Topic: User Impressions/Reviews Thread

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Star Wars: Republic Commando (Switch)

Tactical FPS set in a galaxy far, far away heads out on a Nintendo platform for the first time ever (originally an OG Xbox console exclusive).

Gameplay:

• A Tactical FPS, it sees you and 3 AI teammates working your way through three different campaigns (each split up into multiple missions) in largely linear fashion. Each campaign should take you only a few hours each, for a total playtime of 9-10 hours (maybe less, depending on how adept you are at it).
• While there were small instances of stuff like a teammate getting in my line of fire (and friendly fire IS a thing, so you can hurt each other & yourself with your own grenades & the like) your ally AI is surprisingly good and they're generally pretty good at taking care of themselves. However taking command is a requirement for success, and there are two types of commands you can give out to them.
• The first of which are more general all encompassing orders triggered by a combination of the "A" button & a D-Pad input. You have "Search & Destroy" (the default command, this leaves your squad to their own devices, for better or worse), "Form Up" (they'll stay close to you), "Secure Position" (they'll defend the spot you're currently aiming at), & "Cancel Manoeuver" (this cancels all commands currently engaged). Also, pressing "A" while aiming at an enemy will cause your squad to focus on it exclusively. I personally like to have everyone "Form Up" after clearing a room, as once too often I'll be rooting around for any dropped ammo only to learn that my squad took it upon themselves to advance to the next room engaging the enemy before I was ready.
• The other type are more specific orders given to a single member. You'll see symbols littered throughout the environment that denote things such as sniping & grenade positions, mountable turrets, hackable computer terminals, surfaces to place an explosive charge, & more. Simply aim at one of these symbols & press "A" for the nearest squadmate to take up position. Many of these things you can also do yourself (as seen below), & you'll have to decide whether it's better for you to place a charge or hack a terminal yourself, or to help provide cover for an AI ally to do so instead (most charges & terminals can be activated in 10 seconds, but some take into the minutes to activate). To cancel these more specific positions, aim at the location & press "A" again, or use the "Cancel Manoeuver" command (this affects everyone though). If everyone is already locked into a position when you pick a new one, the furthest back squad mate will drop his current position for the new one. If you don't call off a squadmate's command they will stay there even after you've moved on, so make sure you keep tabs on them.
  
• You'll need to make use of these commands too, else you'll run into situations where you'll be routinely slaughtered until you think of the right strategy. It isn't an easy game (I played on Normal) & there are some sudden difficulty spikes in spots, but it does a lot to ease the frustration. Firstly, it isn't a game over until everyone is dead as you can indefinitely revive your allies (to half health) & they can revive you as well. Secondly there are healing stations (called Bacta Tanks) installed liberally through the levels that have unlimited uses (usually every couple rooms, or even stationed around an area you're expected to hold for several minutes). Allies will heal up automatically if they're gravely injured, but you can also command them manually to top off too. Finally, auto saves come pretty quickly & you can make manual saves at any time as well, which particularly comes in handy as this is an older game & the auto save system will put you into some unfavorable positions at times.
• I also want to point out that in terms of structure I think it fits the Switch surprisingly well. Each of the three campaigns has 4-6 missions, and each of those is usually broken down into several smaller segments (probably for loading purposes). Each segment is usually just a few rooms big, which (alongside the frequent saving ability) makes the whole thing pretty digestible in more bite size sessions.
• The UI is organically built into the presentation as well. You view the world through the helmet of your Clone Trooper, and UI elements such as your (easily depleted) sheild power, health (as well as that of your squad), & equipped grenade type appear to be part of your helmet's display. Also, a wrapon's total ammo (as well as what's left in it's current clip) is built directly into it's design, all of which you can see in the screenshot below. While this is mostly cook, one small problem with this approach is the one timed objective in the game. The first campaign is capped off with a task that must be completed in 5 minutes (IMO, the hardest part of the game, since it requires a more gung ho approach that kind of runs counter to the tactical nature of the rest of the game), but it isn't made immediately apparent as the countdown is presented sort of in the background by the computerized voice of the facility you're in (there's no on screen representation of it), and you don't really realize the countdown isn't just for effect (as there'll be ominous warnings elsewhere presented similarly which are just that) until it's too late.
  
