The Armchair Game Designer

Here it is: the highest-rated game on my list, and the second-highest rated game of all time after The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, according to Gamerankings.com. Does the world’s favorite plumber truly live up to the hype? Or are these reviewers full of the very thing that ordinary plumbers would find themselves up to their ankles in, were they to actually descend strange green pipes?

INTRO:

• Relatively quick start, game file selection integrates well with Mii support for custom icons
• 2P intro seems shoehorned, stinks of ‘marketing afterthought’
• Storybook text/images are boring and unskippable
• Given control right away in a very brief zero pressure situation
• Bowser cutscene is pure cheese, but might appeal to kids and Mario canon freaks (if such people exist!) … also unskippable. (Would it have killed them to make story cutscenes skippable? It’s not like people play Mario games for the storyline. Oh no, Bowser kidnapped the princess again… what an UTTER SHOCK.)
• Intro requires only running, but can also grab stars without quite knowing why

GETTING GOING:

• Curve: Gives control right away but offers no real explanations, player is just sort of ‘cut loose’ to start… but all you need to know is how to move which should theoretically be fairly intuitive
• Feedback: Bunny/star offers guidance… typical tutorial
• Bunnies actually fairly difficult to catch, ensuring that mastery of the most basic skill, movement, is solid before anything else comes at the player
• Stars offer introductions as necessary… game mechanics introduced one at a time: moving, jumping, spinning, piece collecting, inside levels, grand stars, etc.
• Certain mechanics are never really explained, at least not in a “hey, definitely don’t forget you can do THIS” sort of way, such as certain advanced jumping mechanics. I believe it’s in the manual, but that shouldn’t be required reading.

FUN:

• A lot of ‘piece’ collection, nice smattering of long term goals (power/grand stars) with short-term goals (such as star pieces for launch stars, star bits for feeding hungry Lumas)
• Fanfare, sense of accomplishment in attainment of grand star
• Some ‘twitch’ gameplay requiring fast timing, but usually forgiving
• Allows itself to be unforgiving in challenges where failure does not = death (such as certain timed challenges)… ironically, death is not where frustration occurs, since it is easy enough to avoid dying that it always feels like the player’s fault. Yet some of the timed encounters left me swearing in frustration over the ‘unfair’ restrictions.
• Archaic “lives” system… but the game was easy enough that I never lost all of my lives, ever.
• Health system: enough life to survive a few mistakes, and the game is smart about offering ‘bonus health’ before a particularly grueling challenge.
• Yet the ‘down to one health’ sound became incredibly aggrivating
• Arbitrary rulesets, such as what will change the ‘sticking’ surface and direction of gravity, and where the camera is set vs. where it is adjustable
• Post-level wrap-up: scores tallied, items added, becomes a routine of accomplishment
• Surfing with Wiimote worked surprisingly smoothly
• The baffling fact that 1UP extra lives do not persist between game loads really cheapens the accomplishment of getting them in the first place

INTELLIGENCE:

• It seemed like the longer it took players to catch a bunny in one later section, the easier it became, but subtly so.
• Enemies: pattern-based, progressive difficulty on bosses… the fun is derived not from outsmarting enemies, but from finding and exploiting weaknesses in their pattern
• Puzzles: Variety of outer planets and inner planets, massive variety of puzzle types
• Creative thinking rewarded in a real way… “Hrm, what if I tried doing this?”-style thinking has actually been planned for, and often leads to rewards
• Microchallenges: always different, variations, within ruleset

VISUALS:

• Visual pans: movement between planets gives good idea of what to expect for what is to come, hints at puzzle to come, gives sense of ‘blast-off’, accomplishment
• Seeing planets in the distance gives a sense of long-term goals
• Flying into the level adds level of emotional engagement and excitement

IMMERSION:

• Wiimote controller showing up with a human hand sort of killed suspension of disbelief
• Fluidity of world: disparate unique worlds, art styles, mixed together by planet concept
• Levels change according to what star is being attained
• NO LOADS, or if there were, I could NEVER tell (i.e. they were masked extremely well)
• Absolutely seamless presentation, not a single hiccup and game rules could not be ‘broken’ due to creative exploitation

CAMERAS:

• Wanted ability to ‘right’ the world to Mario’s orientation instead of having Mario upside-down
• 1^st person camera of limited use, weirdly reversed Y-axis with no apparent way to change it
• Quick ability to get behind Mario
• Good start-of-level overview, points towards goals
• Camera positioning actually becomes a strategic exercise, as the right position will let your pointer “see” star bits
• Arbitrary when and how you could adjust the camera, which was sometimes a needless frustration

CONTROLS:

• Typical ‘Mario’-style 3d platformer controls: stick controls movement, d-pad controls camera, very few actual other buttons needed to perform actions, since most are done in tandem (or with a shake of the remote)
• Mistakes of motion usually felt like the player’s fault, not the game’s (with a few glaring exceptions below)
• Need to be pointing at screen for full benefit even though its only used for one thing
• Jumping system seems non-standardized, and the results of a jump are sometimes unpredictable
• Bad camera control options, reversed Y-axis with no way to change it in 1^st person view
• Mario “slides” after running stops, making it impossible to stop on a dime and robbing players of a certain amount of control
• Haphazard ‘throwing’ mechanic: sometimes things doesn’t go in the right direction, but it feels like the game’s fault, or at least the fault of the camera and control scheme, rather than the player’s

IDEAS:

• Full spatial freedom: Mario 64 was the first 3d platformer to give true three-directional control, and this game takes it a step further by offering gravitational control as well
• Open world concept to some extent, but moreso an open CHOICE concept: you don’t have to tackle every challenge to beat the game, but every single challenge is different and unique, so if you find one to be too tough, move on to another one

MEMORY:

Of all of the criticisms levied above, most are the result of nitpicking out of love. This game demonstrates incredible inventiveness and astounding variety. It plays with its concept of ‘turning things on their head’ and gravity creatively, it features a huge variety of different play styles and challenges that still feel part of one unified ruleset and control scheme. Its series of micro-challenges and leeway reduce big-picture frustrations and create nugget-sized morsels of pure fun.