Catboy = Lefties
Bowser Jr = Liberals
Bowser = Trump Tower

Nintendo what did you mean by this?

It's weird having this attached to 3D World, because I think it demonstrates very few of 3D World's real strengths. Where 3D World was tight, lean, and bursting with variety, Bowser's Fury, despite it's short length, can't help but feel strangely padded.

I loved how open this game felt: jumping off a lighthouse after finishing a level onto Plessie and speeding off towards the next challenge on the horizon never failed to be exhilarating. Unfortunately, the actual levels I think leave a lot to be desired. A new camera angle can't disguise the fact that this game recycles a lot from 3D World's platforming challenges, though there are a few new ideas here that are joyful to play through. What makes this worse is how repetitive these levels are: whilst sometimes the blue coin and key hunt challenges recontextualise a level enough to make it a fresh experience, too often they just have you repeat a level over again without a way to vary it up. You can't just make me fight Boom-Boom again and call it a new thing, Nintendo, especially when you've already made me fight them so many times before.

Bowser himself is a mixed bag. The first time he appears and FFX's Otherworld kicks in, it's an absolute riot. But familiarity breeds contempt, and I found myself getting irritated by his interruptions before long. I think I would have preferred less frequent, but more scripted and involved sequences rather than him showing up every 5 minutes to breathe down my neck. The Fury Cubes are, in particular, a massive misstep imo: there's nothing interesting or fun about standing next to a set of cubes and just waiting around for Bowser to blow them up for you.

Don't get me wrong, Bowser's Fury is still a very fun 3D platformer, but even at its 5 hour length, it overstays it's welcome. I'd love for Nintendo to learn from Bowser's Fury, but I don't want this to be the shape of Mario going forward.

Playing this in short bursts during downtime at work was a really sweet little treat. Logging in at lunchtime and seeing all my fellow home-working pals pop up around the same time with "ONLINE: SUPER MARIO 3D WORLD + BOWSER'S FURY" notifications was a heartwarming bit of parasocial friendship - it's nice to think of a bunch worn-down Microsoft Teams Miners were getting an injection of joy in the form of Mario flapping his stupid happy little legs in the Tanooki Suit to the jaunty tunes of Pounce Bounce Isle.

I think despite the fact we've all come to take the Nintendo Switch for granted, Nintendo themselves are still actively thinking about the docked/handheld interplay of the console - Bowser's Fury has a gameplay loop that works very similar to Breath of the Wild, where you can leave Mario sitting anywhere in the world when you hit the power button and still have a reasonable chance of standing right next to a new adventure or challenge when the screen next comes back on - or at least see (and quickly get to) the next bit of fun on the literal horizon. No loading in and out of a redundant SMB3 menu or watching of 'lets a go!' animations for the thirtieth time - everything in the game zips right by.

Much has been made of the 'continuous world' idea here, and I think Nintendo did a skilful job of making 3D World Mario's toolkit into something briskly mobile without really changing anything about that game's mechanics - it all just seems to be down to very generous and thoughtful placement of that game's power-set. There may be a little too much time spent wearing the propellor box, but those ad-hoc sequences where you come leaping off Plessie at 80mph, transform into a cat to scale the wall you're about to crash into and then shift to a tanooki to take a quick shortcut feel very very very good.

The only complaints I can really make about this are things that are decidedly anti-Mario in ethos - it's aliased to shit and the frames chug like hell during the (very impressive) Furious Bowser sequences (though weirdly these issues are far less pronounced in handheld mode - again suggesting that Nintendo still give a real shit about how handheld players enjoy games on their console), but I feel weirdly... guilty? about pointing out dry technical flaws in a game where Super Mario is running about having the time of his life. I just wanna join him in the fun instead of counting the grains of polygon around his cap.

I've seen a lot of takes comparing Bowser's Fury to Super Mario Odyssey, claiming that this new open-world approach to Mario is the future of the franchise, and I gotta say:

...why?

Bowser's Fury is fine! It's better than most 3D platformers, without a doubt. But comparing this to Super Mario Odyssey is like comparing a tasty little tapas plate to a Michelin Star 5-course meal.

