Review (but not a review): Super Mario Bros. Mashup (AKA New Super Mario Bros.)

Unfun fact: I'm listening to roygbivmlp's second Ponystep mix right now You should probably go fuckin' check that shit out.

OK heres my review (not a proper review) of New Super Mario Bros.
"But Tom, that game has already been out for 6 years"

And that's not exactly true, its only been out for 5 in South Korea and 3 in China, HA! 'Tards.

So yes, NSMB, been out in most of the world since late spring/early summer '06 and moved almost 29.1 million units worldwide. I bought this game less than a week ago and have since made it to world 3, do I like it so far you may be asking? Well yes and no at the same time, allow me to explain.

First let's start by saying what I like about the game, the concept seems fresh, it being 2.5D and whatnot, the music is pretty good too, everything about it seems new and exciting, as if it's only just been released, really love the new powerups in the game as well which are as follows:

• THE MEGA MUSHROOM

 

 The mega mushroom basically allows Mario to grow to a pretty impressive size and gives him temporary invincibility allowing him to kill/destroy anything in his path (including warp pipes) which eventually leads to Mario earning a certain number of 1ups depending on how much he destroys (the maximum being 5 mushrooms) and generally makes easy work of the more fiddly levels.

• The mini mushroom

Which is ironically a little bigger than the mega mushroom...not in-game though.

 The mini mushroom obviously does the inverse of the mega mushroom in that it makes you tiny and gives you the same damage resistance as normal sans-mushroom Mario has (i.e. 1 hit and its bye-bye Mr. Plumber stallion), it also allows you to jump a bit higher and the ability to climb into small gaps...also you have to stomp on enemies in order to kill them, think that's about it. And finally:

• The blue Koopa shell

Apologies for the pants-quality image, I'd find a better one but Wikia was the first site I found on my quest for images so I'm just using that.

It's a shame theres no real effect I could use for the blue shell, unless I just made the rest of the text blue, which is exactly what I'm doing. The blue Koopa shell allows you to sorta act like a normal Koopa shell in that you will slide when running and crouching/crouching on a slope (not too impressive mind you, you don't slide much regardless of what you do), crouching also grants you invincibility for the most part (some enemies will still be able to hurt you) and I've read that it improves swimming too but I've yet to use one in an underwater level so I cannot confirm that, I might come back at a later date and amend this when I've tried it.

So theres what I like about the game, now for what I don't like (or at least what I find to be a bit off). The one that's always there screaming at me, it looks like a bit like a Frankenstien'd Mario game (i.e. it seems like a lot of features have been borrowed from older Mario games). Examples include: The flagpole from the first game, the world map, item/1up hut and hammer bros. (they only seem to be relevant to 3 so I'm attributing it from there) from the third, the saved item from World (although you have to select it manually no matter what, also its touch only, which is a bit of a bummer cause there could have been a nostalgia factor to it if you could do it using select, which is unused throughout most of the game...I think...doesn't say anything in the manual about it so I assume it isn't used much, if at all) and the timed bits from Yoshi's island. Thats all imma list because this bit is already too long and under-punctuated (it's been a while leave me alone!). The other gripe I have about it is that it seems to lenient in terms of time, I've not played 1, 3 or World for a while but I'm sure the timers on those games tended to be shorter, I could be wrong though, and I cannot be bothered checking so this may very well be hideously inaccurate.

And now we come to the conclusion, as much as I want to hate this game I've gotta give this an 8/10, absolutely top class game, it has it's faults but then again so does Quake 2, Doom and Spyro 2, they're still fuckin' brilliant games.

If anyone's interested I will be doing a LP of New Super Mario Bros. 1 in a short while (Planning on starting Christmas Day 2012 and continuing from there every Saturday from there) so watch this space.

Anyway that's the end of a terrible review from a stale reviewer, sorry, I'll improve once I get back into the swing of things, I promise.

Buhbye for now!

TheWardy signing off.