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Super Mario 3D Land (3DS)
Published: August 2, 2012Posted in: All Content, Reviews
About the Author
Michael Gray is a staff writer for GameCola, who focuses on adventure games, videos and writing videogame walkthroughs. Email: mgray@gamecola.net
That pretty much summed it up, especially the part describing the difficulty in determining distance. Tongue Twister Man, awayyyyyy!
Paper Mario….. A franchise that prides itself on 2d novelty… In 3d…. Face palm.
I regard SM3DL (Smeedle? Ah, whatever) the same way that I regard beef jerky:
I know, full-well, that I can and should eat higher quality beef products (e.g. hamburgers, steak, tacos) but sometimes all a brother wants is a quick fix.
As it stands, Smeedle is a pleasant enough mix of old school Super Mario as filtered through SM64 or SM Galaxy. The bite-sized level thing seems to be a nod to Smartphone Gaming – short little bursts of gaming that you can digest and then exit out of when you want to / need to. Compare this to the previous portable Mario outing (the original New Super Mario Bros), where, if you had to stop playing, you were left with two choices:
1) You closed the DS case and put the system in sleep mode, praying that A) the battery lasted until you got home because you forgot to charge it recently and B) that you didn’t bump the DS cart and cause it to eject from the DS, thereby losing all of your recent data, or
2) You hoarded your coins and used them strategically to unlock things (e.g. Mushroom Houses, alternate pathways) as a surrogate Save Game feature.
All’s I’m saying is this: the ability to save and quit a portable title should never be something I have to unlock by beating the game and I’m glad that *someone* at Nintendo figured that out between New Super Mario Bros and SM3DL.
As for Paper Mario, I dunno: Personally I like the idea of the backgrounds gaining depth and the whole thing taking on a true pop-up book presentation, *in spite* of the fact that it’s a series that prides itself on 2D novelty. But then I’m the kind of freak who really digs Magic Eye books and pointing out that the Magic Eye poster in Mallrats wasn’t even really a sailboat / schooner but rather just a bunch of shapes (triangles, circles, squares) so….
The main world is a piece of cake, but levels after world 8 drove me crazy. Especially the secret hidden level you unlock by going throught each level as Mario and Luigi, get the golden flag and all three special coins in each level. Damn that was hard!
The memes say all. :)
@rizziman33:
I’m with you, man. I thought the main challenge / campaign / whatever was a fast and easy playthrough. The Special Worlds / challenge levels, well, that’s another story altogether.
Honestly, I really don’t get what the gripes are all about. I thought the difficulty was fine. I mean, it kind of reminded me of Mega Man games – you could tailor the challenge somewhat to meet your needs. If all you wanted was to dash through the levels and get from beginning to end, you could do it. If you wanted to go after the 3 coins and get the golden flag on the flagpole, you might have to work a little harder for it.
I feel an argument could be made that Nintendo overdid the “Shadow Mario is chasing you! and OHSNAP YOU ONLY HAVE 30 SECONDS” combo in Special World 8 but, beyond that? I felt like they gave me my money’s worth.
Was the 3D depth effect disorienting? At first, maybe. I’d hardly call it “broken” or “game-breaking” or anything along those lines.
Reggie’s comment that Nintendo releases games and the fanbase responds with “Okay. Now what?” seems to hold true here. Evidently, they’re supposed to be releasing nothing but ground-breaking release after ground-breaking release. But whatever. I mean, it’s all right for Capcom to release fighting game after fighting game because they’re all so nuanced and balanced differently. It’s all right for Halo 4 because we finished the fight and now we need to start a new one so we can finish it again (I guess?). But additional Mario games that merely offer up new spins on old ideas?
GOOD SIR YOU HAVE GONE TOO FAR. YOU’RE RUINING VIDJAMAGAMES FOR THE REST OF US.
Whatever.
Wowsers, these comments are longer than the article itself!
About the 3D, I tried my hardest to play the game with maximum 3D, all the time. “It’s the way the game was designed to be played,” I told myself. But whenever I reached a tricky jumping section, I had to turn off the 3D to make it through. Otherwise, I’d just die over and over and over again.
I didn’t touch the bonus levels, actually. It seemed suspiciously similar to the “replay the entire game” gimmick that was the green stars challenge in Super Mario Galaxy 2. The REAL bonus world in that game was pretty good, though.
Anyway! I gave the game an 8 out of 10! That’s, like, a super high score.
Well today the hidden level formula for modern Mario games have become well known.
1) Beat the main world in no time
2) Unlock Luigi & Special world
3) Beat special world.
4) Go back to previous levels to find all the secrets. (Easier said then done)
5) Unlock he super secret hidden levels.
6) Get one hell of a thank you from Nintendo for beating the game.
*the
@Michael:
You’re not far off – I mean, a fair amount of the Special Worlds are stages you’ve seen before but with changes here ‘n there (I might draw a parallel to Mega Man 3’s Doc Robot Stages – similar territory but certain parts are different) but there’s plenty of original content too.
Without scientific data to back it up, I’m sure everyone’s mileage varies with the 3D field of depth, purely because our eyes are all varying degrees of functional. I, personally, didn’t really have any major issues with the 3D effect but I’m well aware that others have. I’m near-sighted with glasses, so…. *shrugs*….
So the picture memes were cynical, mocking, and pretty critical… and the score for the game is an 8?
What the hell’s going on here, Michael?