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Super Mario 3D World + Bowser’s Fury Review -
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Super Mario 3D World + Bowser’s Fury Review

Sandwiched between the sublime planet hopping of Super Mario Galaxy and the absurdist delights of Super Mario Odyssey, Mario’s Wii U outings are very much the black sheep – or perhaps more appropriately, the colourful cats – of the franchise. They’re getting another shot, however. First, New Super Mario Bros. U returned in a deluxe 2019 re-release, and now it’s Super Mario 3D World’s turn. And better still, the already decent-sized Wii U adventure is bolstered by an entirely new outing: Bowser’s Fury.

Both parts of the package certainly have their moments – and Bowser’s Fury in particular has a pretty interesting central hook – but by the time I was finished I still had an itch that Mario’s cat suit didn’t quite scratch.

The Spice of Life

Back in 2013, IGN’s reviewer praised Super Mario 3D World for being a joy to play, both in single player and with friends. Many of the points made in that review very much still stand, in particular the entertainment value from the fact that each level is typically built around a unique gameplay twist.

Much like the Galaxy games, this has allowed Nintendo’s designers to flit nimbly from idea to idea. In one level platforms appear and disappear in time to music. In another, players use the gyro functionality to activate blocks themselves. There are levels with all sorts of fun concepts – playing in silhouette, walking on invisible tiles, steering through mazes of Futurama-style pipes, and navigating paths with panels that flip each time you jump. There’s even a level that pays homage to Super Mario Kart, complete with music straight from the SNES classic.[poilib element=”quoteBox” parameters=”excerpt=Nintendo%E2%80%99s%20designers%20flit%20nimbly%20from%20idea%20to%20idea…%20There%E2%80%99s%20even%20a%20level%20that%20pays%20homage%20to%20Super%20Mario%20Kart%2C%20complete%20with%20music%20straight%20from%20the%20SNES%20classic.”]

Power-ups add to the variety, giving Mario a cannon on his head, or allowing him to be cloned and tasking players with wrangling several of the portly plumber at once. Levels generally contain standalone micro-challenges too – short, single room set pieces that are one and done. And as is so often the way, Super Mario 3D World’s true scope – its full set of Worlds – doesn’t become apparent until well after you’ve “beaten” the game.

The visual design is also still a highlight. The environments are wonderfully vibrant, from the way shrubs and flowers bop along to the jaunty melodies that are apparently piped into each area, through to the impressive amount of variety between worlds. The suite of cat suit animations are also just so lovingly composed. Mario doesn’t need to wiggle his bum before he pounces, for instance, but the move is so much the better for that small detail, and that’s just one of many.

Schrödinger’s Cat

That said, playing Super Mario 3D World again now, the gameplay actually feels like a bit of an awkward fit for the presentation. Levels are viewed from fixed perspectives (that can often be shifted left or right) and generally have limited depth, giving you a path to follow but only so much room to move within it. This has a few unfortunate knock-on effects.

Despite sharing some design principles with Super Mario Galaxy, for instance, 3D World feels a lot more staid. Of course, there’s a pretty big difference between Mario running all the way around planetoids and the levels here, in which he’s basically trapped in a set perspective diorama, but 3D World’s presentation means that even transitions lack the dynamism and excitement that naturally come hand in hand with galaxy-hopping. To get from one playspace to another in the Galaxy games, for instance, you literally rocket off the surface of the world you’re on and zoom through space, spinning and twirling and collecting Star Bits as you go. In 3D World you, erm, go into a box… and then come out of a box in a different place. At best you fly slowly through a glass pipe. It just doesn’t feel as effervescent as Mario’s most freewheeling outings.

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Of course, the designers have tried to think outside the presentational box in a few different ways. The introduction of the cat suit is perhaps the most notable, as it lets players scale walls, reinventing the playspace and revealing secrets or unseen paths that were previously out of sight. Heck, you can even run right up the flagpole at the end of each course. It’s a liberating inclusion, expanding your possibilities in ways that throwing fireballs and boomerangs or swiping enemies with your tanooki tail doesn’t. Other power-ups also transform traversal, whether you’re soaring up into the sky using a Propeller Box or stomping through the scenery after chomping down on a Mega Mushroom.

