Miracle Reviews some games she played

Jackie Frost

Jackie Frost

That’s more like it! Alright! Jackie rules!
Pronouns
She/her
MarioWiki
MiracleDinner
So you might get that I like reviewing games and I've done this a couple of times in the "I just beat_" thread and I'm going to continue doing that but there's also some games I already beat which I wanna review so here goes. As always I'm trying to be as unbiased as I can but there's always going to be a little bit of bias behind it. Also yeah I like the divide and conquer approach if it's in a genre I think about lots.

Anyway I'm going to try and do them chronologically. Following my spreadsheet I think I should start with Wii Sports Resort since that's my earliest game which I feel I can review.

Wii Sports Resort aspired to use the Wii's motion controls to bring casual family fun with all sorts of sporting events. And yeah, I'd say they did it on the large part. It didn't feel too hard or too intense. You didn't have to put your mind into it much but it felt like a fair challenge at times. The game had a good share of events, it wasn't overwhelming many, but it felt like a good selection. I haven't played all of the sports particularly intensely but I struggle to think of any bad ones, and some felt really cool like the long solo sword fighting tournament. A lot of the motion controls felt well done such as with the cycling or archery. Music was pretty good but not phenomenal. Graphics were decent for the time, now kind of outdated, but not really bad by any means. That's more or less all I really have to say on this game. This was a bit more difficult to review since I don't usually review sport games, but I think I'd judge it as a good game overall which didn't do anything truly amazing, but didn't have many significant flaws and overall did well to accomplish what it wanted. Verdict: 7/10.
 
Mario Kart Wii


My first Mario game. And also my least favourite. Maybe it's just that racing games aren't for me but anyway I found far less to enjoy in this game than in any other Mario game I've played. Still though I think it deserves a review here even though I don't like it. Once again I'm going for a kind of freestyle review as it's not like other games I normally review.

So what was Mario Kart Wii trying for? Just to be a simply casual family fun racing game, nothing much more to it.

I'd say they did that great, because the Wii gave them the toolset they needed to pull it off. You can use a gamecube controller or classic controller pro to make it more precise, or you can use a wii remote to make it feel more casual. They even made a plastic steering wheel to go along with it! Admittedly however, the controls are less precise than they could have been even with a CCP (I've never tried with a gamecube controller). Whilst I would not have previously commended this game for its OST, I've got Rainbow Road up right now and it's actually really good, as is coconut mall come to think of it. The graphics aren't much compared to MK8 on Wii U or Switch, but they're not too bad either. Whilst the game didn't feature much in the way of story elements, that was never really necessary anyway because that's not what MKWii aspired to be (still might have been nice tho.) Whilst it doesn't have an extremely large pool of tracks to it, it actually does have a fair few, and some of them are designed in a genuinely interesting way. The powerups are pretty cool but nothing phenomenal. The character range is OK and Baby Daisy was introduced but if only they would actually use more unique characters - by that point we already had two M&L games and three Paper Mario games. It would have been awesome to have Mallow, Kammy Koopa, Fawful, Vivian, Princess Shroob, or Dimentio in there, to name a few, all of were around at the time.

Unfortunately with this game being my least favourite Mario game I was never motivated to try the rest of the series, so I'm really just having to judge it for what it is on its own rather than comparing it to its predecessors and/or sucessors. I do intend to eventually try MK8 (probably Deluxe as that will be more active in the long term for online multiplayer, though I don't know if it'll be possible to mod Fawful into that one) but for now, just reviewing MKWii on its own.

All in all I'd say that, whilst I don't enjoy it personally, I recognise it as a game which aimed for something pretty reasonable and pulled it off pretty well. That's kind of what an objective review is for, in that I can still give a positive review to MKWii despite not liking it personally because I recognise that it deserves it. It may not have done anything phenomenal, and could be (and most likely has been but idk for certain) improved in a lot of ways, but it's still a solid racing game. Verdict: 8/10.
 
New Super Mario Bros. (NDS)

I realise I've probably given this game a bit of a bad rap previously, but actually I think I'd like to review give it a bit of a fairer review here. It was next on my list anyway. I haven't played this game in a while but I think I still remember enough about it to write a good review.

