Let's play this hot new game: Super Mario 64
Jun 27, 2009 9:45:57 GMT -5
Post by derboo on Jun 27, 2009 9:45:57 GMT -5
So the Nintendo 64 just dropped in price, from DM 399 to 299, so I finally could afford to get it, together with Super Mario 64 (since when do consoles get sold without Mario included? What a rip-off). Over are the weeks of constantly avoiding game magazines, to prevent them from spoiling my experience with the new Mario. As well over are the times my friends with Playstations can look down on me playing dated 2D-games on my SNES.
The manual has a cool picture where Mario gets his ass flamed by Bowser. Yeah, we knew Bowser is back from the early E3 presentation (which I couldn't manage to avoid). It seems Mario has a whole assload of moves, even more than Tomb Raider. He even can punch and kick his enemies. When did Mario become so violent?
Since I was looking forward to travel through the Mushroom Kingdom in 3D, I was first disappointed that you start directly in front of the castle, but it seems the entire Kingdom is contained in the castle, or rather inside of paintings Mario can jump into. Kinda weird.
There's three new Powers: One grows wings on Mario's hat, and thus replaces the cape from Super Mario World. Then there's an item that turns Mario into the Terminator, the last one divides Mario into his atoms, so he's supposed to be able to go through fences or the like. I can't help but think that the last two are mainly there to show off the hardware capabilities of the N64 - where's the fire flower, seriously?
Into the game, after having a chance to deform Mario's face in the title screen, we're coming out of a pipe in front of the aforementioned castle. There's some explanation by a Lakitu, who's supposed to be the camera man, we can freely roam the gardens, practice Mario's moves and enjoy the great atmosphere. We here the noise of the waterfall, and there's birds, butterflies and fishes. Only the trees are a bit weird, because they are not really 3D and seem to turn around with your viewing angle, like in Doom or shit like that. Inside the castle, there's Toad doing some more explaining. So we can only enter most doors after collecting enough stars, but there's a few we can enter immediately, behind one of which we find us the first painting.
So this is the Bomb world. There's a cool water-effect upon entering the painting, and we get a task "Defeat King Bob-Omb!". Inside, there's pink bombs we can talk to and black bombs and goombas to fight. Control's seem a bit iffy, Mario's acceleration seems off (especially many slopes are much more slippery than they look out to be), and it's hard to talk, read or grab things, often you'll just execute other moves, like punching. There's a lot of things to see, like one of those big cannonballs on a chain (much bigger than in SMB3), interesting platforms, cannons who shoot bubbles, and even a Koopa, whose shell we can use to go surfing. Awesome!
On to climbing the mountain. Now the camera kinda falls apart, because it feels reluctant to go to some certain angles, and it's hard to see what's behind the next corner. I experiment with the other settings, but none of them really helps. One is far too close to Mario, and the third setting is really quite similar to the first. This also proves to be a problem in later platforming, when certain inconvenient angles are forced upon you. You also can have a look around, without being able to move. When Mario goes to close to the wall, he starts hugging it, which is annoying. Because of the camera, I get hit by a huge marble, but instead of dying, I just lose some energy, which immediately gets replenished after collecting the coins that lie around everywhere. How are you ever supposed to lose a life in this game?
On top of the mountain (great view, btw) waits King Bob-Omb. Before the fight fool is telling us how to beat him. How convenient. So I ran behind him, grab him (after a few misses where Mario tries to punch him or slide through him instead), and throw him down the mountain, whereupon he just comes back and complains. So I guess I have to do it three times, as always with bosses in Mario games? I did it six times, without anything happening. Quite desperate, I just throw him in an arbitrary direction out of frustration, and see, it seems to hurt him. How in the world does throwing him onto the plateau more harm than droping him the whole mountain? WTF? Despite this totally silly game logic I beat him, earning my first star.
So there's only 15 levels in this game, but you can find six stars in each of them. There's tasks like collecting 6 hidden red coins, shooting yourself through rings in the air with a cannon, racing challenges, and the obligatory boss fight every once in a while. Levels sometimes change drastically with new tasks, but some of the tasks are really short, like freeing the cannonball on a chain we met 10 seconds into the first level, but so where some levels in previous Super Mario games, so I guess it will end up at a similar length. I can't help but wish the controls and especially the camera were more intuitive, but I'm having fun so far, and as we come to expect from a Mario game, there's a ton of crazy ideas. For example, in the second level, the well known man-eating plants have fallen asleep, so we have to sneak around them, or else we get eaten. The 3D world makes the platforming a completely new experience, while we're meeting a lot of the enemies we came to love to hate in previous games (no Yoshi, though, and also Luigi - and a 2-player mode, for that matter, is significantly missing in this game) I'm really looking forward to play more of it. And of the handful of N64 games that are out so far, its the only one that really interests me (not to speak of the fact that I'm broke now anyway, afte I bought the system and Super Mario), so I guess I'll be playing it a lot.
