Fake plastic Toads.

Have you ever seen the NileBlue video where he makes the world's purest cookie? It's a pretty entertaining watch, if you haven't seen it; essentially, it's a professional home chemist sourcing some incredibly expensive lab-grade materials in order to chemically synthesize a completely refined cookie. No contaminants, no adjustments to or from the recipe, no ingredients which haven't been first sourced and validated by a chain of scientists. It costs thousands of dollars, requires a fully-stocked laboratory environment, and only ends up producing a single cookie. But, by the end of the video, it's ready. They've got a cookie. A real, honest-to-God, chocolate chip cookie. It's been made in a lab rather than in a kitchen, but it's a cookie all the same. The chemist lifts it up and takes a bite. He chews, and chews, and then grimaces, setting it back down. He says the cookie is bad, and he doesn't know what went wrong.

New Super Mario Bros. U is that cookie.

The word of the day is "sterile", because it's the only thing you could possibly call New Super Mario Bros. U. It uses heat-blasted tools fresh from the autoclave because it's horrified that it might introduce an imperfection or accidentally open a new pathway for experimentation. It's a base template released as a finished project. It's math worksheets. Nothing has been done to make it interesting, because the director has mentally checked out. The newest additions are coins that are colored green rather than gold or red or blue, and a flower power-up that lets you shoot snowballs instead of fireballs. We aren't exactly inventing the wheel, here.

It's a remarkably uninteresting game. The music is some of the worst in the series, everything looks like shitty action figures, there are essentially zero unique power-ups or gimmicks to keep the gameplay fresh. You would hope, then, that the levels would be some great pure-platforming challenges with solid designs and interesting layouts. They aren't. The overwhelming majority of the levels in this are long platforms followed by instakill pits followed by long platforms. You run in a straight line, jump over the pit, run in a straight line, jump over another pit, and repeat until the level ends. Sometimes the pit is bottomless, and other times it's filled with poison, and other times it's filled with lava. Picking up frozen enemies requires a second button press rather than just holding down the run button the way that you do for koopa shells, for some reason. There was one level that was actually interesting, where everything was shaded to look like Starry Night, and it seems to be the only level that anyone actually remembers. I suppose there's also the level near the end which suddenly requires you to use tilt controls for the first time in seven worlds, but that one's more memorable in the sense that you've never forgotten the time that you really embarrassed yourself in school.

Mario as a franchise (the 2D department, at least) was clearly in need of a shake-up long before this came out. It's a stagnant pool, filled with bacteria and fly eggs, completely unfocused. Even New Super Mario Bros. 2 at least tried to do something interesting by flooding the screen with coins. What does this have? Really, what does it have? Some boring levels and no personality? The vastly superior Super Mario Bros. Wonder shares only one game designer and two level designers from New Super Mario Bros. U out of the respective nine and twelve members of each department for Wonder. I don't want to suggest that those who worked on New Super Mario Bros. U and found themselves ultimately replaced are talentless — many of them are currently doing far better work on other, non-Mario games — but I think it's obvious that they got complacent. This game feels like the product of bored minds. Something released purely by compulsion; "the console is drowning and we need a new Mario game, so just get one out in time for Christmas!"

This is an era of Mario that I'm very glad has been left behind. Hopefully it'll remain as little more than a Super Mario Maker template for interested fans to add four games worth of tools to in order to bolster it into something actually entertaining. Aside from that, it's best that we just forget about this and move on. This should have stayed trapped in the coffin that is the Wii U instead of getting a Switch re-release. I'm certain that the resources wasted on putting it out again could have been better used literally anywhere else in the company.

Baby Yoshi fucking rules.

Com certeza um dos Marios de todos os tempos. Qualquer tentativa que essa série tinha de fazer algo novo morreu com o NSMBW, tornando o "New" em seu título um oxímoro. Mas pelo menos não senti a absoluta apatia que tive com NSMB2. Progresso...?

O teoricamente grande ponto positivo desse game é o visual. Esse é, afinal, o primeiro Super Mario em Full HD. Mas, sendo bem sincero, os visuais não fedem nem cheiram. São uma versão ainda mais estéril do visual iniciado no primeiro New Super Mario Bros.

Mesmo que a direção de arte fosse fenomenal, só ser bonito não ajudaria muito o jogo. O gênero de plataforma é um dos que mais consegue utilizar as possibilidades gráficas dos consoles modernos para afetar a experiência de forma substancial e não ficar só no "é, é bonito". Pega qualquer Kirby da vida com seus experimentos malucos com background e foreground pra você ver.

NSMBU é mais do mesmo do mesmo do mesmo. Considerando o histórico inovador da série, isso chega a doer.

Yes, the NSMB shtick was getting tired by this point & it did feel like Nintendo was just kinda going through the motions. But a solid 2D Mario is still a solid 2D Mario. Sick of the series by this point or not, NSMBU is, at the end of the day, still inoffensive. The level design’s still entertaining, the world map is even more expansive, baby Yoshis' abilities added a fresh twist to the formula & everything looks, plays, feels & sounds as you’d expect. Feels recycled? Sure. But definitely not bad.

Honestly, for such a “new” series it sure has repeated a lot. I think the New part should have dropped off long ago. We are seeing the same formula from New Super Mario Bros./Galaxy and it hasn’t changed, not one bit. There are just a few additions to accommodate the Wii U gamepad and those aren’t even that impressive or necessary.

