Super Mario 3D Land, Part 2: The Game

Now that a bit of history has been covered, it is time to see how Super Mario 3D Land stands as a game on its own. There may be spoilers in my following ramblings, so be warned. Yet at the same time, is anyone really expecting Mario to do anything other than save Princess Toadstool? Yeah, I didn't think so.

Just as Super Mario Galaxy 2 streamlined level design, so too does Super Mario 3D Land. The levels in 3D Land are streamlined and lineal affairs, with Mario running towards and away from the screen in the best 3D seen on the system yet. Each stage also has three golden coins for you to collect, and if you are on the ball you can collect all three of them in your first run. 3D Land’s stages follow the design we saw in Super Mario Galaxy 2, and this abstract level design gives the player a great variety of levels, challenges, and things to see. But this variety only persists through the first 8 worlds of the game (essentially play-through 1), and soon you find yourself playing through the same stages over and over again as you adventure through the special worlds (play-through 2). While the levels do get different groups of enemies, power-ups, and even time limits during this second jaunt, replaying them over and over again does become a drag after a while.

For me, music can make or break a game for me and it was a pleasant surprise that Super Mario 3D Land has some of the best Mario music yet. The plethora of Mario 3 remixes, and how the music changes based on whether you’re above ground (clear and boisterous), underground (muffled and reserved, or a great remix of the classic underground music), or in the water (think of the typical tropical vibe video games have used throughout the years) is a great way to provide the player with a surprisingly immersive soundscape. After a year of amazing music, 3D Land was a nice way to cap everything off. This is a soundtrack I would like to get my hands on.

Players will have to get used to how Mario controls in 3D Land. While the game is presented in the same vein as Mario 64 and Galaxy 1 and 2, Mario doesn’t move nearly as fast as you would expect him too. The inclusion of a run button (Y) obviously lets Mario run around the levels faster, and as you would expect, using the momentum from running is key to helping Mario make many of his death-defying jumps. The return of Tanooki suit is something fans have been wanting ever since Mario 3 (leaf and all), and it plays just as you would hope and expect: Mario can extend his jump distance by using the suit to glide for short distances, and the iconic racoon tail can smash blocks to reveal hidden areas and dispose of those incessant goombas who block your path to the Princess.

Overall, Super Mario 3D Land is a joy to play. While the repetition of levels does drag the experience down somewhat during play-through 2, the overall experience is solid. The inclusion of a second, harder game after the initial credits is great and is something I hope more and more developers do (see Irrational’s 1999 mode for Bioshock: Infinte), and helps to give the game longer legs. Super Mario 3D Land is easily worth the price of admission, and is a great show piece of what the 3DS can do in the hands of competent developers. If nothing else, this has me excited to see what else Nintendo does with their 3DS and to see where this evolution of Mario will take the world’s favourite plumber.

Super Mario 3D Land, Part 1: A Brief History Lesson

Super Mario 3D Land is one of the best games available for the 3DS. Not since Super Mario World and Super Mario 64 has a Mario adventure really drawn me in. While I loved what Nintendo did with Mario Galaxy 1 and 2, I could never really get into them (mostly due to having other games on the go: see World of Warcraft and Team Fortress 2) despite them being amazing games. Yet here I am, on my way to having a perfect save file for Mario’s latest adventure. This is something which I have not done in a game in years, and why is that? What has Nintendo done to make this game draw me in so much, and keep me hooked for so long?

I view Super Mario 3D Land as the next natural step in Mario’s never-ending evolution. Over the next couple of posts I will try and justify why I feel Super Mario 3D Land is the most refined Mario experience yet, using more evidence that just how I feel about the game. But before I jump into what makes 3D Land such a great experience, I think a very brief look at Mario’s history in the polygon age is worthwhile. This brief history lesson will be used to help justify my love for the 3D Land, and help show the evolutionary process I have seen unfold with regards to Super Mario and my time as a person interested in games.

1996s Super Mario 64 was the game that showed the world not only how a 3D camera should be done, but more importantly, that it could be done in the new age of the polygon. It was a landmark title, and one that is still remembered fondly; hearing that music from Bomb-omb Battlefield still fills me with childlike glee. His adventure through the game’s huge sandbox world was what led the game industry’s charge into our modern polygonal age, and would give rise to the school of game design based around the idea of the collectable.

2002s Super Mario Sunshine for the GameCube iterated heavily on the 64’s sandbox world design: we got a large open hub world with Isle Delfino; 120 “Shine Sprites” to replace the 120 “Power Stars” from Super Mario 64; and we saw the triumphant return of everyone’s favourite dinosaur, Yoshi. Sunshine also saw the inclusion of the FLUDD, a water pack that augmented Mario’s powers and abilities. While the FLUDD added to the game by really increasing the scope of what Mario could do (allowing him to jump higher, hover in mid-air, and attack enemies from a distance without the help of a fire flower), Sunshine was much the same as 64. That is not to say it is a bad game, far from it, Super Mario Sunshine is one of the best GameCube games around, and is one I would highly recommend.