• Let's talk ordinance, shall we? There are three weapons you'll have on you at all times (technically, 3 configurations of the same weapon), the first of which is an Assault Rifle (the default configuration, you access it by pressing up on the D-Pad), a Sniping configuration (press right on the D-Pad), & an Anti-Armor configuration (launches charges that really obliterate enemies but only holds 4 shots at a time, press left on the D-Pad to access it). Ammo for these weapons tend to be lying around after every other skirmish, usually near Bacta Tanks or in the corners/slightly hidden nooks of larger rooms you may be fighting in for awhile.
• Other than those you can also pick up enemy weapons (of which you can hold one at a time), which are accessed by pressing down on the D-Pad. These range from Assault Rifles, Shotguns, Bowguns, Laser Cannons, Concussion Rifles, to Rocket Launchers. My favorite was a heavy duty Chain Gun which could really mow down foes. To replenish ammo simply walk over a dropped weapon of the same type you're currently in possession of.
• If you run completely out of ammo you'll revert to a basic laser blaster that has unlimited ammo, but an overheating feature so you can't just spam it. You can also access it at any time by double tapping down on the D-Pad if you want to conserve ammo elsewhere or for whatever other reason.
• You also have 4 grenade types at your disposal (of which you can hold up to 5 of each), and you cycle through them with "L" (the game never tells you this though, and you don't automatically switch over to the next type when you run out of another, so it took awhile to figure out). Thermal Detonators are your basic grenades & EMP Grenades are extra effective against Droid based foes, but you also have Sonic Detonators (I'm not sure what specific effect these have, but I'm guessing they may be extra effective against organic enemies?), as well as Flash Grenades that temporarily blind enemies. Extras are often found alongside the ammo for your main 3 weapon types.
• You'll need to know when and where to use what weapon, as some enemies (particularly the tougher Droid types) are absolute bullet sponges unless under the effect of an EMP Grenade or picked off by a couple of well aimed shot of the Sniping configuration. The game likes throwing new enemies (or altered versions of current ones) at you at a pretty regular pace throughout the first 2 campaigns, and while the final campaign only introduces one new enemy type, it's an absolute doozy that'll ask the most of you whenever it shows up (plus, enemy types introduced in the first campaign that skipped the second return here, so it throws everything you've been introduced to at you).
• Other things to note are that "L2" & "R2" are used to lob grenades & fire your weapon respectively (pressing the right stick as a button lets you aim down your sight), "R" cycles visor modes (in addition to your standard view you have a "Low Light Mode" that gives everything a lo-fi black & white look that lets you see in dark places, and a "Tactical Mode" that adds some extra noise to your view, though I'm not sure it's exact purpose), "B" performs a melee attack, "Y" is jump (I literally got stuck at a downed pipe for 10 minutes as I didn't know you could do this, lol), & "X" reloads. Oh, and you have to press the left stick as a button to crouch (and hold it down to keep doing so), which is a bit of a pain.
• You unlock development extras such as videos of concept art or developer interviews after clearing each campaign, but much like the pre rendered cutscenes in titles such as Onimusha & the Devil May Cry games, no attempt has been made to remaster these videos into HD. Also, I think there might be a glitch as the last one didn't unlock after I finished the last campaign which the game stipulates as it's unlock condition (not a huge deal though).

Story:

• Set during the events of the "Clone Wars" in Star Wars canon (though I'm not sure if the events are still considered as such after the big Disney retcon), the game does away with lightsabers & Jedi & instead follows "Delta Squad" (of which you're the commander), a specially trained strikeforce of Clone Troopers who take on missions of insurmountable odds in support of the Republic's war efforts. You exist on the periphery of the overall Star Wars narrative and as such there's no game long story arc (each campaign, though played through in a set order, is largely stand alone), and what few famous figures do appear (such as the shot of the villainous General Grievous below) do so in fleeting cameos. What the game lacks in overall narrative & recognizable faces it makes up for with a strong brotherhood between your squad (who'll begin to rib each other with playful "Bro" talk as you get further in) & a surprisingly gritty war torn atmosphere for the Star Wars universe.
  
• The first campaign takes place during a major battle on the rocky desert world of Geonosis (I believe it's supposed to be the same battle featured during the climax of the Star Wars: Attack of the Clones! film), and while your team is first sent in for an assassination mission, the powers that be decide you may as well destroy the enemy HQ while you're there. Despite the generally limited scope of being a linear shooter it does a great job of making you feel like you're in the middle of a massive battle, and it's all that action on the periphery that I believe helps contribute to Switch's frame rate woes (while frame rate hiccups do appear elsewhere, they feel most prominent during the opening campaign).
  
• The second campaign takes place on a Republic Assault Ship which has sent out a distress signal, and it's my absolute favorite of the bunch. Your team is split up at the onset of the mission, and due to the isolation & the foreboding atmosphere of "something" gone wrong (such as dead Clone Troopers), which builds up to seeing other Clone Troopers assailed by myserious assailants just out of your reach, and ultimately a tense solo trek which sees enemies surprising you by jumping out of grates & other sudden encounters, it gives off an almost Metroid vibe that's unlike anything else in the game, and it feels good to finally meet back up with your squad to kick some butt and take the ship back.
• The final campaign sees you off to Kashyyyk, the forested homeworld of the Wookies, where you must free the imprisoned resistance & help them retake their occupied home. I'm sure it'll put a huge smile on any Star Wars fan's face to team up with the famous creatures, and it is neat to see them toss around foes like ragdolls (and similarly sad to see them die due to their tendency to rush headfirst into danger).
• The narrative unfolds organically as you play, and as such there's a minimum of cutscenes (and nothing pre-rendered). The game does have brief prologue & epilogue scenes that bookend the adventure, but even in those you can move the camera around to some degree. Each campaign will also start you off rooted in place as your squad huddles around a hologram of your commanding officer (usually riding in a transport vessel where you can look out the door to the action outside), but once it puts things in your control it never wrestles the controls from you to focus the scene, as more modern adventure games tend to do.