Even so, I just don’t enjoy Super Mario 3D World’s gameplay as much as other entries in the series, and I think that has a lot to do with this game’s heritage. The foundation of this design was born in Super Mario 3D Land for 3DS, after all, and in that context it excelled. The constrained scope of levels suited handheld play and the limits of the hardware well, while the set perspective and movement restrictions gave Nintendo’s designers the perfect diorama-like design to showcase the system’s 3D screen. It worked wonderfully.

On console, it’s a rather different story. Without the depth perception enabled by a 3D screen, the forced viewpoint makes spatial awareness harder to judge than it would be in a purely 2D design or in a 3D game with full camera control. As such, 3D World doesn’t feel as intuitively precise as other Mario games.

Co-Op Catfight

This feeling is compounded when you throw additional players into the mix. Yes, just like the New Super Mario Bros. games for Wii, Wii U, and Switch, up to four people can quest together – in this case choosing from Mario, Luigi, Princess Peach, Toad and eventually, Rosalina. The result is chaotic and fun, but also haphazard; some levels and challenges simply don’t work that well with four people running around in them.

Multiplayer is a mixed bag in other ways, too. The core of the experience is meant to be a push and pull between cooperation and competition. On one hand you’re working together to get to the end of the stage but, on the other, you’re also fighting to get the most points and win the crown… that you then get to wear in the next level. This tension can be fantastic – one minute I’d leave a power-up for a friend to help them out, the next I’d pick them up and try to toss them off the map.[poilib element=”quoteBox” parameters=”excerpt=Multiplayer%20is%20chaotic%20and%20fun%2C%20but%20also%20haphazard%3B%20some%20levels%20and%20challenges%20simply%20don%E2%80%99t%20work%20that%20well%20with%20four%20people%20running%20around%20in%20them.”]

One of the places where it fails, however, is when the shared pool of lives runs out and prematurely ends the fun. Why have lives at all? As long as one player remains on solid ground then why can’t we keep trying to bumble our way through a level? That would suit the random, anarchic-feeling gameplay a whole lot more, and it would also mean that less experienced players aren’t punishing the whole team if they die over and over.

The differences between playable characters is more of a negative than a positive, too. It’s rare that you’d want to use Toad, for instance, who is fast but can’t jump very high. Luigi, too, can be tricky if there’s a lot going on, as you need to judge both his larger jump and the fact that he skids to a stop. Rosalina, on the other hand, is just broadly better. Not only does she have a spin attack out of the gate, but she can basically double jump. Yes, she’s the slowest and yes, she’s the only character to lose her core abilities when she’s wearing a suit, but still, she’s always the first draft pick.

The solution to this would be to simply let multiple people use the same character and then put them in different colours, but that’s not an option. Of course, the deeper solution is to have levels designed specifically for multiplayer outside the main storyline. That’s perhaps too much to ask for a re-release like this, but it’s disappointing no improvements were made at all. Even the scoring system, in which whoever gets to the top of the flagpole basically insta-wins, is unchanged.

Instead, the main change to multiplayer is the introduction of online play, which I wasn’t able to test ahead of release. And to be honest, if I was going to play this again with other people, I’d want to be in the same room, anyway.

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Nein, Lives

Playing with friends is still fun for a change of pace, but 3D World’s levels feel much more appropriate for one – or possibly two – players. I mostly played it solo and for the most part stuck with Ol’ Reliable, Mario, then Rosalina once I’d unlocked her. There isn’t a great deal of impetus to use the other characters beyond curiosity and obtaining the occasional character-specific stamp.

