New Super Mario Bros 2. - Mini Review / Mega Rant

Though Mario 3D Land and Mario Kart 7 were in the works, I bet someone at Nintendo was scared over the 3DS’ scarily bad start and thus a system-saving savior was needed. Enter New Super Mario Bros. 2. What’s sad is that whoever thought of making NSMB2 was a genius because like the DS and Wii installments before it, all it takes for a Nintendo system to take off is a NSMB title. It’ll sells for years, which can’t be said of most video games. And still seeing New Mario Bros. 1 for DS still sell hundreds of thousands to millions years after its launch in 2006, at its full $34.99 price, is nothing less than astounding. There’s a reason the box of this installment’s shows a lot of gold.

So my experience with NSMB2 started around twelve hours before I wrote this. I woke up at noon, had breakfast, surfed the web and decided then to start the game. Then, while curled up on my patio playing with the neighbor’s cat, I finally picked up my 3DS. Throughout the day I picked up and put down the system, playing just a little bit more. During this 11-hour on and off play session, I beat Bowser, played through the three “secret” worlds and unlocked most of the hidden stages, just enough time in my night to write this.

I felt déjà vu. When I played the first NSMB for the Nintendo DS, I walked away completely irritated over the experience due to Nintendo butchering the ideology of what makes the previous 2D Mario games, Super Mario Bros 1-3 and World, special. While the core level design and gameplay was rock solid, the worlds, the artstyle, the easy-to-notice hints - the entire ambiance was just utterly generic, like it was some by-the-numbers platformer. Although its console successor, New Super Mario Bros. Wii, was a definite step in the right direction with its frantic-but-fun couch co-op, these New Super Mario Bros. games needed a kick in the ass when it came to presentation. New Super Mario Bros. 2 was no exception.

So in NSMB2, Peach is kidnapped… again. You go through your generic grass, water, desert, dark lands... again. You run and jump on Goombas, Koopas and the seven Koopalings… again (though no Bowser Jr. - that’s a plus). They decided to bring back old favorites like Renzors and the Raccoon Tail, but this is the recurring pattern - that mostly everything in its core is recycled. Hell, all of the music was ripped from the previous two NSMBs. When I expect a new badass final Bowser theme (because he always gets one) and get NSMB Wii’s, you’ve really pissed me off.

I say, “mostly everything in its core is recycled,” because the developers added a metagame in the mix throughout the game’s experience. There’s a coin theme to the design because the game’s box (nothing in the game ironically) tells you to collect one million coins. This is achieved by spamming coins everywhere. Coins pop up if you touch the right place, there are coin-enhanced Fire Flowers which can turn nearby brick to coins and coin bonuses to enemies, and big gold rings which turns enemies gold and gives them a Midas Foot (coins trail their path). There’s even a Gold Rush mode, where you power through three levels with a single life trying to get coins and coin bonuses. It’s an interesting touch, but other than a coin counter on the bottom of the map screen, there’s no other achievement to perform this. I beat the game with 20,000 coins and I am not bothering to do such a useless and time-consuming task if there’s no goal on my end.

Maybe I’m just getting old and jaded, because if you aren’t a hardcore Mario fan like me, you’ll probably enjoy most of what’s here while given a decent challenge. In fact, its familiarity would be actually a sign of solace and safety that you’re getting into something easier to understand. Where if you want explore something, you’ll be rewarded and feel rewarded (see some bricks/coins/structures in a mirrored pattern? Jump between them.). Where your replayability is finding where the hell that alternate exit is and combing the level for its secrets. I understand I’m not the primary audience for the NSMB series, but it can if it gets a damn personality.

And that’s the problem I’m really having with NSMB2. It’s bad per se, it’s just not exciting, but that’s what gets to me the most. There’s no reason that a 2D Mario cannot have something fresh and new while feeling slightly familiar, like Super Mario World or Yoshi’s Island did in the 90’s. It’s weirder that while Nintendo uses the same layout for NSMB, the 3D Mario games are blowing them out of the water in terms of reinvention and style. Super Mario 3D Land took those familiar Mario tropes, but built a whole new way of playing 3D Mario titles with a mix of the sidescroller blended in a 3D plane. Super Mario Galaxy 2, while a traditional 3D Mario, is my favorite game this generation because of its amazing art direction, pixel-perfect controls, it’s fair-but-challenging difficulty and inventive power-ups that made the gameplay feel newer. These two games represent what Mario games should feel like, but NSMB2 does none of that - it feels rushed and forced. Its other modes, like Gold Rush and it’s last-second attempt of 2-player co-op, are unappealing add-ons to a game that has no personal replay value. It feels so rushed that even the stereoscopic 3D effect is badly implemented, on a supposed system seller of a stereoscopic 3D system.

Come on Nintendo, give me something to latch to with the NSMB series. Maybe we can experience some new artstyle or some really unique power-ups that’ll change the way we play. Do something drastic, like how Super Mario Bros 2 (Mario USA, Doki Doki Panic, whatever the hell you want to call it) is incredibly different than Mario 1 and 3. Hell, if you want to recycle, do something we haven’t seen reused since Super Mario Bros. 2, because it’s really unique, stupid and fun. I feel at this point it’ll probably be impossible to ask for a Snifit. I don’t know why Nintendo thinks NSMB players don’t deserve more than hitting the same enemies in the same locales. On top of NSMB2, New Super Mario Bros. U is coming out for the Wii U’s launch later this year. Seeing that same personality as NSMB Wii will feel even staler when put side-by-side with something like Rayman Legends, another co-op-friendly platformer that furthered themselves since last year’s Rayman Origins.

To those who never saw a Snifit before. My point exactly.

The worst thing about it is that though NSMB2 is a short, unfulfilling experience, I respect its existence because it’ll drive the 3DS through its entire lifecycle. Though it’ll destroy the sales of the infinitely superior Super Mario 3D Land like how NSMB Wii dominated the sales of the gaming nirvana that were Super Mario Galaxy 1 and 2 combined, I can watch it burn its name on sales charts for years to come and not be terribly upset. That’s because just knowing that it’ll help fund future 3D Mario titles, developed my more talented and inventive developers, can make this lackluster title seem somewhat worth my money.