Gameplay: Pretty good, but not absolutely amazing. The controls overall felt good and things like the wall jump and the blue shell were really nifty. The Mega Mushroom was a huge amount of fun when it came around. The item storage was really handy also. All of the enemies were well done, including the bosses gameplay wise. The minigames and stuff were awesome. There a few shortcomings and ways in which past or future games have been better than this in the gameplay department (Propeller Mushroom, Tanooki Suit, and Yoshi for example), but all in all it doesn't have any serious gameplay flaws, it just isn't as amazing as some of the 3D games I've played such as Galaxy 2 and 3D World, nor does it uttely stand out amongst 2D titles. Gameplay gets an 8 out of 10.

Level design: I don't have much to say on this, but overall it was again great but nothing phenomenal. Few of the levels stand out in my memory as being particularly genius, but I couldn't name any botched levels either. Verdict: 8/10.

Presentation: Like most Super Mario games this is the biggest downfall. The graphics are not great when you compare it to any of the later entries in the series. The only interesting part of the story is when
You think you defeated Bowser for good but he comes back first as Dry Bowser and then by his son reviving him in a cauldron.
and there are no unique or original characters in the game, besides
Dry Bowser
(Personally this was my second Mario game after MKW, in which this character featured, so it didn't feel original to me back then)
Music is actually pretty decent overall but I recall no standout tracks and rarely find myself listening to it on its own unlike many Mario games I play such as Galaxy, 3D World, SPM, and SSS.
IIRC the game basically doesn't have any dialogue.
I'm going to give the presentation a 6 out of 10: It's not bad by any means but it really could be better.

Conclusion: Whilst it's no masterpiece like Galaxy or something was, and it doesn't stand out amongst 2D Super Mario games, it's still a perfectly good game in its own right and a lot of fun to have with you wherever. It aimed to be a classic, portable, fun, 2D Super Mario platformer, and it achieved that well despite not going above and beyond with anything. Verdict: 7.5/10
 
Starfire said:
I do intend to eventually try MK8 (probably Deluxe as that will be more active in the long term for online multiplayer, though I don't know if it'll be possible to mod Fawful into that one)
Click to expand...

The Fawful mod by BLgotswag hasn't been ported and released for Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, but porting is extremely easy so long as I don't run into any skin count issues (and even then, that's still relatively easy to fix). In addition, my sister did describe a process that'll let you enter two different Switch modes where one of them lets you play games online without mods while the other lets you mod.
 
Super Mario 3D Land vs. Super Mario 3D World

So this time I'll be directly comparing two games of a similar genre aspect by aspect to conclude which one is better. I've not done something like this before but here goes!

Portability: Super Mario 3D Land, no question.
Controls: Super Mario 3D World. 3D Land wasn't bad at all but in 3D World you get SIX controller choices (GamePad, Wii U Pro controller, Wii remote and nunchuck, Wii remote sideways, classic controller, classic controller pro) and all of them feel great and intuitive apart from wii remote sideways, no hard to reach L button or flat circle pad, and the camera control is much better.
Gameplay elements: 3D World. In addition to choosing between five characters which all have strengths and weaknesses, there's the cat suit powerup and a few other neat things like the double cherry, stamps, overall it's a solid improvement.
Multiplayer: 3D World. Iirc 3D Land has none whereas 3D World definitely does have it, and an entertaining form.
Length: 3D World. 3D Land feels a lot shorter at least imo.
Balancing: 3D World. It felt a lot more of a genuine challenge, whereas 3D Land was like a cakewalk (to any% at least).
Postgame content and extras: 3D World. I've not 100% either yet but so far the postgame content in this one feels like it has more variety and challenge and less often just copies an existing levels whilst adding one new thing to make it harder. Some of the extra stages in 3D Land and actually pretty good though.
Level design: 3D World. It's very difficult to generalise the whole game but this one often felt like they were more clever and original, as well as having stamps, Captain Toad levels, hideout levels, better mystery houses, etc.
Graphics: 3D World. Whilst 3D Land had the nifty 3D effect that could help a little with platform, 3D World easily makes up for it and more. This game is gorgeous, from the water to the sunlight to the textures of just about everything, I was shocked this game is only 720 resolution when it feels like 4K.
Story: 3D World. At least Peach actually gets to do something this time rather than just being kidnapped, plus it kept
A good plot twist after Chapter 7, Meowser was cool too
Characters: 3D World, you got five playables, including
Rosalina, which is pretty cool, but not that unique tbh
and there were the Sprixie princesses who were original, plus I believe more original enemies and bosses.
Music: 3D World. This is very hard to generalise and also quite hard to not be swayed by personal opinion, but I always found 3D World's OST to be much more powerful and unique than 3D Land's.
Dialogue: Tie. There was basically none in either.