Speaking of the stamp system, it’s been integrated with the game’s new Snapshot mode. This will be familiar to anyone who’s played Super Mario Odyssey, and lets you pull up a camera-style interface, then zoom, pan, and switch filters to get your shot just right. The addition of stamps into the mix is a great concept, but works a lot better in Bowser’s Fury, in which you can more easily frame a scene. In 3D World you’ll often not be able to move the camera at all. It’s also a little disappointing that you can only rotate stamps, not flip them to face the other way or adjust their size. There’s quite a low limit on how many stamps you can have on screen at once, too.

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Snapshot mode is a good addition, but I would have liked to see Nintendo make some single player quality of life changes too. Player lives feel really anachronistic at this point, for instance, and only get in the way of actually enjoying the game. Structurally, their purpose is to force you to restart a level from the beginning if you run out of lives, as opposed to from the checkpoint, but the upshot of this system is that I’d deliberately kill Mario to get back to five lives (not nine, curiously) instead of starting a new level with only one or two lives, just to avoid the possibility of losing checkpoint progress. That doesn’t seem like the kind of player behaviour Nintendo would want. There’s no good reason not to have infinite restarts from the mid-level checkpoint, either, as getting to the end of a course generally isn’t meant to be the biggest challenge – it’s finding all three Green Stars and the stamp.

Then again, maybe Nintendo’s designers would make the argument that hitting the Game Over screen refreshes the slot machines (which essentially grant extra lives) and the Toad Houses (which let players stock up on power-ups) in the overworld. Sure, but all that shlepping around is just unnecessary busywork, and the Toad Houses in particular feel like a misstep in the first place. Not only is there a fear of wasting what you get from these houses given they won’t reset very often, they highlight how much more fun – and challenging – 3D World could have been with a deterministic loadout system.

The way it currently works is you’ll go into a level in whatever state you finished the last level. If you happened to be mini-Mario, for instance, have fun, because you’re starting the new level as mini-Mario (and for the record, there’s no other instance in which this happens – in all other circumstances you start as regular-sized Mario). Alternatively, if you happened to finish the last level in the cat suit, with a tanooki suit in reserve, well, aside from having extra movement and combat options, you can also take a bunch more hits in the next course. I understand that the designers want you to roll with whatever you’ve got, and also that they’ll provide appropriate power-ups within each level (although, if you’re mini-Mario, enjoy the mushroom in place of something better), but rather than it being a fun test of skill, it instead feels punitive.[poilib element=”quoteBox” parameters=”excerpt=It%E2%80%99s%20a%20real%20shame%20Nintendo%20didn%E2%80%99t%20take%20this%20re-release%20as%20its%20chance%20to%20address%20the%20elements%20that%20create%20friction%20throughout%20the%20game%20design.”]

I can’t help but imagine a (3D) world in which you can choose your loadout before every level. Each slice of gameplay would start on an even playing field, and experimenting with different suits could be part of the challenge, and even tie into getting specific collectables. In essence this is how Bowser’s Fury works – you build up a stockpile of power-ups and can basically switch between them at will. It’s much more fun.

I also would have liked to see Nintendo take inspiration from Super Mario Odyssey’s assist functionality. With that option on, kids could find their platforming feet, secure in the knowledge that if they fall into the abyss the game will just pop them back up onto solid ground. 3D World has an Invincible Super Leaf pickup which appears once you’ve failed a level enough times, but this only protects players from enemies, not from falling to death… which is the bigger hurdle on a lot of courses. A change to this would have been great for beginners and made a huge difference to multiplayer too.

As it stands, Super Mario 3D World has some great levels and challenges, but I don’t think it fully succeeds as either a single player or multiplayer game, and it’s a real shame Nintendo didn’t take this re-release as its chance to address the elements that create friction throughout the game design.

The Cats and the Furious

So that’s one half of the package. The other is Bowser’s Fury, a whole new, much more contemporary-feeling adventure. Gone is the concept of lives, and the fixed perspective, replaced by an open world with full camera control. The other playable characters have also been jettisoned, but Mario is joined by Bowser Jr. and together they’re trying to save the new setting of Lake Lapcat from a malevolent black goop that has taken hold of the Koopa King.