Visual Audio:

• It has a grittier take on the franchise to really focus on the wartorn aspect of it all, and while there can be a bit of hallway deja vu in the design every now and then, I generally feel it changes things up just often enough where it never feels too repetitive. There's at least one screenshot from each of the three campaigns below, but picking them out I had to keep myself from making it all Assault Ship shots. While it is the most "hallway-ized" campaign in the game, due to the simpler geometric shapes that make up it's environments I felt like it held up the best graphically (I didn't post a screenshot of one, but there are these vents you occasionally crawl through in the early portion that have a heat effect, and I thought these looked really good).
  
  
  
• There's a great attention to detail in the action as well, as your visor will be smeared by raindrops in rainy areas & enemy "blood" (black from Droids, orange from the insect like Geonosians, & green from the lizard like Trandosians) whenever you get a kill up close, which is quickly wiped away by a an electric "wiper" (this you can see back in my UI screenshot).
• There's a lot of recognizable elements from the wider franchise present, whether it be the unmistakable blaster sounds & musical cues, to common enemies such as the Battle Droids, Super Battle Droids, & Droidekas (which I've always called "rolly poly robots" until now, lol) which appear prominently in the prequel films, as well as the aforementioned Wookies & the unmentioned R2 units that roam the halls of the Assault Ship.
• The big convo regarding the Switch version is in relashion to the aforementioned frame drops, and while a patch is promised for early May to fix the issue, as I write this I can say that the issue is currently pretty prominent. It wasn't enough to keep me from enjoying the game & I felt like they became less frequent the further I got, but if you have any issue with this at all it may be better to wait for the patch (and as an OG Xbox game the problem shouldn't have been there to begin with in all honesty).

Conclusion:

• It may have it's share of technical hiccups and general dated elements, but this is still a really strong example of the genre. I may not rate it quite as highly as other gen 6 HD conversions like FFX & Okami (though genre bias will play a part in your own ranking), but I'm more than glad to have been able to play it on Switch and as always hope to see more games from the era cleaned up and given a new lease on life.
  
  Accomplished, your mission is.

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New Super Lucky's Tale
Platform: Nintendo Switch

For a while it seemed like the 3D Platformer genre was dead - but from Nintendo's big splashes with Super Mario Odyssey, Super Mario 3D All-Stars and Super Mario 3D World (+ Bowser's Fury), to Activision-Blizzard's revival of the Crash and Spyro franchises, to the upcoming release of Ratchet and Clank Rift Apart, it seems this genre is getting the most love its seen since the early 2000s. The original Super Lucky's Tale - an Xbox One and PC exclusive - seemed a timely release in 2017, not only capitalising on the emergence of this trend, but providing a charming homage to classic 3D platformers on a platform that was in desperate need of compelling exclusives. Despite this, the game sorta just came...and went. I played an hour or so of Super Lucky's Tale at the time and, while it seemed interesting enough, I never took it past the first few levels or so - it was, after all, competing with Super Mario Odyssey for my interest.

Come 2019 and Super Lucky's Tale was to reborn as New Super Lucky's Tale on the Nintendo Switch - not only would the game make it to a non-Microsoft platform, but it would be portable, and include a fully controllable camera. These features made the game all-the-more compelling so I took a dive and picked it up for Nintendo Switch. The Switch port is serviceable enough, with the art style scaling well in both handheld and docked mode (the latter of which, I believe runs in 1080p), and the game generally running at a steady 30fps. The added camera control adds a whole new layer of depth and immersion to the game, which is certainly welcome.

New Super Lucky's Tale is a modern 3D platformer with collectathon elements. In typical platformer fashion, the player controls the titular fox character, Lucky, progressing through numerous worlds, stages, and bosses to complete the game's main objective, while collecting magical "Pages" along the way. The game is divided into 5 worlds, each of which contains numerous levels, puzzle challenges, and a boss fight.

At their most basic, levels require that Lucky complete an objective (usually reaching the end of the level), to collect the level's completion Page. However, each level will also contain three other pages: a Letter Page (for collecting 5 letters, each spelling out Lucky's name, akin to the KONG tokens in Donkey Kong Country), a Coin Page (for collecting at least 300 coins), and a Hidden Page (for completing some sort of hidden task, often a platforming challenge requiring the collection of coloured coins under a time limit). Although these are optional, a number of Pages are need to complete the game, and, as standard in the collectathon genre, you will probably find yourself motivated to collect everything anyway (especially as none of these tend to be too far out of your way).