In Bowser's Fury, you gradually open up the world by uncovering islands which have been hidden by Bowser's goop, which seems rooted in the same base concept as Ganon's Malice goop in Breath of the Wild. Collecting Cat Shines powers up Giga Bells and lighthouse towers which lead to giant-sized boss fights and the clearing away of the aforementioned goop. Each new group of islands is quite small, with Cat Coins and Cat Shines densely packed. Size-wise, they're smaller than your average Super Mario Galaxy level. This means the game is itty-bitty and you'll likely be finished in a couple of hours. (I 100%ed the game in just under 4)

Unfortunately, many of the Cat Shines recycle identical challenges across each of the islands you encounter. This was a major letdown for me, and reminded me of Yooka-Laylee more than anything else. You're gonna chase a goopy Luigi a lot. You're gonna bait Bowser into breaking big silver blocks. You're gonna collect a handful of blue coins within a time limit. The back half of the game was mostly filled with disappointment, as the game settled into rinsing and repeating Cat Shines. Don't get me wrong, when you first reach a new area, the challenges are diverse and enjoyable! But after the main Shines have been collected, the game pads the content with these repeated filler Shines. If you notice that you're missing 2 or 3 shines on each island, you can probably guess what they're gonna be without even going there.

When the trailers showed Super Saiyan Furry Mario fighting Fury Bowser, I was excited to give that a shot. It does end up being fun, but it still boils down to a classic "jump on them three-ish times" Mario boss battle. I'd say the final boss battle is moderately satisfying, though 100% completion doesn't offer anything new in terms of the boss fight mechanics or the ending cutscene. (The first ending occurs with half of the game's Cat Shines)

All in all, Bowser's Fury is a fun way to spend 2-4 hours, but I cannot for the LIFE of me fathom why so many people are touting this as the future of Mario. There is nothing that this game does exceptionally well. Everything falls somewhere in the vicinity of "pretty good". I doubt there are any challenges or set pieces besides the repeated boss fights that will stand out in players' memories in a few months' time. Maybe I can't see past the game's small scope and repetitive challenges, but Super Mario Odyssey does literally everything better than Bowser's Fury. If the next mainline Mario game takes after this instead of SMO, it will be a huge missed opportunity.

Bowser's Fury is fine. If you're buying 3D World anyway, play BF too! But don't drop $60 just for the new content.

Finally got around to playing this and it’s pretty fun. Almost worth the $60 price tag on its own which is good because I don’t want to play through 3D world again. I’m having a good time playing it with my wife even though co-op kinda sucks in this. Bowser Jr. seems really not fun to control. Gonna keep playing this one until we get all the shines or we don’t. My score might go up later but for now I’m feeling a decent to a light to a strong 3 and a half on this one. Oh also they really didn’t need to turn Plessie into a cat. There are some creatures in this world that do not need to also look like cats. That thing is an insult to god.

GOTY 2022 & '21 - NUMBER 3
(A video version of this is available here)

I've long asserted that the thing that really made Mario 64 work is that its audience had the time for it. It was a £70 game in 1997, and the 8 year-olds who went wild for it weren't likely to get another one of those until Christmas. They were willing to knock their heads against the wall a million times and lose countless lives to find each new Power Star, and the game thrived under those conditions.

But what if a 3D Mario game was short and light? What if it was a bonus freebie bundled in with another game? That's what Bowser's Fury is, and it's why it works so well.

Bowser's Fury is the Thatcher's Techbase of Super Mario. A dense open world, exploring the full depth of 3D Mario design, and focused directly on the execution of a vicious demonic tyrant. The cat theme might wear thin within the context of a traditional campaign, but it's a constant delight within the few hours the game takes. As much of a treat as it is for longtime fans, it serves as a great introduction to those who aren't so committed to the series.

It's an odd duck this one. Many have seen it as a way to experiment with what Mario can learn from Breath of the Wild. I think it's equally valid to see it as an experiment with what a very wee Mario game could be. Portal has long been held as a standard-bearer for short games, but compared to personal favourites like PaRappa the Rapper and Kirby's Dream Land, that's a fairly meaty game. I'm into this stuff. The success of Bowser's Fury's freeform structure and open level design is heavily owed to its scale. I suspect a full Odyssey-sized game of this would feel pretty drab and repetitive compared to the big Marios, but as a wee bonus for a 3D World rerelease, it's great.

