I have played not one but two games! Well, okay, I finished Bowser’s Fury yesterday, and didn’t finish Super Mario 3D World at all plus last played it months ago, but I for sure have enough data to make a fair review of the bundle.
First, the one I did not finish. Super Mario 3D World is basically the same game as Super Mario World, the one from the ’90s I think? SNES era, anyhow. You wander around a track from level to level, and then complete the level to unlock forward progress.
I mean, yes the graphics are better, and the levels are more 3D wander around instead of side scrolling, plus there are different things in each level to collect, so maybe it’s like a combination of Super Mario World and Super Mario 64? And also there are new-to-me conceits, like a cat suit for climbing walls, and a white raccoon suit they give you if you fail a level like 5 times in a row, that makes you invulnerable to everything but lava or infinite falls, and helps you with those too. So it’s pretty forgiving, at least until like three levels from the end, where they introduced a rolling log mechanic that I find impossible to adapt to, and came close to running out of lives over. So that’s why I’m stuck. All the same, I can visualize what is left of the game well enough to be satisfied with what I’ve written here.
Bowser’s Fury, on the other hand, does not have any lives, and is actually almost its own thing. The deal is, Bowser Jr. who you may remember as a mini boss in some prior games, shows up asking Mario for help, because his dad has grown massive and is way way way angrier than usual. So Mario runs around a giant lake collecting things that help him defeat Bowser and clean up all the crazy oil slicks laying around. It is less like Super Mario Sunshine than this makes it sound, but that game was certainly on my mind a lot. Eventually, you finish going everywhere and win, which I did. Hooray!
It also has a second player mechanic similar to Cappy in Super Mario Cappy[1], which would be great to play with the kids except that Bowser Jr. can also control the camera angle, which makes it a miserable experience instead. Maybe when they’re older?
If you like Mario games, these are certainly two more of them. Bowser’s Fury is shorter, but also, I think, better.
[1] I forget the real name[2], but it’s the one that debuted with the Switch and has a talking hat that guides you around. You’d think I would have reviewed it, but nope. I finished, but finishing left like 50% of the game unexplored, so I wanted to play more before reviewing it, but then… didn’t. You’d be surprised how often something adjacent to this happens to me.
[2] My wife informs me it’s Super Mario Odyssey.
Two milestones! Surprisingly to me, I’ve never finished a Switch game before. Like, I kind of finished the Mario game from one perspective, but from another I was barely halfway through it. Regardless, no review! So, oops. (Or not. It’s hard to know.) But also, I’ve never played a game that required specifying a year for version control.