The levels themselves come in various different flavours, from more open designs to more streamlined, 2D design. On the one extreme, you have more open, objective-based levels akin to those in Spyro 2/3, Banjo Kazooie and Super Mario Sunshine, where many collectables are obtained by performing certain tasks such as finding an NPC's chickens. Other 3D levels are more akin to Super Mario 3D World's focus on purer platforming challenges. Some stages are in 2D, granting a feel similar to the side-scrolling levels of Crash Bandicoot games, or the Donkey Kong Country series; and many of these levels are auto-scrolling. This juxtaposition of predictable objective structure and varied level designs is welcome - while the varied levels keep things fresh, the familiar objectives add a level of comfort to the game's progression, ensuring that no part of the game is too strenuous or frustrating. Unfortunately, however, I will say that the 2D sections tend to be weaker, as Lucky's platforming isn't quite tight enough for the challenges in these levels to be as satisfying as other games in the genre. Moreover, the 2D level design doesn't seem to blend quite as well with the collectathon nature of the game - in the autorun stages especially, these will be over within a couple of minutes, and rather than testing your platforming skills by having you get a perfect or near-perfect run, I always found that playing 2 or 3 times through was enough to get all of the Pages anyway.

Outside of levels you have puzzle stages and boss fights. Personally, I found puzzle stages to be a welcome break from the platforming, although I can see a lot of people not wanting to do these. One puzzle type - involving moving statues across paths to reach a certain point - requires more thinking than platforming skill, and I really enjoyed this - in fact, I found this to be the most challenging part of the game before the final boss. Other puzzle levels replicate your typical ball rotation maze / collectathon (think Monkey Ball physics). Personally these aren't my thing, but they weren't overly abundant in the main game (although did overstay their welcome in the post-game, in my opinion). Boss fights are generally solid - being mostly based around platforming and maintaining your footing as the boss attacks you, before finding an opportunity to hit them. The final boss unfortunately was an exercise in frustration, being the most difficult part of the game only because of the need to attack numerous floating enemies, viewing from a fixed camera angle in which the player has very little perception of depth.

One great thing about this game is how Lucky controls. Lucky has a fairly standard repertoire of 3D platformer moves - a double jump, and a tail whip attack, for example. But his notable technique is his ability to dig underground by pressing the ZL or ZR buttons. This allows him to pick up items underground, to attack enemies from below, and to get underneath certain barriers. In practice this feels very much like swimming through ink in Splatoon. What's also great about this move is that, when on hardened surfaces that Lucky can't dig through, he instead skids, adding a bit of acceleration to his movement. This adds a great sense of flow and momentum to his movement, and generally Lucky is great to control. As alluded to earlier, however, while his moveset is greatly fine-tuned for 3D platforming, I find that his jump arc and double-jump are less suited to precise 2D platforming - not terrible, but his strength is definitely in a 3D space.

Overall you've probably got the impression that this is quite an easy game, and...that's because, for the most part, it is. In fact I'd say it's perfect for someone's first platformer, or for someone (like me) looking for a comforting game after a difficult day, or something that won't have you exert too much mental energy. The post-game adds a few extra challenges which do dial up the difficulty a little - however this part of the game also lacks Page collection so, personally, I didn't find it as compelling as the main game, despite the welcome addition of some extra challenge. Regardless, this game is pure 3D platforming comfort food and I'd recommend it to anyone who's not too bothered by a game being easy for that reason.

Finally, you'll note that I've mentioned a lot of other games in this review. This is partly because I'm a big fan of the genre, but also partly because the game borrows so much from other games in the genre, but not in a bad way. I don't think this game does anything particularly original, but what is original about this game is how it weaves everything together - definitely a case of the sum being more than its parts. You may feel like you've seen everything this game has to offer before, but IMO it didn't detract too much from my enjoyment.

Verdict: New Super Lucky's Tale is pure 3D platforming comfort food. While not particularly original, nor are its 2D sections particularly strong compared to some other games, it is a charming game that brings together some of the best aspects of the genre into a compact, charming, and easy-going experience. B+

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Super Mario 3D World
Platform: Nintendo Switch
Completion Status: 100% complete across all characters; all stars and stamps collected; all golden flagpoles achieved; 40+ hours in 5+ playthroughs

I actually played this on Wii U a decent length of time ago. It was around half a year after it initially launched, so I want to say... mid-2014. The public response to this game was kind of up-and-down at the time. First, it was: "Nintendo's wasting the 3D Mario slot on Wii U by making an HD 3DS game." Then, it released, and the narrative became: "Oh... this is quite fun! Not a proper 3D Mario game, but it's a lot better than 3D Land was." So, having picked up a refurbished Wii U for the amazing price of $200 online, I decided it was worth buying at the premium price all Nintendo games tend to sit at.

And it was... fun. But it was difficult to become fully invested. Aside from the controller gimmicks that required Nintendo's bulky, Fisher Price tablet-like Wii U GamePad, it always struck me as a game that would benefit from smaller play sessions, and, when I go through the ritual of clearing out time to sit down in front of a TV, I want to be good and immersed for hours. The game's levels are frequently super short, and the endgame grind is structured around replaying the same levels as every character, and, for me, that just wasn't conducive to staring at a TV screen for hours.