Bowser's Fury is full of wee islands. Each one, a new spin on the platforming. It's kind of like Super Mario Bros. 3, where none of the levels really felt as substantive as those from its series' siblings, but their brievity gave them the freedom to delve into mad stuff with slopes and frog suits. Bowser's Fury is full of wild level design. Areas full of bouncy platforms and slides, invisible obstacles, and giant towers that seem to go on forever. The design of its platforming obstacle sequences is frequently more linear than something like Sunshine or Odyssey, but oddly, it feels less boxed-in and restrained as a result. It feels more like Galaxy, except you can shoot off and do something completely different at any point.

It's odd, but this wee bonus game tacked on to a 3D World rerelease might be one of the most balanced Mario games ever made. The 3D games have always struggled to weigh freedom against the excitement of deliberately designed sequences of hazards and challenges. Bowser's Fury is arguably the first Mario game that feels like every Mario game. It balances the appeal of the NES games with the HD and handheld ones. More casual fans who have been following the series' biggest releases will inevitably be annoyed at the thought that they have to buy 3D World again if they want to try this new spin on the formula, but it's been out for a while now - I'm sure someone will give you a lend if you ask.

There are a lot of dedicated Mario fans who will miss this as a result of being asked to buy the same game twice, and the Wii U owners need every bit of good will that could be sent their way. I don't know why they couldn't just chuck this up on the eShop. This far from launch, it feels like it's slipped into obscurity. I don't think there's a lot of people still finding out about Bowser's Fury. If they're looking for a game to push on young audiences who have just become excited about Mario through the new film, I don't know if there's a better one to hand them. It feels so reflective of all the surrounding games, it could serve as a fantastic gateway. 3D World's not a bad place to go afterwards, but it could just as easily spark interest in Odyssey, Mario Maker 2 or Super Mario World. If this was a £15 download, everyone who owns a Switch would have played it. Time's running out before April, and I'm embarrassed to think that kids who just came out of the Sonic film probably asked their parents for Forces or Colors Ultimate.

I don't know if Bowser's Fury is indicative of the future of Mario games, but I'd hope that whatever comes next can learn from it. It's every reason people like them. I hope a lot more people will play it.

I have nothing much to say about the design, history, artistic merit, thematic resonance, or any plumbable topic of depth with which a person trying to conceive of something meritorious inherent to Mario, Bowser’s Fury specifically but the general statement stands, which may be drawn on for fuelant to inspire criticism. 3D Mario games generally, with the elsewise brand expressions being as a whole still encompassed but to a lesser degree, move me not at all to thrill or agonise; they do not deposit me to a prolonged convalescence from rapture nor a disappearing into mist that arises some self doubt; the antics in do not put before me a self which I can see as bettered or worsened. I can think of nothing in myself to pull from play to paper other than surmising that games, with their inset holding of many excellent offerings of Mario, which are so consistently fruitful and nutritious, showing in their prodigious production no sign of overflowing the cellar nor going bad in storage, are still in a period (which they may never leave from either external pressures or internal transfigurations) of such infancy that there manages a dominant hold of an entire orbiting shape of their format, medium, expressionistic vocabulary - however else expressed - which is composed of an idea which is sterile, contained, utterable only in relation to itself, and which controls the traffic of anything which has sprung up in the ecosystem it has hardened to externalities but softened to itself.

In the wake of the Mario movie’s enormous success, dwarfing likely any other single Mario property’s profits by a daily increasing margin, the comparative draw on the dire shape of film audience ability to be met en masse and the enormous accessibility of games to the PC game demographic has, for me, been recast. Whereas The Mario movie has now made more money than the entire filmographies of some of the greatest filmmakers (possibly even more than the entire film industry in some directors’ countries of origin), the film industry, with all its structural and cultural issues, has been able to establish the bedrock for possibility and what contrasting heights and lows are possible outside of any singular name or film; the Mario movie dwarfing in recognition Jonas Mekas by a margin of ∞:1 is not offerable as any miniscule shred of proof as being superior or in anyway equally significant to the artistry possible within the medium. In games, that may never be possible. To talk about the entire etymology of not just the verb titles, but the actions possible in describing those verbs outside of the magic circle, cannot be divorced from the IP which dominates its form’s facade.

