{"id":59776,"date":"2019-02-03T03:09:10","date_gmt":"2019-02-03T10:09:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.taterboy.com\/blog\/2019\/02\/game-review-super-mario-bros-u-deluxe-for-nintendo-switch-offers-a-lot-of-mario-for-the-money\/"},"modified":"2019-02-03T03:09:10","modified_gmt":"2019-02-03T10:09:10","slug":"game-review-super-mario-bros-u-deluxe-for-nintendo-switch-offers-a-lot-of-mario-for-the-money","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.taterboy.com\/blog\/2019\/02\/game-review-super-mario-bros-u-deluxe-for-nintendo-switch-offers-a-lot-of-mario-for-the-money\/","title":{"rendered":"Game review: \u2018Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe\u2019 for Nintendo Switch offers a lot of Mario for the money"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Back in 2013 when it was released, New Super Mario Bros. U <\/em>got kind of a complex reaction from fans. On the one hand, it\u2019s a classically styled Mario <\/em>game that you can play with up to three of your friends locally and simultaneously, cooperating to hop and bop your way across the Mushroom Kingdom. It\u2019s exactly the kind of couch co-op for which the Wii-U, and subsequently the Nintendo Switch, seemed to be designed.<\/p>\n

On the other, it\u2019s also a good way to start a fight. In NSMBU<\/em>, players can scoop up extra lives and power-ups before anyone else can get to them, bounce off each other, punt one another into pits, or on certain stages, scroll up or right so quickly that your slower partners get crushed in the level geometry. It\u2019s still fun with the right amount of patience and understanding, but it\u2019s a lot like playing Monopoly<\/em>; unless everyone\u2019s at about the same skill level and in the right kind of mood, it\u2019s a lot more likely to end when someone gets frustrated and quits.<\/p>\n

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Which is a shame, because NSMBU <\/em>is the kind of classic Mario <\/em>platform game that\u2019s built on equal parts nostalgia and raw challenge. It\u2019s definitely here to celebrate the franchise, as it\u2019s full of nods to the older games, but it\u2019s not content to just <\/em>be a nostalgia trip. It\u2019s got more than its share of new gimmicks, power-ups, stages, enemies, and challenges, with some of the best level design in the business and a well-tuned but steep difficulty curve.<\/p>\n

In Mario <\/em>terms, it sits on a sort of odd border between Super Mario Bros. 3 <\/em>and Super Mario World<\/em>. I had no idea there was an argument between the fans of the two games until relatively recently, but\u00a0NSMBU\u00a0<\/em>tries to split the difference. It\u2019s got the verticality of\u00a0SMB3<\/em>, with lots of high jumps and hovering, with some of the tricky pinpoint jumps of\u00a0SMW,<\/em>\u00a0an additional gimmick in the form of arc-lengthening spin jumps, and the presence of Yoshi. It\u2019s easy to learn, surprisingly tricky to master, and offers a lot of challenges that are tough without being entirely unfair.<\/p>\n

If you\u2019ve been playing these games for most of your life like I have, it\u2019ll remind you why. If you haven\u2019t, it\u2019s a good example of why Mario games are popular. Mario didn\u2019t end up as the face of Nintendo for no reason, after all.<\/p>\n

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New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe <\/em>for the Nintendo Switch (US$ 59.99) is a compilation title that joins together NSMBU <\/em>with its DLC, New Super Luigi U<\/em>, with a few tweaks<\/a>, a couple of minigames and additional challenges. It\u2019s a little <\/em>ballsy for Nintendo to offer a 6-year-old game at full retail price, even with its DLC included, but there is, at least, a lot <\/em>of game here.<\/p>\n

As usual, it starts with Princess Toadstool being kidnapped, but this time, Bowser opens the attempt by picking up Mario, Luigi, Toad, and the new character Toadette and throwing them halfway across the Mushroom Kingdom. A tree full of Super Acorns breaks their fall, however, and followed by a passing Nabbit, they immediately set back out across eight worlds of tricks, traps, pits, hidden coins, and assorted dangers to get back to Peach\u2019s castle and save her.<\/p>\n