I guess some people might have opted for the Wii U's Off-TV functionality in that case (where the console would stream the game image to the screen on the tablet), but considering you could never take the controller very far away from the TV, it always struck me as a fairly pointless gimmick. The one use case it seemed to address was if you were sitting in a room playing a game, and someone else came in and wanted to interrupt your session, and then you'd pick up the game on the tablet screen, but honestly, that just seems like it's enabling unhealthy relationship dynamics, doesn't it? If someone sees you having fun and decides: "Oh, hey, your enjoyment actually isn't as important as mine, so I'm going to co-opt the screen now," then that's a relationship worth re-evaluating in some respects, in my opinion, because there's clearly a crucial imbalance in the power dynamic there. So, anyway, I played through the game, and basically enjoyed it for the five to ten hours it lasted, and then went on to something else. But I always knew I was missing out on the experience of completing the game's famously frustrating final level that only unlocks when you collect all of the green stars, and, for whatever reason, I've been on a completionist kick with Mario games as of late.

Enter the Super Mario 3D World port for the Nintendo Switch. At first, I was like: "Pfff! I already bought this game seven years ago for full price. You ain't gettin' my money again." But, well, they got my money again. Because I realized I wanted to re-experience 3D World, but was just never gonna touch it on my Wii U. 3D World always struck me as a game that'd be more at home on a handheld due to the way it's designed, but I figured that wouldn't happen because of the HD presentation. Lo and behold! Nintendo releases what amounts to an HD handheld that can be hooked up to the TV. It was the perfect device for this game.

Actually, the first time I saw the Switch reveal, I thought to myself: "They gotta put 3D World on this thing. That was a Switch game before the Switch was a thing." Certain other changes swayed me as well, though. Unlike a lot of their lazier re-releases, this one came with significant balancing changes to the base gameplay as well as a pretty sizeable expansion on the side that was exclusive to the Switch version. I've already talked about Bowser's Fury in relatively explicit detail, but what about the changes to 3D World? Well, here's the thing: Super Mario 3D World on Wii U is slooooooooooooow. I didn't realize that at the time. It seemed like the pace of the gameplay was fine. But I could never go back to the Wii U version after playing it on Switch. Nintendo boosted the speed of every character significantly, to the point where Peach, the slowest character, runs as fast in the Switch port as the fastest character, Toad, ran in the Wii U version. This boost in speed probably doesn't do any favors to the short levels, but it sure as hell makes the game feel significantly snappier.

Another minor change worth mentioning is the addition of a Photo Mode similar to what was included with the new Bowser' Fury expansion, although, given the difference in game design, there's arguably less to be experimented with her. It's still fun to mess with filters, though.

3D World on Switch also does us the favor of dispensing with level elements reliant on GamePad gimmicks. I mean, yes, there's a small part of myself that's entertained by the idea of having to blow on my controller to move a wind-based platform. But, in general, this is still weird and gimmicky. And gross. Do you really want peoples' spit all over your controller? Imagine multiple people playing that level. I can't be the only person who would practically want to bleach the thing after someone played with it. Anyway, this allows us to focus more on the level design itself, which, as I alluded to before, is a bit... slight. They're not really any shorter than most levels in 2D Mario games, though, which should be the real comparison point design-wise. 3D World feels like what the series would have evolved into on N64 if Nintendo's visionary designers hadn't been so taken with the idea of complete 3D freedom. Even down to the level theming, which is a bit generic and traditional, for the most part.

Nintendo mostly abandons consistent worldbuilding with this entry. It's like the opposite of Sunshine, where everything was connected and logically consistent in-universe. Where it made sense how new areas connected to the hub, and so on. Level designs often have no consistency within worlds. The upside of this is that the game is allowed to play with a lot of interesting level gimmicks and power-ups. You'll have levels that are designed around tearing across terrain at high speeds using regularly spaced boost pads to maintain momentum, or levels where your character will don a cat suit (truly the most useful AND inherently fetishistic of the new power-ups) and race around a miniaturized savanna, hunting rabbits, and so on, a level that subverts expectations by making you chase down the flagpole, or even the Mystery Houses, which crop up throughout the game and feel like Warioware minigames and force you to complete a series of challenges super quickly (you've given around ten seconds for each challenge). While the theming of the worlds can be a bit generic (it really feels like a New Super Mario Bros. game in 3D at times), Nintendo goes out of its way to consistently introduce new ideas and mechanics to the fray. In that respect, it feels a bit like the Rayman Legends to 3D Land's Rayman Origins, or even like how Super Mario Galaxy 2 related to the original Galaxy: less conventional, and feeling almost like a gigantic level pack, where ideas that were left on the cutting room floor for the previous title were instead utilized here.