Good or bad, Mario is Coca-Cola, Kleenex, Band-Aid, and Kraft Dinner.

Other than ToTK, it's been a while since I've played a first party, main-line Nintendo game and nearly forgot how insanely polished and refined the gameplay can be. Despite the vast ocean area, it's nigh on impossible to find yourself lost. Despite it being fairly easy to fall back down to ocean-level while climbing the islands, you will always land next to something that will pick the gameplay right back up. Mainline Marios are magically crafted, and I really do mean that. They are Disney movies in game form (in the best way possible).

That being said, there are some points of failure that drag the gameplay. Bowser always seemed to spawn at the worst times for me, and I started to wonder if there really is a good time for Bowser to spawn. At any given moment, I'd be part-way into a Cat Shine mission, and I would just feel annoyed that Bowser was going to interrupt the fun challenge with his shitstorm making bullshit flying everywhere. Alternatively, I'd be moments away from collecting the Cat Shine and he'd just turn around and leave just as soon as he walked in. To add onto this pain, when I actually did want him to spawn so I could destroy some blocks, I'd find myself sitting on my hands, too afraid that if I started wandering off, I'd get distracted with another Cat Shine mission and leave the vicinity of the blocks. Just like the Blood Moons in BotW/TotK, they never happen at the right time and just feel like a needless interruption. I'm not a fan of either mechanic.

One silver lining to this is towards the end of your run to 50 shines, Bowser is suddenly undeterred by any additional shines and won't leave until you fight him in super bell mode. It was a pleasant surprise when I realized I was going to have to collect more shines during Bowser's shitstorm whether I liked it or not. It was no longer an interruption, it was a hard-mode-esque challenge, and I very quickly went from "oh, great" to "oh... great!!".

It is very silly to package a game as wonderful as this in a bundle with a game most Nintendo fans have already relatively recently played. It is silly to force some of 3D world's otherwise sensible mechanics into an open-world Mario game (one-hit kills like lava are no fun at all). However, this game is still sheer joy and despite everything, I found myself lost in the world of Nintendo's iconic charm.

Musical Accompaniment (just choose to listen to however much of this that you can before you dont feel like it, my Music accompaniment guy is on strike right now).

So they took the Super Mario 3D World physics, movement system, and powerups and threw them into an open sandbox level with the benefits of Odyssey's collectible design of not disrupting your play on picking up the collectible. I really disliked how Odyssey handled its moons, many of them just being haphazardly littered in the playspace, in deserts etc. By the standards of Odyssey then, Bowser's Fury is great in that every collectable is focused, with 5 hanging around each lighthouse and a few others on islands that you use Plessie to explore to.

Bowser's Fury actually answers 2 other issues in a couple Nintendo games to. Another recent one Breath of the Wild's Bloodmoon mechanic. In that piece, after a significant amount of time passed, a cutscene would interrupt you and all the enemies would respawn with several strong enough near you chasing you. The issue with this mechanic was that there was no threat to it, at least not in the mid to late game, since you would be stocked up on pausable quick heal items, and it would be easy to simply outrun the enemies. Here, Bowser occurs during the 'night portion' as a legitimate threat. He has blocks fall from the sky near mario and will breath a sizable flame attack near the player that they have to find cover to avoid. On top of this, you can also ward off the Reptile's bile by collecting a catshine (the primary collectible) early thereby giving the player legitimate control over the desperation state and allowing them to do something that isn't just run away for a few minutes. At no point was I irritated with Bowser coming up to attack me, sometimes he would disrupt me from the shine I was trying to get, however Bowser himself is also nessecary to collect shines as well by baiting him to break blocks and running to spawning islands that show up during the night. I hope that the Zelda development team takes note of how this game handled the day/night cycle tension because it was honestly a mess in BotW and comparing it to this shows a night and day difference.

