WIRED Frantic multiplayer, adorable character designs, lots of challenge.
But if you’re looking for a new Mario adventure that’s tailored to creating the maximum amount of fun for just one person, you’ll have to wait for next year’s Super Mario Galaxy 2. Wii is an excellent game with friends, and I had a great deal of challenging fun with the solo mode. I’d rather have seen a game design that didn’t use motion at all - except in very rare instances, it adds nothing to the gameplay.Īs a Mario fan from way back, I’m probably being a bit of a stickler here. Want to pick up an item? Shake.Īnd because Nintendo’s comfortable, retro-style Classic Controller doesn’t have a motion sensor, you’re stuck holding the standard Wiimote on its side, which is much less comfortable.
When a character gets a Propeller Suit power-up and wants to fly up into the air, you have to shake the Wiimote. The one thing I truly didn’t like is that the game forces you to use motion control in certain situations. It’s justifiable, though, since the multiplayer is so good (even if it’s only local, not online). I think that’s because those games’ level designs and mechanics didn’t need to take three other players into account. Judging this game purely on single-player, it doesn’t hold a candle to Super Mario World or Super Mario Bros. Makeshift Museum Shows Off Mario Oddities (I got my ass kicked a few times and had the block appear, but there was no way I was going to let the levels get the best of me.) Hit it, and the game will play the level for you, allowing you to go to the next one. If you fail a level enough times, a Super Guide block appears. Nintendo is walking a fine balance between giving hard-core players the difficulty they want and giving its new casual audience a break. Wii‘s are wide open and mostly linear - which you need if you’re going to give four players their own personal spaces.Īnd it can be brutally hard. Previous 2-D Mario games could have all kinds of different levels that were tailored specifically to a single player, but New Super Mario Bros. Wii entirely by yourself, it’s hard to shake the feeling that the other three players are missing. If everybody dies and there’s no one left to pop bubbles, you fail the level.Īlthough you can access any level you’ve discovered in the single-player game from the multiplayer menu, you can also go through the entire game’s main story mode with anywhere from one to four players, who can drop in and out between levels.īringing friends along for the ride seems like the optimal experience. If a player dies, he floats back a few seconds later in a bubble, which the other players must pop to release him. Everyone’s competing to collect as many coins as possible, and that means that you’ll be intentionally firing turtle shells at your pals.Īlthough I preferred Coin Battle, the cooperative gameplay also works well. In Coin Battle, all thoughts of working together to clear the game’s levels go out the window. This goes double when you’re playing the competitive mode. You might be playing with three Mario experts, but the fact that you’re all stuck in the level together means that everyone’s carefully laid plans can be quickly thrown awry when one of your friends does something you didn’t expect - jumps over you and knocks you into a bottomless pit, nudges you off a platform, accidentally kicks a turtle shell at you. Most of the time, that’s exactly what multiplayer New Super Mario Bros. Players can spread out quite far around the game’s levels and still be visible.īut this doesn’t mean it’s not utter chaos. Wii‘s main attraction, the four-player mode. The fact that the camera can zoom out so far allows for New Super Mario Bros. These games feature 3-D graphics and 2-D gameplay, creating a world that’s less visually interesting than the best hand-drawn games Nintendo produced, but also much more malleable: The camera can zoom in and out the level can transform dramatically as you play. Wii, released this week for Wii, is largely patterned after New Super Mario Bros., an excellent 2006 title for Nintendo DS that brought the videogame company’s longtime mascot back to his roots.