Verdict: Super Mario 3D Land may be a good game to have on the go, but when you're home, 3D World is by far a superior sequel.
 
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Super Mario Galaxy 2

With the success of Super Mario Galaxy 1 on the Wii, Nintendo decided to make a sequel to that game. What ended up happening wasn't a particularly revolutionary sequel - such as Super Mario Land 2, which upgraded Super Mario Land 1 significantly in almost every way, or Super Mario Maker 2 which, though I've not played it, am almost certain is a huge upgrade from the Wii U version. Super Mario Galaxy 2 feels very similar to the first game, with not much in the way of overall improvements. But nonetheless, it's still a hugely exciting package in its own right, introducing tons of new galaxies, locations, music, etc. as well as a few welcome upgrades like Yoshi and the Green Stars. People like to knock it down and call it a copy and paste sequel and yeah it could've expanded on the first game in more ways than it did, but that doesn't mean it isn't an excellent game for what it is.

Because of this I often prefer to just think of this game as an expansion pack of Galaxy 1, but it is published as a separate title and is often separated from Galaxy 1, so here I'm judging them separately.

Super Mario Galaxy 2 was the game that really dragged me to Mario. MKW was a bit of fun, NSMBDS was a cool platformer, but this game was truly amazing and really felt like how Mario should be.

So once again we start with the gameplay. This was pretty excellent. Tight controls, cool powerups, some multiplayer, you really feel like it's a polished 3D platforming experience. It keeps a lot of the cool things Galaxy 1 has, skating, star bits, launch stars, sling stars, unique gravity mechanics, and adds just the icing on the cake with its new stuff. I wouldn't call it perfect but it's still really, really, good. The gameplay gets a 9 out of 10.

Next is the level design. This was also awesome. I can't really think of any that were designed badly. From some that took you on a new adventure every time you entered a galaxy, building around a specific powerup, giving you the right challenges and breathing room, being a great way to challenge yourself especially later on, this game really did well. It does run out eventually but with all the green stars you have to collect it's a satisfactorily long game. The main flaw is that it's a bit too much on the linear side, but that's not terrible. Level design also gets a 9 out of 10.

Thirdly is the presentation. Graphics were pretty impressive for 2007 (Galaxy 1 was basically the same as this graphically) but nowadays, they aren't truly amazing, and in particular, the non-HD resolution has begun to hold it back. That being said, the correct setup on Dolphin such as this one, can look incredible, and I hope Nintendo one day remaster this game in 4K glory officially, but for now, I sadly have to mark down for the outdated graphics. The OST on the other hand is a masterpiece, just like Galaxy 1. Almost all of the community agrees that the music matches each situation nearly perfectly in addition to being great to listen to on its own - full of life when it needs to be, truly dramatic and epic when it needs to be, or calm and representing the deep cosmos, when it needs to be. Story is sadly quite limited, as are OCs, but at least we had some original bosses and the ending was OK. Overall I'd say the game did a little less than it could to feel like an epic space adventure, and more so just felt like a generic Mario game, but I still think they did a pretty good job of making it feel grand. Presentation gets an 8.5 out of 10.

Conclusion: The game may not be perfect and is held back by a few flaws, but regardless, it's still an excellent game, hope we get a Galaxy 3 someday. Overall the game is well conceived, and it may not be a divine sequel to the original, but it does reach the same level as what was already a masterpiece, and feels great on its own (you don't need Galaxy 1 to truly appreciate this game, I actually played this one first), or if you've played its predecessor too - either way you're almost sure to know what I'm talking about when I highly applaud Nintendo on this game. Verdict: 9/10.
 