Aside from this, Plessie is also acts as a reply to the sailing mechanic in windwaker. Compared to a small sailboat, here you ride a large sea mammal that emits a hefty rumble on a jump giving a weight to the journey. They also make the travel time from one island to another proportionally significantly shorter than whatever you are trying to do on said island whereas Windwaker was oversatisfied with being sailing simulator for most of its runtime. One other way it prevents a feeling of tedium is making Plessie vital on her own terms for collecting around 20% of the possible shines. These factors all work to keep the player constantly in a satisfied relationship with the collectathon element while still keeping them engaged with the environment. You are on a satisfied unbroken pursuit from one place to the next. The only thing I wish Plessie had here is a small boost operator. None of the timer functions would have needed to be remanaged, a small boost would just let me 'feel' the animal actually moving faster whereas tilting the stick forward doesn't convey a great sense of a change in speed.

One interesting note here is that most of the movement is based around power up swapping. Your movement options like the long jump, triple jump, and backwards verticle jump are all still cramped or removes. While this wasnt particularly an issue in the linear level design of 3D World (Especially if you played as peach who had the raccoon suit power baked into her movekit), it does provide a small issue with the large sandbox playspace, instead you gain movement control through power up accumulation and management, being able to hold 5 of each power up and swap to them at will. For instance you climb the side of scaffolding with the Cat Powerup, swap to the Raccoon one, and then float over to the other piece of scaffolding. This mechanic works mostly well and its honestly way more appealing than trying to do the obnoxious hat combos jumps in Odyssey, and is more accessible in general, my only grievance here is that it renders the basic mushroom powerup redundant due to this accumulation, since all powerups make it a dead power up from random box hits and 100 coin level up drops. On that note, here I unveil once again my fundamental hatred with coins. I hate the constant bling sound on picking them up and they simply were not necessary to litter this playspace with. I might be one of the only people unironically annoyed and averse to the coins that isn't a no coins challenge runner but I must be honest in saying that if there is a way to avoid such redundancy its better off to do so.

Speaking of redundant, the 'theme' here is that everything is cat themed, cats sprawl all over non hostile spaces, cat power ups are used in the Giga Bowser fight, and cat ears appear from all the enemies you fight. The first two are fine, but the others push the experience too much into the realm of 'gimmick' or 'joke game' which doesn't really fit in with the pollution anxities and kaiju descalation neuroticism from Bowser Jr. While we are on the point of aesthetic presentation, the sludge effect looks great, especially with contemporary lighting and liquid physics effects, it drips and sputters out like an oil spill coming alive which is fantastic.

Spontaneous Critique on Cameras

What isn't great is the fact I have a sleepy camera for viewing it all. I believe that Mario 64 has actually the best camera in any 3D game I've played, which is a bold statement because most people dont really know how to use it and thus see it as a nuisance (which for me is part of the appeal to, I love having to fight with the camera sometimes in games its actually funny as hell to have Borne levels of confusing camera positions happen out of nowhere in the same way its funny when you long jump off a cliff when you meant to ground pound). To me, the Laikatu camera has so many functions in its favor that I could easily write a fluff piece about how it makes 64 a perfect game as its own, however to cut a long story short, there's a speed to which the camera will snap to the various fixed positions that isn't found in almost any 3D console game afterwards. Most 3D console platformers/action games have at least compensated the monopoly of this garbage 360 drone camera by making the speed for moving it reasonably fast (though not nearly fast enough imo). 3D world actually did bring back the fixed camera positions for the single player campaign, but made the positional change points slight and for the most part not tracking the player as they move forward. Most of the camerawork was semi isometric so I get why they couldn't port that over. However they could have at the very least made the camera more sensitive and move more quickly because stuff will attack you off screen and it will take a full 2 and a half seconds to reorient the visual space to figure out the confusion. This has been a problem in every Nintendo released 3D game since Mario Sunshine but at least Sunshine is kind of funny about it since Mario Sunshine has a wacky masocore energy to it in random bursts. The reason I'm highlighting it here then is that its the worst the camera has probably ever been for this. I was constantly getting annoyed in the Giga Bowser fights because the dude would roll off screen and I'd have to pan over forever to put him in view. This is simply an end point problem of what happens when you make games built around spectacle with contemporary graphics. For instance I would prefer that the sensitivity is increased, but this is a double bind, because with the graphical polish on display it would feel woozy and disorienting scrolling through that much information before settling the edge of the frame. I dont mind because I've played a lot of games, so I get why inexperienced players wouldn't enjoy that. With that said it's also a tacit point against staying in the realm of 3D graphical fidelity too long in general, because the issue ultimately becomes a problem of juggling visual business with the conveyance of context sensitive information.

