New Super Mario Bros. Wii may seem like just another sidescrolling Mario game to enter the series but after playing the game it left a lasting impression which I didn't think it would.


The demo given to us was any level from a selected 10 but we could only play 10 minutes of the game. Not complaining as it gave us a fair idea of what it was about. We played a four player co-op game and started from World 1. It was definitely familiar and the controls where as basic as you can get. You tilted the WiiMote on its side to make the NES controller look and then used the D-Pad and the 1 and 2 buttons to run and jump, as well as shaking the WiiMote to do a spin attack.


You can work as a team throughout the level by jumping on each other’s heads to gain a bigger boost in your jump to reach higher places and the game definitely gave you enough places to do so, placing just out of reach coins and power ups. However, you can just run from one end of the level to the other and fight for the most points and this is what we did. The game became strangely competitive as we fought for all the coins and the enemies to kill. I found myself trying to jump on someone’s head as they were jumping over a hole so that they would fall down the hole and have to wait to respawn. Or we fought between who can ride on Yoshi as once you have control of him you can eat anyone, and I mean anyone. If you were totally cruel you could eat your team and spit them down a hole.


Once you died you waited a few seconds until a bubble with you inside floated on screen. Then you had to wait for one of your team to burst the bubble to get you back into the game. You also have a set amount of lives on each level and once you have diminished all lives you must wait until the next game or a live-up is collected.


What NSMBW had going for it was that it was not gimmicky and stuck to what the old Mario games where all about. What we see now-a-days with co-op games is features which make them too difficult or frustrating and sometimes just pointless. But here was a game that just threw the normal mechanics of the game and a scoreboard and created something fun. no complex story, no co-op puzzles and no need to rely on others.


Super Mario Bros. Wii has everything going for it to be a great cooperative game. I would have loved to have seen how much fun it was on my own but the game really seems to excel in co-op.



Posted By Blood