are there are all solid, and work in a very XCOM-like fashion.  During your turn, you can run around and hide behind various pieces of the environment.  In a very Mario way, you can warp to different platforms via pipes, or hide behind blocks.  Also of note, brick-based blocks can be destroyed via friendly or enemy fire, and fans of the Mario series will know where not to hide if this is a concern.  However, where the battle system really shows its greatest potential is in its exploitation of movement mechanics, both as an offensive helper, and a defensive measure to keep enemies away.

On the weapon side, the two main mechanics I ended up leaning heavily on were bounce and push.  Bounce does just that; when you hit an enemy, it causes them to bounce in the air, taking additional damage, and also giving them the potential to get thrown off the level for further damage.  Push on the other hand causes the enemy hit to ball up and start rolling around the level.  They can then rebound off walls, blocks, and other enemies to cause a chain reaction of bouncing chaos.  In both of these cases, I could take advantage of the damage increase, but more often than not I was using these mechanics to push the enemies backwards, and control the flow of their movement beyond them just moving towards me.  I could also use things like the rebound on push to cause enemies to be knocked out of cover, offering more opportunities for large damage.

There were also some other traversal-based mechanics that were handy to use.  Each character could dash through enemies, causing damage.  However, each ally also had a special move for traversal.  Mario could also jump off an ally, and jump stomp enemies, giving both additional damage and travel distance on the hop.  Rabbid Luigi could dash and drop Vampire on an enemy, causing an HP siphon to be applied.  Peach could jump off an ally, and heal anyone within range of her landing location.  This all added up to each turn not just being about weapon damage, but in seeing how many things you could chain in one turn for maximum potential.

Even the ghost town still feels very Mario, with Boos replacing the normal lamps above houses.

Given all that, the only real criticisms I had were involved in the occasional parts of the mission structure.  There were a handful of escort missions that work about as poorly here as in every other game that uses them.  The escorted units had no attack, and typically moved slower than the rest of the party, as well as spawned enemies.  These missions usually just devolved into running forward to wipe enemies, then running everyone back to act as a damage sponge for reinforcements flanking from behind.  The other main problem was in the mission chaining within each chapter.  Rather than allowing healing between missions, you could only heal at the end of each chapter, and had to fight with the HP pool you had through multiple battles.  There was healing to alleviate the problem, but I felt like they could have played up to higher difficulty within a single mission if they’d gone with a more typical heal in between battle setup.  As it is, quite a few of the missions in place were simply too easy due to the chaining being in place.

You can never go wrong with an opera boss.

It speaks volumes to the skill of Ubisoft’s developers that they pulled this off.  They managed to seamlessly blend two franchises that have next to nothing in common, beyond a love of occasional slapstick comedy.  They put them into a genre that hadn’t been done for the two series, and yet made it feel like it belonged.  They turned what many gamers assumed was a joke, and made it one of the best games that has come out this year.  It also speaks volumes to Nintendo’s ongoing willingness to let external development teams have the keys to the kingdom, in a manner of speaking.  We’ve seen this with Metroid for years, Zelda with Hyrule Warriors, and a ton of great platformers out of the team at Good-Feel.  Is this worth buying a Switch for? I dunno, I’d save that for Breath of the Wild, but it certainly makes a good case for the console.