Super Mario Galaxy 2 vs. Super Mario 3D World

I was kinda tempted to do SMB1 vs NSMBDS but tbh that would've ended up in the latter completely dominating in every way, so this time I wanted to do a bit more of a fairer comparison. 3D World snagged an easy win last Saturday so this time I'm giving it a more formidable opponent: Galaxy 2!

Convenience: 3D World. The ability to play in off-tv mode instantly sets this one higher (yeah if you have a Wii U you can do the same with Galaxy 2 but you can't use the actual gamepad to control the game, so it's quite awkward to play wii games that rely on motion and pointing like this)
Controls: Difficult, but Galaxy 2. 3D World has the nice controller variety and is nice and simple, in a good way, and doesn't force you to use motion controls for precise movement levels like Purple Coins on the Rainbow Road. But I think what sets Galaxy 2 above 3D World is the fact that you really do feel more in control most of the time, particularly with having the spin move to correct your movement, or Yoshi's flutter jump.
Gameplay elements: Galaxy 2. 3D World was great, but this game just seems to have a lot more variety and valuable content, like Fluzzard and the Star ball, Boo Mario, Cloud Mario, Rock Mario, Sling Stars and Launch stars, pull stars, guiding enemies towards the end levels, Bee Mario, star chips, etc. Overall it goes ahead of 3D World.
Multiplayer: 3D World. Maximum player limit is higher and being able to actually control a character rather than just a co-star luma is a lot more entertaining.
Length: Galaxy 2 is longer I believe which I'm going to count as a good thing when both games are so great they have one wishing there was more.
Balancing: Galaxy 2. I think they both did well in that they're accessible to less experienced players but become more challenging later on and with the postgame content. But I'm giving the point to Galaxy 2 because I think 3D World overall was a bit on the easy side whereas Galaxy 2 is in a little more of a sweet spot.
Postgame content (and extras): 3D World. The green stars were OK as was World S but I think 3D World goes further with making the postgame feel engaging and unique since it has quite a lot of courses that felt a lot more diverse.
Level design: Galaxy 2. They were both great, but 3D World was just really linear with a few secrets on the way, whereas although Galaxy 2 was also very linear it at least felt like interesting takes on the same environment and had greater variety in how levels are completed, such as Cosmic Cove Galaxy or Throwback Galaxy.
Graphics: 3D World. As I've said before, 3D World looks absolutely incredible. Galaxy 2 looked great too, but in vanilla it doesn't quite reach it, mainly due to the lower resolution.
Story: Galaxy 2. 3D World's was next to inexistent whereas Galaxy 2 actually had some decent story in it even if it was dissppointing next to Galaxy 1.
Characters: Galaxy 2, because of its greater variety with enemies, bosses, and NPCs etc. though 3D World's character selection was cool.
Music: Galaxy 2. 3D World's OST was great, but this game is almost unanimously agreed to be excellent.
Dialogue: Galaxy 2 had at least a small amount of OK dialogue whereas 3D World had basically none.

Verdict: Well I tried to get a fair match and this happened. 3D World does have some significant advantages compared to Galaxy 2, but overall, Galaxy 2 is easily a better game.
 
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Donkey Kong Country Returns

Almost forgot today's review lol.

Anyways this is another strong favourite of mine just because I really liked the atmosphere as kid and it gives me huge nostalgia. Once I beat the game I saw the
Golden Temple appear and it was so cool and mysterious, and I really wanted to go through the door but oh no you need 8 orbs to open out which really sucked, but I found the Golden Temple levels but they were freaking impossible on top of it being even more difficult to get all those KONG letters in the first place. Anyways I got better at gaming as I grew older, and finally did it age 13, it did not disappoint me at all and since then I've always loved it just as much as I did then.

One thing to note: this is my first and so far only DKC game

I'd love to try the 3DS remake (tbh though more of a port as the only thing besides portability it really has over the original is the Cloud World levels and a few shop items) but for now it's just the Wii version we're doing, so let's do this!