The manual has a cool picture where Mario gets his ass flamed by Bowser. Yeah, we knew Bowser is back from the early E3 presentation (which I couldn't manage to avoid). It seems Mario has a whole assload of moves, even more than Tomb Raider. He even can punch and kick his enemies. When did Mario become so violent?
Since I was looking forward to travel through the Mushroom Kingdom in 3D, I was first disappointed that you start directly in front of the castle, but it seems the entire Kingdom is contained in the castle, or rather inside of paintings Mario can jump into. Kinda weird.
There's three new Powers: One grows wings on Mario's hat, and thus replaces the cape from Super Mario World. Then there's an item that turns Mario into the Terminator, the last one divides Mario into his atoms, so he's supposed to be able to go through fences or the like. I can't help but think that the last two are mainly there to show off the hardware capabilities of the N64 - where's the fire flower, seriously?
Into the game, after having a chance to deform Mario's face in the title screen, we're coming out of a pipe in front of the aforementioned castle. There's some explanation by a Lakitu, who's supposed to be the camera man, we can freely roam the gardens, practice Mario's moves and enjoy the great atmosphere. We here the noise of the waterfall, and there's birds, butterflies and fishes. Only the trees are a bit weird, because they are not really 3D and seem to turn around with your viewing angle, like in Doom or shit like that. Inside the castle, there's Toad doing some more explaining. So we can only enter most doors after collecting enough stars, but there's a few we can enter immediately, behind one of which we find us the first painting.
So this is the Bomb world. There's a cool water-effect upon entering the painting, and we get a task "Defeat King Bob-Omb!". Inside, there's pink bombs we can talk to and black bombs and goombas to fight. Control's seem a bit iffy, Mario's acceleration seems off (especially many slopes are much more slippery than they look out to be), and it's hard to talk, read or grab things, often you'll just execute other moves, like punching. There's a lot of things to see, like one of those big cannonballs on a chain (much bigger than in SMB3), interesting platforms, cannons who shoot bubbles, and even a Koopa, whose shell we can use to go surfing. Awesome!
On to climbing the mountain. Now the camera kinda falls apart, because it feels reluctant to go to some certain angles, and it's hard to see what's behind the next corner. I experiment with the other settings, but none of them really helps. One is far too close to Mario, and the third setting is really quite similar to the first. This also proves to be a problem in later platforming, when certain inconvenient angles are forced upon you. You also can have a look around, without being able to move. When Mario goes to close to the wall, he starts hugging it, which is annoying. Because of the camera, I get hit by a huge marble, but instead of dying, I just lose some energy, which immediately gets replenished after collecting the coins that lie around everywhere. How are you ever supposed to lose a life in this game?
On top of the mountain (great view, btw) waits King Bob-Omb. Before the fight fool is telling us how to beat him. How convenient. So I ran behind him, grab him (after a few misses where Mario tries to punch him or slide through him instead), and throw him down the mountain, whereupon he just comes back and complains. So I guess I have to do it three times, as always with bosses in Mario games? I did it six times, without anything happening. Quite desperate, I just throw him in an arbitrary direction out of frustration, and see, it seems to hurt him. How in the world does throwing him onto the plateau more harm than droping him the whole mountain? WTF? Despite this totally silly game logic I beat him, earning my first star.
So there's only 15 levels in this game, but you can find six stars in each of them. There's tasks like collecting 6 hidden red coins, shooting yourself through rings in the air with a cannon, racing challenges, and the obligatory boss fight every once in a while. Levels sometimes change drastically with new tasks, but some of the tasks are really short, like freeing the cannonball on a chain we met 10 seconds into the first level, but so where some levels in previous Super Mario games, so I guess it will end up at a similar length. I can't help but wish the controls and especially the camera were more intuitive, but I'm having fun so far, and as we come to expect from a Mario game, there's a ton of crazy ideas. For example, in the second level, the well known man-eating plants have fallen asleep, so we have to sneak around them, or else we get eaten. The 3D world makes the platforming a completely new experience, while we're meeting a lot of the enemies we came to love to hate in previous games (no Yoshi, though, and also Luigi - and a 2-player mode, for that matter, is significantly missing in this game) I'm really looking forward to play more of it. And of the handful of N64 games that are out so far, its the only one that really interests me (not to speak of the fact that I'm broke now anyway, afte I bought the system and Super Mario), so I guess I'll be playing it a lot.
