New Super Mario Bros.

New Super Mario Bros

1 comment

Okay, I've had it for a couple days, now it's time for the review.

Good. Very good, in fact. It's been years since we had a really fine mario platformer and this is what we've been waiting for. That said, it could be better and more importantly, I think, it could be less forgiving.

The very first thing that struck me about NSMB was the nostalgia trip that seemed to draw from every other major mario title produced. World-themes were stolen from SMB, Mario's 'character' (the way he moves and acts) is very Mario64-esque, a number of characters picked from SMW, even the shifting sands from SMB2! Like other more recent mario titles, character control has a lot more momentum attached to it which is jarring at first (especially so since Super Mario World has taken up residence in the GBA slot for my DS) but makes some of the flat, open levels much more fun to run and jump through at high speed. When it all boils down though, this is a sequel to the original SMB (NES, 1985) and it has some great improvements in game dynamics and graphics while still maintaining the same classic platformer feel. The game is very forgiving. That's not to say it's not difficult at times - I had to set it down a number of times trying to get through the last couple levels - but we all remember those moments in SMB when we were so sure we made that jump but fell in to the abyss anyway and that rarely happens in NSMB, in fact, I've found myself giving up on a number of occasions when I thought I'd surely misjumped right into a pit or in front of an enemy only to realize a moment later that I'd actually survived.

The game has enough extra items to complete to keep a hardcore mario platformer fan interested (that would be... me) and enough simplicity to draw a couple new fans that had only played the original SMB. It's a very solid release and I recommend it highly for anyone with access to a DS and a love for italian plumbers-turned-princess savers.