Gameplay: Pretty solid all around but I think it could be better. Overall it was cool to be able to like roll of platforms or smash through enemies with the infinite roll, Rambi was a blast and the minecarts, cannons, and rocket barrels were also really fun to have in the game. One really nifty thing which I think made the game a lot better was the Diddy Kong Barrel that you could use to correct in game movement. Speaking of Diddy actually, the game has a fully working multiplayer with one as Donkey Kong and the other as Diddy Kong - that's great, although it can get a little competitive as to who gets to be the one you usually don't get to play as with the banana gun, and some things like rocket barrels didn't really work well in multiplayer. However the gameplay does have its downsides, the aforementioned downsides of multiplayer, but also a lot of the time you don't feel very in control of the game, cannons, rocket barrels, and minecarts being examples of this fun though they were. Also a lot of the platforming doesn't feel very precise, particularly if you're playing as Donkey Kong and don't have Diddy Kong, your short rolls can't really be adjusted and there's not much midair adjustment you can do. So, gameplay is overall good but could be better. Gameplay gets a 7 out of 10.

Levels: I can't think of any real bad ones, and I can certainly recall a lot of really creative ones. The game can get genuinely challenging towards the end, particularly when you unlock
The Golden Temple, and then go on to get Mirror Mode
But it's still well balanced enough to be beatable as a child (well for my 8 year old self at least), and it's not too hard to get the KONG pieces needed for the above feature in the spoiler tag. A lot of the levels have really creative elements, and have the right sets of challenges, checkpoint placement, enemy placement, item arrangement, and hidden secrets. The bonus room was great too. It's a decently long game with a good amount of extras and postgame content. My only real gripe with the level design side of things is that it's a bit on the linear side, but nonetheless, I still regard the level design in this game as excellent. Level design gets a 9 out of 10.

Presentation: Great also. The graphics aren't the absolute best, but they're pretty good for a Wii game and feel good enough for what this game is. The music is really good, I'm listening to it as I'm writing this, maybe it's just personal but I really do think it's composed perfectly to make the game feel epic and atmospheric all around. The overall way in which the locations and stages are set out, designed visually, and paired with music makes them really feel like a powerful experience of a jungle, a cave, or a factory, whatever it is the game makes it feel very authentic. Whilst the game does have a little interesting stuff in the way of story (some original bosses, plus something of a plot twist at the end) it's not really very much, and I wish we had more bosses, a more involved story, and more original characters. Presentation gets an 8 out of 10.


Conclusion: Donkey Kong Country Returns is a great game all around. It's not legendary or anything, and it does have flaws, or ways in which it could have been improved, but overall it's a blast of a platformer to be playing and has a really powerful atmosphere. Verdict: 8/10.
 
Unfortunately I won't be doing a head to head comparison today, because I haven't got a suitable pair. Unless someone wants to see SMB1 get totally rekt
 
LEGO Indiana Jones 2: The Adventure Continues

Ah... LIJ2. One of the most major games of my childhood, I much preferred it to the original. There were a variety of reasons - hub worlds, bonus levels, kingdom of the crystal skull but above all it was the level editor which I loved about it. I would spend hours just building everything to my heart's content, from cities to stud collection, to driving vehicles around, it was awesome. If only my young self had Super Mario Maker to play around with. Speaking of that game, I've played it finally and I like it a lot, which means that by this point nostalgia is the main thing keeping my love for LIJ2 going, but I still have fun playing it every so often.

Anyway once I grew up I found out that critics and people didn't seem to like it very much and sure I've come to see its flaws, but really, I think this game is underrated and I'm here to try to review it as fairly as I can. I'm going for more freestyle this time because it's not like the other games I've reviewed so far. I had the Wii version at first and as a child I got it on the Xbox 360 too. I admit I wasted money doing so as the two versions are nearly identical, but I always preferred the X360 version from then on (better graphics and better controls, though I believe they got rid of enemy stacking which was a shame.) so I'm reviewing the X360 version here. I never played the NDS version, which I believe to be substantially different.

I think it was a good game overall. People complain about the hub worlds being too far apart but really I think they were a positive addition to the game overall - they made everything feel connected and had cool secrets - bonus levels being a good example of why hub worlds were good. It was pretty cool also to have treasure level parodies of the original stages where you'd bring in new allies, sometimes even villains, to use their abilities to solve a puzzle. People say it's a bad thing that the story levels in each chapter followed the same structure (miniboss, puzzle, racer, fighter, final boss) but I don't think it was bad, it could have been more interesting yes, but it was kind of comforting and homely to have them be repeated but different each time and sometimes in a different order too.

