I wasn't sure what to expect when I saw this title; while I'm a huge fan of the original Super Mario World, I was not a fan of the rather boring, Tetris-wanna be Dr.Mario. I was hoping it wasn't too much of one and not enough of the other.
To my surprise, this game is actually pretty good. I am suitably impressed, overall.
The game is played pretty much like Super Mario World-all the bells and whistles are there. Mario is playing his Dr. Mario alternate, and when Toad gets sick, Dr. Mario decides he needs to go visit him right away.
They changed the graphics for Dr. Mario, the mushrooms (into a crudely drawn heart), the fireflower (into an ok but slightly creepy glove, I assume they were going for a surgeon's glove but it looks like one of the dancing gloves from that old Mickey Mouse cartoon), the extra-life (green heart), Mario as a spitter (weird...Native American? inspired brown outfit with a headband), the leaf Mario (his cape is white, like his outfit.)...but not the leaf, for some reason. That stayed the same.
Yoshi makes his appearances here as well, but I have yet to find him in a level. The only place to pick up a Yoshi is in the hidden Pharmacy Levels. (I'd say SPOILER ALERT and stuff, but if you've ever played Super Mario World, you know what the red dots on the map mean and it's not that hard to find the keys, so....yeah.) You can pick up a Yoshi in each Pharmacy, along with power-ups. And you can go back in as many times as you want, so it's kind of like a free powerup buffet. Love it. Each Pharmacy level features a different colored Yoshi.
The levels, for the most part, are very well laid out and executed. You don't feel like you're simply playing a mish-mash of Mario games, you don't feel like you've seen this level before, and you aren't jarred by out-of-place, oddly matched graphics. Things almost look professional, with a few exceptions (like the mushroom/hearts, for example.)
The only place the game really fell down for me was the only truly unique part of the game, which is a shame. The idea was good, but...well. When you get to a Toad House, (entering them is the same exterior shot of you entering a Ghost House), you walk through the house and jump on the head of a sick toad, which transports you into...the Toad's body.
Which, pretty much, is disgustingly pink, sadly lacking in detail and texture, and populated with exactly the same bad guys, the same 'boss' battle, and the same weird, blobby pink and red background. The first time I did this, I thought hey, this isn't bad. About the sixth or so Toad House I entered I was thoroughly bored with Toad's insides. The boss battle is always the same: grab a power block, wait for the boss to go solid while dodging half-invisible floating invincible ghost "viruses", then hit him with the powerblock. Repeat twice more. They started changing up where and how the blocks were stacked, and made me do it underwater (a bit harder, considering you can't 'throw' the blocks), but there was no surprise and you knew exactly what you were doing.
The enemies in Toad's body are all these little germs-no matter what creature they were templated from, they all look the same. Some are goombas, some are turtles, some are Shy-guys or the shy ghosts...but they all look exactly the same.
This is all really unfortunate, because the idea was quite frankly great and they missed out on a good opportunity here. I wish they had been able to mix it up a bit, or at least make the level not so eye-tiringly ugly.
The other problem with this game is lags and glitches. The more creatures on the screen, the worse the lag-especially underwater, where it was a big problem. The further you go into the game, the worse these two issues seems to get, as well. The boss battle against Kotie Pie Koopa (and yes, it bothers me very much that they misspelled Cootie, but it's even worse in the next world where all the "mountain" levels are spelled "Mountian") is so glitched that it's almost hard to kill her. Almost.
For the numbers:
Graphics: 9
They did a very good job blending different Mario themes and worlds and games into this game. Things look like they belong together, for the most part, and nothing jarred you. In a few levels, I thought they did more than good-a few levels are actually really great. No where did I feel that the graphics were forced or unnatural.
Sound: 9
That's not really fair; I love the original Super Mario World themes, and they pretty well stuck with them the whole game. The sounds otherwise were a bit odd sometimes' spitting fire sound a bit like coming out of a very small pipe, for example.
Addictiveness: 8
I'm going to rate this a little lower than I would Super Mario World, and the reason is two-fold. One is that this game doesn't have nearly as much to do (only one hidden area a world, no P-Switches, no Star Road...) The other reason is the Toad House levels. It gets boring doing the same thing over and over, and just because you rearrange things doesn't mean it's any less boring, guy.
Story: 9
Glory Be! A Mario game with an actual story! You can tell this wasn't made by Nintendo. (Just kidding, I love you Nintendo.) Mario's tracking down the cause of the sickness. It's not a novel, by any reason, but it's more than most Mario games have. And not one mention of peach anywhere yet.
Depth: 8
As I said in the Addictiveness score, this game just isn't as big. It's still a lot of fun, but your path is mostly purely linear and you don't have a lot of side-stuff to worry about. It's still plenty long, and there are a good amount of levels on each map, so you won't breeze through it, but I doubt you'll spend half as much time on the game as you did the original.
Difficulty: 7
Surprise! A hack that doesn't ramp up the difficulty to insane levels! They should get some kind of award. This game isn't any harder, really, than the original it was hacked from-there are tricky levels, and there are cake levels, and for the most part it's hard enough to be fun but not make the casual gamer break into noisy tears. The lag issues make some levels far more difficult than they should be, and they have a tendency to throw a ton of bad guys at you, but you shouldn't have any trouble with it if you could play Super Mario World.
Overall: 8.5
I have to say, I liked this game. It's currently at pause in the RGR on the fifth level, and I'm planning on playing it again after I post this review, so you already know I think it's great. If you've beaten Super Mario World and you want to keep playing, I encourage you to give this game a try. Hopefully you like it as much as I do.
|
User Notice 
Beastmode64 is Offline
| ID: 729210 | 24 Words
Beastmode64 is Offline
pacman1755 is Offline
| ID: 729284 | 48 Words
pacman1755 is Offline
Jordanv78 is Offline
| ID: 729329 | 153 Words
Jordanv78 is Offline
