LesmoThoughts: Super Mario 3D World

I wish I hadn't been so lazy lately and written more of these so I start this particular piece off with some wanky "full circle" intro about how Super Mario 3D Land was the first game I wrote about in this style. As is, I've only done a few games in between these bad boys so it would just be weird, fortunately I can just opt for an even wankier intro paragraph where I waste 30 seconds of your life explaining how I couldn't do that but would of instead. Right, good, intros done, now we can go straight into the meat of the matter.

For the uninitiated I wrote a thing about Super Mario 3D Land talking about why it's really good and probably the best Mario game Nintendo have done since Super Mario Bros 3, I also wrote a thing about I just got a Wii U and they're pretty cool. With these two things going for it, does this mean that I also really like Super Mario 3D World for the Wii U? Well let's put it this way; I have four games for my Wii U currently, one of them is that brand new Mario Kart 8 that people are excited for, the first game I reached for was Super Mario 3D World and I got straight into it. It's now a day later and I've beaten it, Mario Kart 8 is still trending on Twitter at time of writing and it's still yet to be touched. I've even taken the seal off it to register the code for my free game download so the job of opening it is already half done and still the disc has not left the box, because I was too busy bouncing my way through 3D World. So we'll file the answer to that particular question as "Yes" for now. 

Structurally Super Mario 3D World is pretty similar to 3D Land and retains most of its good points, just to briefly recap those are: perfect level design, perfect celebration of movement and perfect segregation of content into bite-sized fun packages. There are a few differences regarding 3D World however, unfortunately I'll have to duck the hypothetical 9.7 out of 10 (or something) I'd give 3D Land for its level design to like a 9.2 for containing a bunch of gimmicky levels that don't really work, such as the "touchpad platforms" level previously mentioned in the Wii U post. 3D World gets some points back in the movement department however because I really like how they've handled Mario's speed in this one. Finally they came up with a visual way to indicate full speed in the way the P meter and beeps did in Super Mario Bros 3, as now when Mario is fully revved up there's a little speed boost and Mario shoots forward with a different running animation. It's really neat because the worst part of 3D Land was thinking you were at full speed when you weren't and accidentally doing a tiny bunny hop into a pit, which didn't happen to me a single time while playing through Super Mario 3D World.

Just as a side note, I'd like to point out that 3D World also has an option for manual camera controls now. I bring this up because I didn't notice it until I as in World 5, and even then it as by accident and I never actually used them. I can't stress enough how much of a compliment this is, there are almost no 3D games where the camera is legitimately never an issue without you having to master controlling it yourself, these games have to be given insane amounts of credit for that.

I wasn't a fan of those Super Mario Galaxy games, they're neat and everything and I basically respect them, but they weren't what I wanted a 3D Mario game to be. Super Mario 3D Land was a nearly perfect 3D Mario game, and Super Mario 3D World is nearly a perfect Super Mario 3D Land game, but the proximity of the latter is lower to perfection than the proximity of the former, if you get what I'm saying.

In English: Super Mario 3D World is pretty great, almost as great as 3D Land, but it feels like a baby step away from perfection than one towards it. 

There's lots of little reasons for this, many would say it's that 3D World is too short. To be honest; maybe, but I think there's actually more content in 3D World if you discount the fact that 3D Land was padded out by looping the same level designs twice with different gimmicks. Still, it would have been neat if 3D World has done something similar to that as well, I don't mind these games padding themselves out because it's basically guaranteed that I'm going to want to play them more than once so you may as well give me something to work for. It could be that the levels are a little too gimmicky in places, there's no dealbreakers or anything but there's definitely levels in 3D World that I have no intention of ever playing again whereas I would happily run through all of 3D Land any day of the week 

It might also be those gosh darn garbage Captain Toad levels. A lot of people on the internet go on about games "murdering their childhoods", and I have to admit I felt the top of a blade menacing my childhood's jugular when I saw this kind of crap in a Mario game. Basically, you play as a ridiculously slow Toadstool guy, and you walk across an obtuse straight line in a 3D structure, with no fixed camera angles and no ability to jump (although the jump button still works, it's just that it makes your toadstool guy go WAH and a little thrust instead). The ONLY challenge is to steer the camera so you can actually see where you're going, there is only ever one direction you can go unless you want to fall back to the bottom and start again. If you think anything in these levels is a "puzzle" you are genuinely stupid, I mean no offence or anything, thanks for reading, but I would bet any amount of money that there's strange gaps on your walls where you licked the paint off before it dried.

In a nutshell; Super Mario 3D Land took those Galaxy games that I really didn't like that much, and stripped them of all their fluff and just left the delicious Mario gooey centre that I wanted. Super Mario 3D World for the most part is just more of that, but in 1080p with a mostly horrible soundtrack* and some of that fluff put back into it. Just enough fluff to get up your nose and make you sneeze from time to time, but you'll forget about it when it passes. Overall, I had a good time Super Mario 3D World, and I absolutely definitely 100% will go back to it and play it all over again getting all the stars I missed etc., I'd just say that Super Mario 3D Land was a little better. That's all.

Oh and um....the multiplayer...I guess that's cool too but...I don't have any friends.

*Before I get jumped on there's like 5 tracks or so I really like, but overall I don't like the music in this game SORRY