The level designer was a great touch too. Personally I loved it, but I mean I recognise that that's nostalgia speaking so I shouldn't count that really. It was attacked by critics for lacking the ability to upload levels (technically it is possible, by saving data to USB and uploading it, but since it's not official, there aren't many levels to be tried out there unlike in Mario Maker 1 & 2 where you practically have an endless pool of UGC to try.) I'd say yeah that sucks, but it's still a good thing that this level designer exists and I can't be the only kid who actually liked it.

The cutscenes were kind of funny but I do think they weren't as faithful to the films as they should have been. Graphics on X360 were alright but not that great. Music I'd say was pretty good all around but again maybe that's just nostalgia - it's hard to tell, but I'd at least call it decent.

Overall, I think this game aimed for something reasonably good and did everything it wanted to pretty well. It didn't do anything great and I wouldn't call it an excellent example of video game design. I admit that the main reason I still love it is because of nostalgia/personal reasons rather than the game possessing exceptional qualities, but yeah I still think it's a good, underrated game, and I'm gonna recommend it to anyone here who's not played it. Verdict: 7/10.
 
Would have been fairer to compare SMB1 to another platformer of its time.

But to be fair, it would utterly dominate the likes of Ice Climber.
 
Redshift said:
Would have been fairer to compare SMB1 to another platformer of its time.

But to be fair, it would utterly dominate the likes of Ice Climber.
Click to expand...
Yeah but I prefer to only do head to head once I've done standalone reviews of both. IIrc NSMBDS is the oldest game I've reviewed on this site besides SMB1

If I were to do it I don't think there's any degree of "unfairness" to it - I believe NSMBDS is the better game because Nintendo much improved 2D Mario between SMB1 and NSMBDS. Sure I see the argument that NSMBDS is at an advantage because it had better hardware available and had six previous 2D Mario platformers, but I mean that's kind of just how it is - games have gotten better as they've built on the past and they are less limited by the hardware they're running on. I'm just not willing to go through the comparison since it's very obvious who I'd chose as the winner.

And I don't know what Ice Climber is
 
I also think it is totally fair to think NSMBDS is the better game because many of us rather play that today than NSMB myself included, but establishing context always helps your reviews be better if you want to do a comparison. SMB served as a skeletal structure for the Mario franchise that is to come and helped give out the eventual QoL improvements that would lead to games like SMB3, SMW, and then NSMBDS; back then, SMB's competition were games like Ice Climber, Donkey Kong, and Mario Bros., which had bad, imprecise platforming controls like, your jump is always in a fixed spot (and it also helps to research similar games in its time period, hint hint). NSMBDS then occurred around more than 20 years past its inception, it's bound to be a better game thanks to hardware improvements and improvements with game experimentation that allow implementation of backwards retracking and world maps and better graphics.

That's why I think it's unfair to compare the two in how they play. SMB is pretty much outclassed by most Mario games these days. Whereas, people still debate whether 3 or World are the best Mario platformers.

Looking at context for both games that you're planning to compare is just as important as comparing their two qualities to each other.
 
Redshift said:
I also think it is totally fair to think NSMBDS is the better game because many of us rather play that today than NSMB myself included, but establishing context always helps your reviews be better if you want to do a comparison. SMB served as a skeletal structure for the Mario franchise that is to come and helped give out the eventual QoL improvements that would lead to games like SMB3, SMW, and then NSMBDS; back then, SMB's competition were games like Ice Climber, Donkey Kong, and Mario Bros., which had bad, imprecise platforming controls like, your jump is always in a fixed spot (and it also helps to research similar games in its time period, hint hint). NSMBDS then occurred around more than 20 years past its inception, it's bound to be a better game thanks to hardware improvements and improvements with game experimentation that allow implementation of backwards retracking and world maps and better graphics.

That's why I think it's unfair to compare the two in how they play. SMB is pretty much outclassed by most Mario games these days. Whereas, people still debate whether 3 or World are the best Mario platformers.

