I am currently into playing Nintendo Mario games and I have recently completed 3D Mario World on the Nintendo Switch.
It seemed time to get the latest Mario game which was released in October 2023. Thanks to my sister and her family who bought this for me as a present.
Reviews were always good and it looked fun. Playable on the Nintendo Switch console only as a single player and multiplayer. A Nintendo exclusive.
My niece and I had a quick go playing the multiplayer yesterday. A fun but perhaps initially confusing experience as a lot is happening and the game animation and structure is quite different from the earlier Mario games. Though lots of nice touches with animation and musical sections with singing characters. It certainly put smiles on our faces.
When playing through the single player, the story is as you expect with Bowser up to mischief but this time the game is in the new Flower Kingdom and presents an opportunity for new enemy characters. Each of the areas consist of multiple different levels. Each level having a difficulty rating.
In my first impressions playing through, it does take a little getting used to and some levels are quite hard. At first I was a little “What’s going on?”. You can choose from lots of different playable characters though I tend to always play as Mario or Yoshi.
This time when playing, the collectables are all quite different. You still collect coins (100 gets an additional life) but also attempt to gain wonder seeds rather than the stars that you collect in some of the previous games. The wonder seeds then opening more courses with the number of wonder seeds being available to collect per course differing. You still of course have coins but also purple wonder coins to help unlock other areas.
When playing you also gather different action badges. So the special action badge that you play with can vary. In the early levels, you are introduced to a wall jump badge and gradually gain more badges/special abilities. This could be a good feature and hopefully it won’t become over complicated wondering which badge to select.
At time of writing, as I get used to all the different gameplay, I know it will become addictive, wanting to complete courses and gain all collectables. Already, the game keeps drawing me back for more as I get used to what you need to do.
The game is quite large and I know from experience will have a lot of replay value. The game retailing for about £40. This game also being portable will be good to play during downtime in futures holidays.
The animation of the characters is amazing. Lots of nice little extra touches like Mario grabbing his cap when going through pipes.
I’m looking forward to playing this game more. Hours of gameplay ahead I think! With an extended and long weekend, I should make some good progress playing through this game.
