9.4/10 – 17 hours?
Review as written on 11/10/23
Never been more proud to be a Mario fan. This is what I’ve always wanted 🥹.
2D Mario is back, and it feels even better than I could have imagined. Still some things this game needs to work out, but this is a STRONG platformer.
My love of Mario truly started with the original New Super Mario Bros for DS (new soup); the first side scroller I ever played, and the first game I 100% completed. The creativity and replayability of the title enamored my young brain, and is still a fun revisit now. This magic did not last long, as after the Wii New Soup entry, the formula grew quite stale. There was little to offer in each subsequent platformer, and the old school platformer aspect of Mario started to feel like an afterthought. Boy am I glad that’s over now.
Super Mario Bros Wonder delivers so much in nearly all aspects, and knocks it out of the park. However, allow me to be a stinko and start with some of my issues with the game. The main issue lies with the bosses, which do feel undercooked. The “fight the same boss 6-8 times per castle” syndrome from all previous modern 2D Marios still remains here, fighting a cool looking but pushover Bowser Jr with slight differences per battle. The only variety is found with some Castles having no boss, wow. I would also like for more badges to be useful, as I found myself only using the boosted spin jump, and the dolphin kick for underwater levels.
These issues start to shrink into near insignificance when you sit down and take in the rest of the game. The sheer attention to detail and creativity is enormously abundant, from animations, level and enemy design, and the eponymous Wonder Flowers. Beyond that, however, simply playing the game feels so good! Everything you remember about 2D Mario controls remains, yet all feel smoother and easier than ever. The gameplay flow feels so good, and this meshes well with the new power ups. I did not expect to like them that much, as they all sounded pretty underwhelming. Bubble Flower? Republican Mario? No way that can be cool.
But they feel so damn GOOD! The bubble flower effortlessly wipes out anything in its path, walls be damned, and you can use the projectiles as platforms! That’s so cool! Elephant Mario looks cute and can spray water, but the trunk is surprisingly strong and can help clear bricks in front of you. Drill mario is fast and lets you bypass some barriers. It’s sick!
Then, when you pick up the Wonder Flower, you’ll never know what to expect. Even if a level seems to have a prominent gimmick, the flower cranks it up to 40. It’s so fun and so wild to traverse a wildly transformed level beyond my wildest expectations. The now famous Piranha Plant Parade is a good example: I was stunned at how random but memorable it was. “Who comes up with this shit??” THAT’S what’s so cool! It subverts your expectations so much,you don’t even notice how core gameplay doesn’t change much. You just get to go along for the ride and experience something, well, wonderful. More of a thrill than parts of TOTK (“Demon King? Secret Stones?” 🤓)
This, on top of the cool new enemies, music (mostly Petal Isles), beautiful backgrounds, and plethora of playable characters with loads of charm, and it feels like you’re at a museum of peak Mario. The open progression, variety of little challenges, appropriate difficulty in levels, and replayability feels like a culmination of everything Mario has learned throughout the years. The decade of waiting for a true next step in the franchise have paid off, and for me personally, I feel so fulfilled having enjoyed this game. 100% completion is a must.
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