Of course, a lot of what's done here would have been impossible in its predecessor. 3D Land was hugely impressive as the first 3D Mario game designed from the ground up for a dedicated handheld, but the game design was still crafted around the often rather strict technical limitations of the host platform. One major way in which 3D World distinguishes itself is with its support for local (and online, in the Switch port) multiplayer. In a very explicit call back to Super Mario Bros. 2 (which was actually just a reskin/official romhack of Japanese platformer Doki Doki Panic, but that's a story for another day), you're able to choose from four characters, initially, and their balance of strengths and weaknesses is largely the same as it was in that NES classic. Luigi jumps higher, but is harder to control. Toad runs the fastest, but he also falls faster than the other characters thanks to how small and aerodynamic he is, and also takes the longest to break into a full sprint. Peach is the slowest of the bunch, but she's able to do this weird hovering thing in mid-air for a few seconds which makes it much easier to recover from poorly-judged jumps, and also sprints the soonest. Mario is, as usual, the jack-of-all-trades character.

Multiplayer gameplay is initially no different, but if you're competitive, there's one small wrinkle that will utterly change the balance of how the game is played. You see, while the gameplay is ostensibly cooperative, when playing with multiple people, the person who scores the most points in a level will earn a crown. The results screen shows the player wearing a crown on their head and, in the next level, the character's head will be adorned with a crown, and, if they manage to keep it, it'll add extra points to their score, giving them an unfair advantage when it comes time to tally the score. Incidentally, the crown can actually be stolen from the victory by another player in the following level.

You see where this is going, right?

It won't be a surprise to anyone who has a familiarity with Nintendo's long tradition of subtly turning multiplayer modes into mean-spirited competitions, but the fact that the crown is in player and you're competing for limited resources every level turns this cute, friendly co-op experience sour, because you're either going to upset the other person you're playing with by continually winning and having the results screen rub that in their face, or because they're competitive and 3D World is suddenly going to turn into a vicious bloodsport where you're continually trying to sabotage one-another and claim the crown as your own. And I fully believe Nintendo knew what they were doing here.

Players share the same pool of lives, so they're thankfully not incentivized to kill one-another, but this is its own problem, because if you're playing with someone who struggles with the game, it's going to create a dynamic where they start feeling guilty very quickly.

Despite the levels being built with the possibility of co-op gameplay in mind, things start getting super hectic if you play with more than one other person, and if you're doing this with a group of similarly competitive players, this cutesy 3D platformer suddenly turns into the world's most chaotic and stressful 3D brawler. Additionally, the game doesn't feature split-screen support, as far as I can tell, so it especially sucks if there's one game who just books it to the end of the level, because the game's camera always seems to focus on the person closest to the foreground of the level, and if you're shunted off-screen, the game will wrap your character up in a bubble and drag you back to where the tracked player is, so good luck with trying to explore unless you have everyone on the same page.

I've not tried out the online multiplayer, unfortunately, so I can't speak to the strength of the netcode, but the way it's designed seems inherently kind of limiting. You can't play with randoms, so you have to arrange a group of people to play with in the first place, and then progress through the game when playing in co-op only saves for the host. You can play through most of the game in co-op, but if you're not the host, then you're stuck with whatever progress you managed to make while offline.

So, yeah, multiplayer kinda sucks unless you're looking to turn the game into a constant warzone (or upset the people around you). The addition of multiplayer introduces another issue as well, though: level design. Now, don't get me wrong: the levels in this game are extremely creative and, in general, quite fun to play. But, especially after coming off of 3D Land initially, it struck me how much... bigger everything was. 3D Land on 3DS was a single-player experience, so it benefited from tighter level design, smaller platforms, and a camera that was close in to the action, but 3D World's camera pulls out as far as it can to accommodate the wider level design and possibility of multiple characters being on-screen at the same time, so levels can often feel extremely... spacious, and not in the same way something like Bowser's Fury was. The funny thing here, of course, is that these same spacious spaces seem simultaneously cramped when playing with multiple people, so the co-op kind of screws up the level design no matter which way you go.

3D World's power-ups game is on point, at least. Most of the 3D Mario games before Odyssey had disappointing power-ups, but the same can't really be said here. The headliner here, of course, is the forementioned cat suit, which allows the characters far more freedom of movement by allowing them to climb up walls, in addition to being the best transformation in the game in terms of its offensive capabilities, but you also have fire flower Mario, raccoon suit Mario, boomerang Mario, a variety of wearable headpieces that grant Mario the ability to fly, glide, shoot cannons, etc., and the new Double Cherry item. The Double Cherry is more of a level gimmick than anything, but it's still pretty neat. Collecting one will immediately clone your character, making it where you have to control multiple copies of the character at once. Usually levels featuring the Double Cherry will have multiple ones scattered throughout, and you'll be challenged with commanding an army of four or five characters simultaneously to the exit point, which is harder than it sounds when you consider the clones disappear if they take damage, and it can be difficult coordinating everyone in levels with significant platforming elements, as all of your clones respond to your every input at once. Successfully coordinating your clones to the end is usually a precondition for collecting one of the green stars in the level.

