Super Mario World is considered by a lot of older gamers to be one of the best games ever made with Nintendo’s excellent level design and gameplay seen at its highest. Since then, Mario’s gameplay has gone through numerous iterations with the move to 3D and Super Mario 3D World marks Nintendo’s return that that brand.
While things are quite different from the SNES days, this is an amazing Wii-U title that continues to show the expertise of Nintendo.
Co-op Platformer:
Super Mario 3D World’s first big change from traditional Nintendo platformers is the inclusion of multiplayer. For the first time in the 3D Mario titles, you can have four people playing at once with different characters. Similar to Super Mario 2, Mario, Luigi, Toad and Peach each have different running speeds and jump heights.
New items include the ability to wield boomerangs and use a cat suit with the cat suit being vital for finding hidden items. While running around with it, you can hit enemies, climb walls and do a pounce attack to cover large distances. The “world” in Super Mario 3D World also plays into the expanded world map where you can run around and explore in between each course.
In terms of level design, having four players possible has affected the levels and they were built wider to accommodate having everyone on. Also your available moves have been condensed — No spin jumps or triple jumps this time. Every level in the game has hidden items for you find in the form of three green stars and a stamp with their locations always in a harder area than the rest of the level.
The structure through 3D world is the same as in any Mario title — You have eight worlds of differing environment types each with a boss at the end with Bowser waiting for you at the final course. Starting out, Super Mario 3D World is simpler compared to titles like Sunshine and Galaxy and that’s because of the change in structure. Instead of having massive levels to explore, each course is about five minutes give or take to go through which creates some bite sized levels.
The world map offers some exploration, but is still pretty simple.
And truthfully despite the varying surroundings, 3D World never hits the same level of variety and unique situations that we saw in Mario Galaxy 1 and 2.
This is no doubt due to the limitation of having to design every level with having multiple players in it.
But as you get further into the game something weird happens — Nintendo begins to take the gloves off and we’re treated to one of the most challenging Mario titles around.
Platformer Trials:
For the main game, Super Mario 3D World stays relatively simple up until around world 8 with exception to finding the hidden stars. But then the levels become a lot more challenging, featuring more obstacles and tricky jumps. And for beating the game, you’ll be rewarded with one of the most expansive post games seen in a Mario game.
The special world features some of the most challenging sections seen from the series which is amazing considering the limited controls and moves you have access to. And this is where Nintendo’s level design is at its finest by taking a very basic move set and instead of expanding on it, expanding on the levels to create new challenges and tasks for you.
And trust me, anyone who says that the Mario games are just for kids will be proven wrong once you get to the special world. To make things even more challenging, the final challenges require you to hit 100% mastery of everything before to reach them. This means finding all the stars, stamps and hitting the top of the goal post on every level and trust me that last one is a lot harder than it sounds.
Super Mario 3D World continues Nintendo’s track record of great platformer game design and it leaves me with only a few issues to talk about.
Jumbled Jumping:
As I mentioned above, the game does take a long time to start ramping up in terms of challenge which can annoy higher skill level players. And while things do get interesting, the level design never reaches that same level of insane variety that we saw in Galaxy 1 and 2. The same goes for the boss fights as well who lack the spectacle and variety.
Surprisingly I do have to complain about the camera for a Mario game. The problem is that because the levels have been stretched horizontally to fit in four players, I had a harder time gauging depth due to the camera’s position which did cause several pit falls.
Four player co-op is an interesting take on the gameplay but is locked to local only.
I would have also liked more interaction on the world map, such as more things to interact with and elements changing based on the levels you played. While this is a minor issue, it was a fun part of the original Super Mario World experience.
But despite these minor problems, Super Mario 3D World is still a great game and one of the best on the Wii-U.
Group Fun:
Super Mario 3D World is proof positive of Nintendo’s great game design and manages to pack a lot of variety into the game while featuring some of the hardest course designs for expert players and still having plenty of accommodations for newer players. Great for solo or with a group, if you’re a fan of Nintendo, this is easily a must play.