The most significant mechanic tied to this setup is that every few minutes Bowser explodes with fury, sending the world into an apocalyptic storm in which glowing blocks drop from the sky and his towering form breathes sweeping jets of fire, decimating anything in their path – occasionally including the frame rate. This rage state will subside in a few minutes, but can also be overcome by directly confronting Bowser or by reaching a Cat Shine – the game’s main collectable. Most of these are found at the lighthouses dotted about the world.

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After the Lake reverts to sunshine and blue skies, Bowser settles back down into the muck, but soon begins to slowly rise up, giving you a visual indication of how close he is to unleashing his fury once again. It’s an interesting mechanic given that we’re accustomed to open worlds that largely let us set our own pace and agenda. Here, however, Bowser’s Fury is unleashed so regularly that you have to be ready to deal with it at almost any time. It’s not always welcome – occasionally ruining whatever you were doing – but can be used to your advantage. Blocks with Bowser’s face on them can only be destroyed by his furious fire breath, for instance, while the blocks that drop from the sky can actually make platforming challenges easier in the midst of the maelstrom. It’s quite cool seeing how the world is reinvented whenever Bowser blows his top.

That said, I did get a little tired of the constant interruptions, and if you’re not within easy reach of a Shine, it quickly becomes apparent that fighting Bowser is an extremely repetitive way to restore the world. This battle is heavy on Godzilla vibes but extremely light on excitement and gameplay. It doesn’t evolve much over the course of Bowser’s Fury, either, and is really just the icing on a pretty half-baked cake as far as bosses are concerned. In 3D World in particular they’re about as gripping as a book written entirely in Lorem Ipsum.

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It’s-a Meme

King Koopa’s role may be a mixed blessing in Bowser’s Fury, but Bowser Jr. is absolutely a net positive. Younger players can set him to help them by taking out enemies and collecting coins, while purists can turn that off altogether, only using Bowser Jr. when they direct him using the gyro functionality. His main abilities are interacting with question mark walls and being Mario’s power-up caddy. It’s this latter function that really elevates Bowser’s Fury, as it lets you stockpile power-ups and call on him to deliver specific suits as you need them. It turns bonus abilities into tools you can experiment with and use as you see fit, and is much more player friendly than the system in 3D World.

Each lighthouse on Lake Lapcat plays host to five Shines, and the layout around each location changes depending on the Shine you’re gunning for. It’s a familiar system, but a good way to pack more gameplay into a small area. The moment to moment action, however, doesn’t contain too many surprises; you’ll be using the same power-ups and suits from 3D World, and a number of challenge types are repeated across the archipelago. That said, the world steadily opens up as you make progress, so there are always new locations or edges of the map to explore. Getting around is good fun, too, thanks to the ability to hitch a ride with the dinosaur Plessie any time you’re near water. Which is all the time.[poilib element=”quoteBox” parameters=”excerpt=The%20moment%20to%20moment%20action%20in%20Bowser’s%20Fury%20doesn%E2%80%99t%20contain%20too%20many%20surprises%3B%20you%E2%80%99ll%20be%20using%20the%20same%20power-ups%20and%20suits%20from%203D%20World.”]

I enjoyed my time with Bowser’s Fury but it ultimately doesn’t feel that essential. This is a Mario title driven more by gimmicks than gameplay. There’s no better example of this than the fact that almost every single creature, enemy, and object in Lake Lapcat is part cat. Goombas are furry, with cat ears and tails. Flowers are shaped like paws and shrubs have cat ears. It’s all extremely silly, and I’ll be the first to admit that it does give the game a fun flavour, but it doesn’t add anything in terms of gameplay, and that’s surprising. The best Mario games take their goofy ideas and tie them into core mechanics that directly impact puzzles and platforming. Here, it’s largely window dressing.

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