I noticed for instance, in Resident Evil 4 Remaster that due to the visual business of the space, yellow paint effect is adorned to all the movable objects to convey context sensitivity. Meanwhile, the wacky camera controls in Metroid Prime Remaster were also stripped back due to the fact its 'antiquated' design comes in sharp contrast to an increase in visual business. The clear appeal is the market dominance of spectacle as immersion. I'm deeply opposed to it. Environmental detail is not that vital if it ambiguates control. Immersion comes through a sense of control or lack thereof, and through impassioned dialogue and interaction with other characters. A lot of modern 'polished' games offer a pretty environment for the expense of less control and clarity, and generally game environments have problems with letting characters speak for themselves. For instance here Bowser Jr. attempts a dialogue with Mario, and instead of letting that dialogue function on its own, an awkward disembodied narrator interprets what Bowser is saying to the player rather than letting the man speak for himself either through pictures alone or voice acting. You might be thinking 'so what?' well, I think the reason people have become too skiddish to letting characterization happen through imagery, body language animation, or various other non dialogue interactions is because people who play games for whatever reason seem to have trouble properly interpreting non dialogue interaction on their own. For instance Transparency made a strong argument in favor of the idea that people ragging on Balan Wonderland for the 'nonsensical story' were simply not paying attention and I would have to say I agree with her assessment. This is an ultimately sad state of affairs, I think its because people are afraid of the ambiguity in images but it creates another paradox. In modern gaming you have complex facial rotoscoping and detailed environments, both of which 'enhance' a raw interpretive ambiguity. Yet, instead of taking advantage of it games like Death Stranding and The Last of Us are obsessed with talking to you. In cutscenes, in the walk and talk, in dialogue boxes, etc. You can't share a stare or look at a painting. It's chatter until the day goes by. Instead of 'talking' this point to death I'll instead just vaguely gesture at Journey as a clear example of how non-verbal storytelling and non graphically 'real' space can be effective for immersion. Whether maximally so or not I leave up to your discretion.

Aside from these admittedly exaggerated complaints, I feel like what makes Bowser's Fury work in its favor in this format is its short runtime and compact open sandbox design. If the game was 3 times larger as some people are wistful about, a lot of what makes it work would begin to strain if it went on too long without being rehauled properly, all the moments I mentioned annoyed me are functionally footnote complaints to an otherwise solid experience. I recognize that such a difference is probably found in the fact most people who played this actually liked Odyssey as well when I find that one bland and flat.

It's hard to make a review for Bowser's Fury. It's a great game and one of the best Mario games ever made but there are somethings that don't let me give 5 stars to this game.

The first thing I have to say is how you can play. The only way you can play this game is buying Mario 3D World for Nintendo Switch. If you already played this game on Wii U, don't wast your money. Bowser's Fury is really great but it doesn't make sense pay u$60 just for it.

The second thing is the time of gameplay. The game is really short. It's so sad because it's really fun.

I hope we see a new Mario game like this one in the future but with everything we deserve.

Having this tacked on to my favourite Mario game is doing no disservice whatsoever, but I can't help but want to like it more. The central mechanic being Bowser's cyclic attacks on a seamless open world feels like such an incredible framework and lends the game a feeling unlike any other Mario game up to this point. Still, I found myself sinking into repetition as each zone tended to share challenges (blue coins, Dark Luigi, locked cage etc.) and fail to be particularly challenging explorations of them.
It was probably the first time I've ever attacked Bowser, and a fucking health bar appeared over his head???? Wild.

I feel this game would be better served as an expansion to Odyssey instead of 3D World if only because the limited move list seems to only work Okay for an open-world game. They were absolutely perfect for 3D World's level design, but the compromise for Bowser's Fury was to add the ability to hoard powerups and switch them on the fly, where something more momentum-based would have probably worked a lot better. It both eliminates a lot of challenge and makes the experience feel a little slapdash, that I'm mainly succeeding because of my gear rather than my own dexterity.

Still, this is quite fun! Cool as hell to see Nintendo pull a little bit of a Majora's Mask again by remixing old assets into a weird new direction n stuff.

