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New Super Mario Bros. DS Review


PikMan

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Earlier this month I reviewed New Super Mario Bros. Wii. I gave it an A, and I mentioned its DS counterpart several times. But how do they compare? That is the whole point of this review, and I need practice before I compare the PSP Battlefront Games.

 

STORY: C

If you've played any Mario game, you know the plot: The princess gets kidnapped. Yeah. Real original, guys. But at least they have a cutscene explaining how it happens. It's shorter than the Wii's cutscene (Which you can't skip, by the way) and that's this game's first superiority over the Wii game.

 

GAMEPLAY: A

This is a plain and simple 2D Mario platformer, just the way I like it. Even though the Koopalings don't show up, the bosses are rather interesting. And although you only use 2 face buttons, there are a wide variety of moves you can perform, from the butt-stomp to the wall jump. Each stage has 3 Star Coins, that can be used to open new paths. I mentioned it before and I'll mention it again: 2D Mario games are better than the 3D ones.

 

DIFFICULTY: B

One of the few things I dislike about the game is the difficulty. It's a tad too easy on most levels, and the 2nd-Last level is so difficult, you'd think it was from the Lost Levels game. Another problem is the length. You skip over worlds 4 and 7, and if you find your way there, you skip 3 and 6, respectively. It's a good thing they adressed that in the Wii game.

 

PRESENTATION: B

The game's 2.5D format looks good, but it was better in Kirby 64, which pretty much introduced this format. On the plus side, the levels are colorful and the enemies look like they've always looked. The world maps are too predictable, though.

 

SOUND: A

About 90% of the music is original, and they're all really catchy. The other 10% is remixes, and they're also good. My only problem with the music is that they have a bunch of riffs in them that when they occur, enemies dance to it, and it gets annoying eventually. As for sound effects, they're also great.

 

FINAL OPINION: B

Mario's first 2D platforming game in over a decade didn't disappoint, but if you had to choose between this and the Wii version, I'd go with the Wii version. But that's not to say this isn't a masterpiece, I just recommend the Wii version more.

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I thought it was decent, but far from my favorites. The water levels were unexplainably annoying, retained the same miniboss for 8 worlds (pattern is pretty much the same through all 8 too), and save for a few levels wasn't nearly of a challenge as I anticipated it to be. Still pretty cool though.

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