The blog of craig2562

Friday, June 30, 2006

Day 2

After spending all of last night waiting for the morning to come and the postman to deliver, I finally got hold of my copy of New Super Mario Bros! So what is it like? I don't want to go into great lengthy detail as I plan to actually review it this weekend (yeah amongst other things), but I'll give you a taster of what you can expect.

To start with it's best summed up with a mix of 4 games, Super Mario Bros 1, Super Mario Bros 3, Super Mario World and Super Mario 64. The style of the levels are like Super Mario Bros 1, worlds are like Super Mario World with multiple exits/routes depending the way you go in the level and moves are just like Super Mario 64, things like wall jumping, butt stomp (at least I think it's called that!) and a few others. Keeping it Mario means a good sound base and to be honest they are keeping in tune (haha) with every other Mario game, even the death sound is basically the same as the original Super Mario Bros (infact you would be hard pressed to tell the difference). Where this game really shines though is the sheer speed you can get out of it, for example in some Mario games you could basically run at a very fast speed and complete the level in under a minute if you wished or take it slow and explore the levels in detail, that exact thing that made the original games so much fun is back and it feels alot more fluid then previously. DS visuals make it a joy to play, 3D models with lovely backgrounds and level design still had the good old Mario charm of days gone by! Controlling Mario is by far easier then some of the latest Mario games with the touch screen only being used to show you a "how far along" meter, 3 star coins (which you can collect to open up new routes in worlds) and a spare item, which you can use to keep you from dying in emergencies.

I have one problem with the game however, I know people will slate me for this but it could have been worked on. When you want to save it's not a case of simply pressing start and selecting save (oh no), It's like you have to find a place to save it like opening a new route or defeating a castle. To some this would be fine but when you consider those people who just want to sit down and play every now and then it becomes a bit annoying when you have to retrace your steps just to play the level again (if you don't save all the time you will need to go over some levels after your last save).

Problem aside I have nothing else negative to say about the game, to me it is simply the best Mario in recent years and yes even beats Mario 64 DS. It was a shame the multiplayer has no "WiFi" mode and the mini-games are simply taken from Mario 64 DS (a couple were new but most weren't), something Nintendo could work on for the second New Super Mario Bros game perhaps?

Apart from the New Super Mario Bros, my day has pretty much been quiet except now coming to notice that my mouse is broke. When I got this PC back in September last year, it came with a wireless keyboard and mouse (wireless ball). At first the mouse was a bit of a problem to use after spending so much time with my old logitech mouse (which is huge), since getting used to it however it became easier to use and had no problems with it despite it being something I wasn't used to in games. Few months back I had no Internet and found myself on the PC less and less but one day when I did, I kinda dropped the mouse on the subwoofer and it hit hard. This might be the reason it's now starting to play up or it could be another reason which I can't figure out. Whatever it is, I need a new mouse soon and I have been looking at a few replacements on the Internet, such as an Air Flow mouse which would keep my hands cool when playing games (cheap) or a Logitech MX518 (4x as much) - really want the Logitech G5 but it's a bit far out of my range for now. Many people I spoke to seem to like the MX518 and it is the mouse of choice for me if I can't get the G5, but again the price is something I can't really afford right now unless I put a little bit away at a time. Silly thing is, if I get a new mouse and find out the problem wasn't my mouse then I have spent money which I didn't need to spend and I need a wired mouse as the mouse/keyboard I have at the moment is tied into one wireless hub, the Air flow isn't but the other 2 are. I will probably get the MX518 and just Prey (haha joke, game out on the 14th need to buy!) it works.

-Craig (with a possibly broken mouse) out.

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