You can switch between any of the five playable characters from the game\u2019s world map, who share an item stockpile, but who have their own independent extra lives. Toadette, who takes up the slot that used to belong to the generic second Toad from the original\u00a0NSMBU<\/em>, has been added to the game as an explicitly easy-mode option. With the acquisition of a new power-up, the Super Crown (which you may remember from that time last year where it accidentally took over the Internet<\/a> for a while), she transforms into Peachette. As Peachette, she can double-jump, float slowly in mid-air, and survive a single drop into a bottomless pit without losing a life. You still lose the power-up if you take a hit, but on many stages, using Peachette still feels a lot like cheating.<\/p>\n

What feels entirely <\/em>like cheating is using Nabbit<\/a>, who I\u2019d always thought was supposed to be some kind of refugee Rabbid<\/a>. Instead, he\u2019s a thieving rabbit (Nab + Rabbit = Nabbit) who first shows up in single-player mode as a thief you have to track down. If you play as Nabbit, you can\u2019t use any power-ups, but you also can\u2019t be damaged by contact with enemies. Nabbit either passes right through them or bounces harmlessly off them. It trivializes a lot of stages, since Nabbit can plow through enemies like they aren\u2019t there most of the time, but since he\u2019s limited to just jumping and running, he also can\u2019t get to a lot of the secrets. He can clear stages like nobody\u2019s business, but if you want to collect all the Star Coins and unlock the secret levels at the end of the game, you\u2019ve got to go back with another character.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

You can swap from NSMBU<\/em> to the New Super Luigi U <\/em>DLC via the main menu, which remixes the game a bit. It was released back in the day as part of the Year of Luigi<\/a> celebration, celebrating gaming\u2019s favorite second banana on his 30th anniversary.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s basically the same game as NSMBU,<\/em> but remixed and changed up. Mario\u2019s gone entirely, because this is Luigi\u2019s show, to the point where all the characters in it jump like Luigi usually does. New Super Luigi <\/em>feels like NSMBU<\/em> with a low-gravity cheat; all four characters can jump about half a screen straight up, and feel like they\u2019re floating the entire time. Each level is also shorter, more packed with enemies, and has a much shorter timer, however. It\u2019s not quite a challenge mode so much as a remix, altering the entire rhythm of the game all at once.<\/p>\n

You can also play a couple of minigames, time attack modes, and various challenge levels from the main menu. There\u2019s one, Coin Boost, that feels like it\u2019s meant to be a nod to the mobile game Super Mario Run<\/em>, where a level automatically scrolls faster and faster as you collect more coins. It offers an entirely new sort of experience from the base game, where you have to abandon any attempts at precision in order to simply move as quickly as you can, but it didn\u2019t do much for me.<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n

New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe<\/em> is a new potential lease on life for one of the lower-profile Super Mario Bros. <\/em>games, which before now, was stuck on the Wii-U. Playing it alone, it\u2019s equal parts flashback and iteration, combining new tricks and features with a lot of the time-honored gameplay that put Mario on the map in the first place.<\/p>\n

Playing it with friends \u2026 well, it\u2019s a good way to see just how strong your friendship actually is. If you\u2019re still speaking to each other after an afternoon of accidentally knocking each other into bottomless pits, then you can rely on these people no matter what. You can even hand a little kid Nabbit, so while the rest of you are bouncing off each other and flying into Piranha Plants, the kid can run around stealing everyone\u2019s power-ups with no real fear of defeat.<\/p>\n

Still, this is Mario<\/em>. It\u2019s the old-school sort of platform game that Nintendo built part of its initial empire off of, honed to a razor\u2019s edge, with a colorful sweetness that covers up a slowly mounting challenge, and split up into easily-digestible stages for easy portable play. It\u2019s probably a little too expensive for what it is, the minigames don\u2019t really add much, and the multiplayer is a good way to start an argument, but the core of New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe <\/em>is rock-solid. Hour for hour, you\u2019ll get your money\u2019s worth here.<\/p>\n

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Back in 2013 when it was released, New Super Mario Bros. U got kind of a complex reaction from fans. On the one hand, it\u2019s a classically styled Mario game that you can play with up to three of your friends locally and simultaneously, cooperating to hop and bop your way across the Mushroom Kingdom…. Read the full article…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":59777,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[174,377],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-59776","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-games-media","category-gaming"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t