The DS then gave us the retro throwback of New Super Mario Bros in 2006 as well as a remake of Super Mario 64 that launched with the system in 2004. Aside from the inclusion of 3 other playable characters in Super Mario 64 DS (Luigi, Yoshi, and Wario), the remake was much the same game as its Nintendo 64 predecessor. New Super Mario Bros on the other hand brought many of us back to the days of the NES and the SNES, and was a window into the mechanical origins of one of gaming’s most recognized characters: gone were the sandbox levels seen in Mario’s recent console outings, replaced with the classic approach of individual side scrolling levels. I also think for a lot of people, New Super Mario Bros was a breath of fresh air. By the mid 2000s, the idea of in game collectables had reached its peak and a lot of us were tired of it (it was the original Assassin’s Creed that really turned me off the whole idea of collecting pointless crap), and with New Super Mario Bros focusing more on gameplay rather than collecting everything in sight, Nintendo brought Mario back to his roots.

Come 2007, we have Nintendo releasing the amazing Super Mario Galaxy and following it up 2010 with Super Mario Galaxy 2. We also saw the sequel to New Super Mario Bros, New Super Mario Bros Wii, get released in 2009. While Galaxy continued Mario’s evolution seen in 64 and Sunshine (large levels, tons of collectables, and a neat hub world with the space station) Galaxy 2 reduced and refined many of those tropes. The Space Station from Galaxy was reduced to a single ship (that you can explore if you want) that goes from level to level. The levels in Galaxy 2 are not meant to house six or seven stars like those seen in the original; instead we see levels build to challenge the player and the design shifting away from housing stars, and back to solid platforming. But arguably the biggest shift seen in the Galaxy series was the rise of the Nintendo EAD Group 2’s (the team who made Galaxy 2 and 3D land) “abstract” level design. Galaxy saw Mario race through the stars, run around tiny planets, and traverse a universe full of coins, blocks, stars, koopas, and goombas; all very Mario, but presented with a very different visual style.

While the Galaxy series was experimenting with what a Mario game could be, New Super Mario Bros Wii was as by the books as you could get; and people loved it. Sometimes there really is a reason why the classics are so revered, and the fact that the simple game play of classic Mario is still enough of a draw for people is testament to the quality of the original design of the Mario games (Super Mario Bros and Super Mario Bros 3).

It was this refinement of the levels seen in Galaxy 2, combined with the huge success of New Super Mario Bros Wii fundamental values, and the rise of the Mario Team’s abstract level design that paved the way for what would come to be Super Mario 3D Land.

Find Mii

So I’m weak and was unable to wait for Nintendo`s inevitable redesign of the 3DS. After playing a demo unit for a couple of minutes the other week while I was out with a friend, I picked one up. I have to say that I am really impressed so far with the little 3D machine, and with Pilotwings Resort; the 3D is a cool addition to handheld gaming, and I hope developers make good use of the feature. I am also impressed with the number of free games that came already on the system. Face Raiders is a ton of fun; using the room you`re in as the stage for the game is awesome, and the idea of collecting your friends and families faces to use in the game is something new. The AR Games are cool, if only for the novelty of shooting a dragon that has grown out of your desk; I hope that in future firmware updates, Nintendo will update the AR Games and release more cards. But what is really surprising are the games found in the Mii Plaza.

The Mii Plaza is an application where you can see all the Miis you have collected with the spot pass feature of the 3DS. Spot pass lets your system connects to others how might have their 3DS with them, and download things such as Miis to your own machine. The Miis you have collected on your travels can help you collect puzzle pieces that form 3D pictures, or you can use them in the little RPG included in the Mii Plaza called Find Mii.

In Find Mii, you take the Miis that you have collected through your travels, and use them to rescue the Mii that you first created on the system. This first Mii, the one you use as your system profile, was the king of the land and has now been captured. It is up to your army of little people to save the king, and collect a bunch of hats along the way. While I have not been able to try this out yet (I not collected any Miis yet), it seems like a fun little game. It is nice that Nintendo included it with the system; this could have easily been a title for the yet released e-shop for a couple of bucks.

I am excited by what I have seen of the systems capability, and I hope that Nintendo fosters an environment of experimentation with this new 3D technology. The addition of visual depth to the screen opens a whole new world for companies to explore, and I hope people use it in interesting and exciting ways.