Bowser’s Fury is a fun experiment. Its bitesize islands are perfect for constantly throwing new mechanics and enemies at the player, Bowser frequently interrupting gameplay is a clever idea without being so invasive that his interruptions feel like a chore and the areas evolving as you revisit them make treading old ground not feel tedious. Yes boss fights with Bowser and the challenges to get the cat shines are repetitive and there is scope for improvements with the water sections, but Bowser’s Fury is still a blast and its shorter length means that the concepts which could grow tedious in a full length Mario game do not overstay their welcome here.

2021 Ranked

Bowser’s Fury shares with 3d Land and 3d World (and the 2d Marios) its approach to platforming-based level design: no more seemingly real but totally unfeasible locations, instead every island (or bunch of islands) in the vast ocean is its own level, and close islands share themes. Of course these islands, in classic Nintendo fashion, are not all accessible since the beginning and instead you unlock chunks of the map after fighting Bowser, which requires the player to collect X Shines, creating a gameplay loop similar to Odyssey. This, though, is not the only similarity between both games: they are way more fun if you play them in “unintended” ways, using Mario’s moveset or alternative powerups (or captures) to your advantage, which by the way is not always possible thanks to some gimmicks and requirements.

While Odyssey was more focused on exploration and interaction than actual platforming here there’s only the latter, and it’s quite bland and inoffensive. The world in Bowser’s Fury is mostly empty and navigating between islands is really uninteresting, so the fact that level design mostly relies on repeating the same really short, easy challenges with slight variations is pretty underwhelming. To the uninteresting level design with really scarce threats you have to add the new inventory system, whichs lets you collect as many powerups as you want and use them conveniently, anytime anywhere. This is the reason why the levels involving helicopter blocks (which is not a powerup like in the New Super Mario Bros series) and keys that you have to bring to the beginning of the level, making you traverse it backwards, are by far the most fun in the game. Holding objects ignores active powerups and limits Mario's movement to the basic running and jumping, making the level design way more challenging and expressive, plus flying with the helicopter block across vertical levels with floating buildings, moving platforms and aerial threats is honestly one of the best times I've had with any modern Mario game.

The thing that was supposed to bring everything together and add some spice is the black, giant Bowser who will periodically wake up from his sleep and attack Mario, but instead of surprising you and forcing you to improvise there’s a clear procedure to this whole thing. When he’s about to appear the music changes, the sky turns black and it starts raining. And it happens so often that it turns into a routine. Bowser will jump from one place to the other and throw flames at you while rocks fall from the sky so that you cannot just hide in one spot and wait for him to leave, but after a couple of cycles he will disappear and you can just resume whatever you were doing. In addition, there are blocks with Bowser’s face all over the world hiding Shines (most of the time) and he is the only one who can destroy them, worsening the already washed out encounters and becoming more of a tool than an actual threat. Transforming into the giant Cat Mario and fighting Bowser in order to progress is quite anecdotic and not much different than the usual Mario boss fight: they're bad. I still believe this was a good idea and the variation it brings to your approach of the levels is more than welcome, but it definitely was not the right approach.



To be fair, it's not that I didn't enjoy my time with the game. Everyone knows that jumping is by far the best mechanic in videogames and no one does it better than Mario. But I wish the game was more than the old Mario drowned into a bunch of mechanics and ideas that don't work together nor by themselves.

This is a nice side-game that has me looking forward to the future of 3D Mario games. I love how well 3D World's gameplay mixes with Odyssey's, and I am glad that this doesn't have any of the uninteresting objectives (such as simply groundpounding a hill) included in the latter. Each objective feels fun and engaging, and it's a wonderful idea to have areas change slightly if you leave and come back.

I did find the Fury Bowser mechanic to be extremely annoying, however. It's a cool idea at first, but it doesn't take long for it to become more bothersome than interesting as it interrupts whatever you were doing. Fury blocks are a smart way to make Fury Bowser helpful, but I didn't like that you had to wait for him to spawn instead of just being able to make him appear at any time.

I also wish each area felt a little more natural with obstacle courses built into them rather than obstacle courses with a theme added later, but it's not too big of an issue.

Overall I really enjoyed my time with this despite the few annoyances along the way and I hope a future 3D Mario game adopts a similar gameplay style to this.