And, while we're at it, I should discuss green stars, and the game's overall metrics for completion. Every 3D Mario game has featured some sort of collectible that's needed to unlock levels further into the game, up to and including the final challenges in the game. In 3D World, those take the form of green stars, which are hidden throughout the vast majority of the levels in this game, often requiring exploration and some mastery of the game's platforming challenges, and resemble the star coins from the New Super Mario Bros games in function. In general, for the person just interested in casually completing the game, every green star won't be needed, and you can probably finish the main game while having collected only half of the green stars in the game.

There are also stamps hidden throughout the levels. In the Wii U version, you could use these stamps on Miiverse posts and when leaving messages for other players in the game. The designs are fun, and generally feature Mario characters engaging in a variety of activities. For the purposes of a normal playthrough, though, they're unnecessary: purely a cosmetic thing.

Finally, while not a collectible, if you finish a level by touching the top of the level exit flagpole, the completion flag for the level will be golden instead of a normal color representing whatever character you last completed the level as. Again, for a normal playthrough, this doesn't matter.

They don't even really matter for the first two post-game special worlds in this game, which you can access after the credits roll, and which features surprises (the coolest of which is the reveal of a new playable character), new level themes, and remixes on older level designs.

They do matter if you want to complete every level in the game, though. They very much matter. 3D World, like 3D Land and Super Mario Galaxy 2 before it, features a final, super-challenging endgame course with no checkpoints that tests every skill you've developed up until that point. In order to unlock it, though, you're going to hope you haven't ignored the things I mentioned before, because you'll need to have collected every green star and stamp in the game, and also have unlocked every level's golden flagpole.

This might seem a bit excessive, but if you've made a point of not trying to play poorly, chances are that you've already at least half-completed your goal. Anyway, it's all unique content, and it comes together to form a fun post-game campaign, and you're rewarded with access to World Crown, which features the hardest level in the game. Also the hardest Mystery House and Captain Toad courses (more on that last thing in a bit), but the final level, Champion Road, is really a thing of terror and beauty.

Champion Road is like a factory designed to burn through your lives as quickly as possible. Much like with previous 3D Mario games, it's not that the challenges it presents are unreasonable This isn't Kaizo Mario in 3D. While difficult, any one challenge in the level, when looked at in isolation, can easily be mastered with practice. And practice you shall get, because the challenge comes primarily from having to engaging in numerous challenging platforming sections for five to ten minutes without screwing up. If you die, you're kicked back to the beginning of the level, and everything starts over. The cumulative effect when you first start challenging this level is the feeling that you're facing an almost insurmountable task. But, as with anything else in life, you eventually learn to succeed at clearing the level because you throw yourself at it and fail more times than most players have even tried to beat it. Eventually, inevitably, you'll get that one lucky run where everything is going your way, and you clear whatever that last hurdle was that kept you from achieving sweet, sweet victory.

So, you've beaten it. Probably spent 100+ lives in the process and numerous hours doing so, but you saw the game through its final challenge and feel like you've done everything there is to do in this game. Except... it's curious... you'll likely note that you're missing four or five of the stamps. But how could that be? You had to collect every stamp in the previous levels to unlock World Crown and the final challenge. You've collected all of the stars and made all of the level flagpoles golden. What else IS there?

This, my friend, is what will define the experience of the completionist with this game. I guess you could cheese this requirement with a dedicated group of friends playing through the levels with you, but, assuming this is primarily a single-player venture for you, then you're in for a rough ride if you want to do everything. Because the final set of stamps are only awarded when you beat every level of the game with every character. Completing all of the levels as Luigi will earn the Luigi stamp, and so on. You have to complete the game five five times (the four normal characters, and then the secret unlockable character) in order to really be able to say you did everything. That includes Champion Road, by the way. You'll have to beat Champion Road a minimum of five times to unlock all of the stamps.

So, there's no way to get around this: the endgame completionist grind for 3D World is INSANELY repetitive. Thankfully, after a certain point, the UI will change a bit, and the game will tell you which levels you've completed as which character, making the sheer grind of it all as painless as possible, given the circumstances. For your trouble, once you've completed the game as all five characters and done absolutely everything there is to do, you'll earn five stars on your player profile. One star for beating the final boss and seeing the game through its end credits, one star for collecting every green star, one star for collecting every stamp, one star for making all of the flagpoles golden, and, finally, one star for unlocking the final set of stamps via completing the game at least five times over. Additionally, if you completed all levels without the help of the invincibility leaf, your five profile stars will sparkle. This is worth absolutely nothing more than bragging rights. Actually, on the subject of the invincibility leaf, I'd like to complain a bit, because I feel it to be one of the game's flaws.

