Better late than never right? No? Well OK, sorry. The reason it's taken so long to write the game review for "New Super Mario Bros. 2" is because it takes an absolute age to write that title! Just kidding, the truth is I have taken so long to write this because I've been having so much fun playing it!
Now, while that may sound like a good thing (because it is) I do have some negative points, first of all let me tell you how easy the game is. Honestly, it makes my 6 year old self think I was completely incompetent at playing games when I was younger, but I wasn't! The fact of the matter is, "NSMB2" is just much easier than Mario games of old, I'm not saying there isn't a challenge for the seasoned fans of chubby plumbers, but overall if you are good at Mario games you'll be steaming through those levels like nobody's business, and if you aren't? Well if you die enough times on a level you are given the opportunity to use the golden raccoon suit, which basically makes you invincible to everything but falling off the level. So failure isn't an option really.
Let's take a minute to look over some other negative points, 'variety' there isn't much, apart from the staples like 'fire flower' and 'super mushroom' there isn't really a lot of new items, the 'mini mushroom' and 'mega mushroom' make a welcome return but are hardly used. The only new addition to the roster of power-ups worth mentioning is the 'golden fire flower' which turns Mario into a Midas/Terminator hybrid, smashing bricks and bad guys all over the show, very cool indeed. But apart from that it's business as usual with the controls being as tight as always and the charm factor cranked up to 11. Oh and I should really mention the coins, everybody likes coins right? Well you'd better, because you'll be collecting a whole lot of them! One million to be exact.
But you will be after the hefty sum of 1,000,000 golden coins this time around and there are many ways of achieving this (HINT: Golden Fire Flower might help.)
A new feature which I've yet to try out is 'coin rush' you post the fastest times on 3 random levels to your "streetpass" in the game and when you and a stranger or friend pass each other in the street with your 3DS's their coin rush challenge will show on your game and yours on theirs, then you can try to beat the times they posted and hope they're failing miserably at trying to beat yours.
New Super Mario Bros 2 Game Review Conclusion
So where does this leave us?
Well I know it seems like a lacklustre review as this is the first time I've reviewed a Mario game for my place of work. But I've been reviewing Mario games since I was a kid, every game that's released is compared to it's predecessors and it's no different with Mario, but after 25 years the reviews will start to sound stale for the same franchise, but let me tell you something. This game is really fun and a franchise doesn't get to be over 25 years old if it isn't really fun to play. So don't worry about it, the game wasn't broken so they didn't need to fix it, they've made a few tweaks here and there and shined it with more polish and gave it the golden seal of approval.
Video Game Visuals - 85/100 (Crisp, colourful, bouncy and beautiful. Only let down by the weird 3D effect which blurs the background on purpose when turned on, to add the effect of depth. Which seems kind of pointless on a device capable of 3 dimensions! Better played in 2D in my opinion.)
Video Game Gameplay - 90/100 (It's Super Mario! Nintendo wouldn't release a Mario game that doesn't have tight and responsive controls. Other than that it is business as usual with cruelty to turtles and a careless disregard to health and safety by eating strange mushrooms. Overall, the way it should be but it loses a few points for being just a little bit too easy.)
Video Game Sound - 90/100 - (Suspiciously catchy jingles will make sure you're humming and whistling the tunes from the game for hours after you have stopped playing, so you sing them in public until it spreads like a virus, making everyone buy Mario. In short, the music is toe tapping, sugar coated goodness.)