Looking at context for both games that you're planning to compare is just as important as comparing their two qualities to each other.
Click to expand...
I think you're right, but that's not what I'm really aiming to do. I respect SMB1 as a game which for its time was unbelieveably ahead of its time and we have to thank this game for how far Mario's come since. But I gave it a negative review because I'm thinking in the present, during which there's no doubt that it is an outdated game. It's nice and all playing a game knowing that it's where Mario platforming really took off, but it doesn't mean that broken physics, only 32 levels, and no more than 6 musical pieces, etc. no longer make the game a worse experience than games that have built upon the past in those ways.
 
That's fair enough. I felt the same way when I played Sonic 1. But I'm just telling you, if you're going to write a review in the modern perspective playing a retro game, always helps to address the context in which the game was released because people are gonna bring that up. People who played the game in their youth can be equally as biased towards favoring it more because of nostalgia reasons, and it's nice to see a review of the game from someone in 2020 who hasn't grown up with the game's inception.
 
I'm also gonna have to postpone the head to head stuff for another week because I still don't got a pair but I'll aim to get an individual review done tomorrow.
 
New Super Mario Bros. Wii

After NSMBDS did pretty well Nintendo wanted to improve what they had going and I'd say they did pretty well. I'm potentially planning a NSMBDS vs NSMBW review at some point so I'll try and not do that so much here.

Gameplay: Overall pretty good. It is a 2D platformer not a 3D one, but it's very well done with the same moveset that we had before but with several positive additions such as the spin jump, the propeller suit, and the penguin suit. We have a lot of cool stuff returning, it still has a decently large amount of content to it, and I'd say you feel pretty much in control. The multiplayer was well done also. I'll give this one an 8 out of 10.

Level design: Very good all around. Though it wasn't quite perfect and it can have flaws such as the items given being too good and disencouraging the inventory system, or feeling a little empty or lazy at some point, or just a little lack in creativity, overall, it's very well done, with a lot of levels, ranging from beginner to very challenging, and the quality of these levels rarely slacks too far behind, and is often well thought out. Level design gets an 8.5 out of 10.

Presentation: This game didn't have any real story or any really entertaining plot twists which was a shame. We had no original characters whatsoever, and all the bosses were just koopalings who didn't speak and eventually kamek, bowser jr., and bowser himself as the final boss. Graphics are decent, especially considering it's on a Wii but nothing great. Music overall was pretty good, and could be cheery or atmospheric, downright epic like the final boss theme, or the World 9 theme which is feels really magical and rocky. The music is the only real reason I'm not putting this one outright on the negative spectrum as the lack of original story and characters was very much a disspointment. Presentation gets a 6 out of 10.

Conclusion: Though the story/characters is a letdown, it doesn't need that to be a genuinely great platformer, and from the level design to the powerup set, it still is. It's a positively challening game if you want but also if desired just some cool family fun. It wanted to be a cool and fun platformer and it achieved just that. Verdict: 8/10.
 
Redshift said:
uh what about the new enemies introduced in this game
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If they don't have dialogue or any plot significance I don't really consider them under the bracket of original characters, or at least not any that are particularly valuable. Still though better than 100% recycling old enemies
 
you should try Newer Super Mario Bros. Wii, a mod of NSMBW, at some point.
 
Redshift said:
you should try Newer Super Mario Bros. Wii, a mod of NSMBW, at some point.
Click to expand...
don't have a good nsmbw iso
still kinda scared to hack
 
Mr. Mr. Prosecutor Grubba said:
don't have a good nsmbw iso
still kinda scared to hack
Click to expand...
You don't need an iso to play Newer Wii. You also don't even need to install homebrew or anything like that. I played Newer long before I installed Homebrew, and it's definitely worth it.

At the very least you can look at the general process of starting the game here:

Newer Installation Guide

Installation Guide for Newer Super Mario Bros. Wii
newerteam.com newerteam.com
 
Varian said:
You don't need an iso to play Newer Wii. You also don't even need to install homebrew or anything like that. I played Newer long before I installed Homebrew, and it's definitely worth it.

At the very least you can look at the general process of starting the game here:

Newer Installation Guide

Installation Guide for Newer Super Mario Bros. Wii
newerteam.com newerteam.com
Click to expand...
kinda busy at this very moment but ill be sure to have a look later. thanks!
 
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