Nintendo has a bad habit of trying to tempt players who are struggling with a challenge to grab ahold of crutches instead of allowing the process to play out. In this case, if you die six times or so in the same level, Nintendo will make it where a golden super leaf block spawns near the starting point of the level. When collected, the white tanooki suit you equip makes you invincible to all damage (although you can still die via falling into pits or lava). Now, I'm not opposed to the idea of an assist mode of sorts existing for less skilled players. What I hate is how Nintendo rubs your nose in your own failure. It'd be a simple thing to give the player the option to disable the ability for the white tanooki suit to appear at all, but instead, it'll appear after six deaths, regardless of your unwillingness to use it. It's easy to accidentally collect it, in which case you're forced to replay the level again if you don't want it to permanently taint your run by disabling the sparkles on your profile stars, and even if you make a point of never touching it, it's still annoying, standing as a mocking beacon of your failure every time you go back to the checkpoint before you died, pulsating ostentatiously as if to say: "Pick me up! You know you can't beat this level without me. Quit lying to yourself and give in."

The characters control tightly, and there's a level of polish to the way movement and platforming are balanced here that was frankly missing in the earliest 3D Mario games. The downside of this is that Mario's platforming freedom is a bit restricted here even compared to the Super Mario Galaxy games which streamlined his moveset. As a result, this is the least nimble 3D iteration of Mario and friends, which, I imagine, is to account for the limitations of the level design and lack of free camera movement, which aren't conducive to giving the player the freedom to experiment with the game's platforming physics. There are still things to play around with, of course: favorites like the spin jump, side jump, long jump, ground pound, etc. all return, and Mario additionally has the ability to roll, which, when combined with a jump, allows the player to activate something like an improved long jump. All of this plays into the game's tight focus on momentum and speed. More useful, although a bit difficult to reliably trigger, is the mid-air roll, which can allow you to reach otherwise inaccessible secrets more easily and/or cancel out of ground pound animations that would otherwise lead to your death.

3D World, in certain ways, feels like as much of a successor to the Galaxy games as it is to 3D World. References to the Galaxy games crop up throughout, including via level gimmicks, the extra unlockable character (Rosalina!), music, and especially the inclusion of Captain Toad levels. In one of 3D World's greatest innovations, Captain Toad from Super Mario Galaxy is given his own set of stages to complete across the game. Unlike the rest of the game, these stages function more like a puzzle game. Captain Toad is unable to jump or defend himself, and will be tasked with adorably waddling around dense, diorama-like stages in order to unlock and collect all of the hidden green stars. While the levels included here don't match up to the fleshed out concepts explored in the subsequent spin-off game, Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker, they're adorable and a great change of pace from the usual Mario levels, and add greatly to the variety offered by this often incredibly creative little game.

It shouldn't surprise anyone to learn that SM3DW performs like a champ on the Switch, given it was previously optimized for weaker hardware. As it stands, this runs at 60fps without a hitch in both docked and portable modes. It's 720p undocked and dynamic 1080p when played on the TV. While it doesn't sound like this should make a tremendous difference, I did notice the game is substantially nicer looking when played on the TV, even taking the smaller size of the Switch's tablet screen into account. With that said, the design of the game being the way it is, I pretty happily played it undocked for the majority of my playtime, and it looked fine.

On the music front, SM3DW is fine, and a solid upgrade on its 3DS predecessor, but after the operatic heights that the Galaxy games reached, I can't say this game is hugely impressively aurally. It's probably the best of the Mario games musically when you remove Galaxy/Galaxy 2/Odyssey from the equation, though. Some tracks, nevertheless, manage to impress more than others.

Like the Hisstocrat's theme. Even though you only hear it in one boss fight, it's a funky, jazzy beat that I found particularly memorable:

I also really like this new rendition of the Super Mario 3D Land theme, which accompanies a fun level designed to replicate the unique look of that game:

And here's a fun circus-themed track that changes depending on where you are in the level. I quite liked it:

The game also brings back and/or remixes a couple of tracks from Super Mario Galaxy near the end for World Crown and the final level. Considering how many times I've thrown myself at Champion Road overall, you'd think I'd be sick of hearing this, but Galaxy's music never gets old, even when remixed:

Super Mario 3D World undoubtedly plays it safe with its game design in many respects compared to its weirder and more exploratory siblings on older consoles, but it also maintains a design consistency that most of those games lack as well. In this respect, it, even more than Super Mario 3D Land, can be thought of as being akin to the New Super Mario Bros. of the 3D games. With 3D World, you won't be getting the massively ambitious new game that wows you and flogs new console hardware like Super Mario Odyssey, but you will be getting a simple, very fun, highly replayable, and back-to-basics sort of Nintendo platformer that still experiments around the edges and has actually pushed the series forward in certain respects (multiplayer support; Captain Toad levels, which inspired a spinoff; thrusting characters other than Mario and Luigi into starring roles for the first time in a 3D Mario game). 3D World is an almost perfect game for what it is, and even if it doesn't shoot for the stars, the moon can be nice as well. With that said, as per the review, I do feel certain aspects of the multiplayer make it difficult to recommend in that regard unless you're playing with a very particular sort of friend group. This ultimately makes 3D World strongest as a solo experience, which slaps a bit against the ways in which it differentiates itself from both 3D Land and the other 3D Mario games. Super Mario 3D World, thus, gets an 8.5/10 from me, and comes highly recommended to anyone who loves the platformer genre.