If you have played games from the series you know what you’re in for. This time around the games difficulty is ramped up to 11 and the addition of four player co-op can either help or break the game. The biggest addition is the Boost Mode from the gamepad user. You can see everyone on screen and can tap to lay blocks that your buddies can jump on. You can defeat enemies for them, help with bosses, stop items from running away, and even help block obstacles. This is both a blessing and a curse. With just one or two people it’s easy, but with three or more you can’t keep track of everyone. If you lay successful blocks you get a rainbow star which makes you invincible and you can defeat anything. A lot of times you will place a block wrong and kill everyone because Wiimote players rely on the Boost guy a lot.

It’s also mindless fun, but the game’s difficulty will make everyone throw their controllers. I restarted levels 20+ times because I just could not get through them. Nintendo continues to offer cheats, and the worst one yet is the Luigi demo. You can literally hit a green block and watch Luigi complete the level for you so you can move on. What kind of crap is that? Is this what we’re teaching the new generation of gamers Nintendo? That games will beat themselves? Half the time I didn’t care because after losing 25 lives and rotating the gamepad to friends we just couldn’t beat the level. There is a large variety and there are some fun power-ups like the ice flower, but most people will give up early on.

Another feature added is the Miiverse. It’s honestly just very annoying. People can post what’s on their mind if they lose or beat a level and it just feels like Nintendo’s version of Twitter, but 5-10-year-olds can post on it so you get incomprehensible words, strange drawings, and it just feels really annoying. Of course, only the gamepad player can post and see other people’s posts. You can also play as your Mii which is fun, but these aren’t anything that would make someone buy a Wii U. Once again, Nintendo fails to sell their consoles at their own games.

The graphics really haven’t changed much from the Wii, they aren’t groundbreaking like Mario 64 or Galaxy was. I really feel this series is now dead in the water gameplay wise. Mario just needs a serious reboot. It doesn’t help that the game is overly difficult and all the new hardware features are forced and can actually make the game feel worse to play. Even the star coins are nearly impossible to get this time, and there’s still no reward for getting them all. Going from level to level just made me feel dizzy with Deja vu.

As it stands, NSMB U isn’t a console seller and doesn’t advance the series at all. The Wii U hardware features feel forced and sometimes break the game. It’s also the most expensive Mario game since the 64 era. $60 for a game you have played many times before isn’t a bargain. If you are already tired of the series, this won’t change your mind at all.

Like all the games in the New series, it's a game made to be familiar and easy to recognize, but I think as this is the "big" launch game for the Wii U something a little more ambitious and elaborate was required.

What to say... in terms of presentation, it feels like an HD version of New Super Mario Bros. Wii (remembering that the Wii one already felt like an HD version of the DS game), the worlds follow the same themes and it's broadly speaking exactly the same art style, but a bit more refined. I won't deny that the game looks good and has a nice, colorful art style (my favorite parts being the cloud worlds). It's the most polished of all the "New" Super Mario titles in fact, but still, there are some things that look dated, like how stiff and expressionless the character models are, or the fact that most of the assets in this game like for example the backgrounds of the stages are PNGs and not real 3D models. In that sense, although the game complies and looks good, it leaves a little to be desired, because being the Wii U comparable in power to a PS3, it's a little sad that this game looks like a remastered Wii title. It also doesn't help that almost all the soundtrack is reused from previous games, which is a bit tiring considering that New Super Mario Bros. 2 did exactly the same, and this really bothers me a lot, because completely new songs was something to be expected, but unfortunately only the main theme is new.

I guess at least it's a good Mario game, in fact maybe the one I've enjoyed the most from the "New" series. The level design is good and the highlight of this game, you can tell that inspiration was taken from the level design philosophy of Super Mario 3D Land for some of the stages, as some of these are designed around a theme. For example, one level may be entirely about swinging platforms, another may be about going on water spheres, and so on. In itself, this game doesn't present anything we haven't seen before to tell you the truth, but in terms of levels it's pretty solid, not to mention that getting all the star coins is still a lot of fun and my favorite part of these titles.

As news, we have very few, but I'll talk about them anyway. New Super Mario Bros for DS was entirely inspired by the first SMB, the Wii title took inspiration from SMB3, so naturally, this game takes inspiration from Super Mario World. The new Power Up in this release is the super acorn, which although it doesn't allow you to fly like the cape, it does give you the ability to glide through the air at high speed, allows you to stick to walls and also gives you a kind of double jump, and although it's not the most impressive power up, it's certainly the best of all those introduced so far since Super Mario World. There are also some levels that are themed around carrying a baby Yoshi that has special powers, such as spitting bubbles that we can jump on or lighting the way in dark levels, although the amount of these types of levels isn't that great, I guess I appreciate the attempt to want to bring back the colored Yoshis, even if it's only as a momentary gimmick for a few levels. The level selection map is now a large map that interconnects all the zones similar to Mario World, it certainly doesn't have the same charm, but I like that this style of map has been brought back.

Conclusion
Needless to say, it's a Mario game, it's good. However, as a game to start a new generation of consoles it falls quite short, because when it comes down to it, this game feels like a product that was cheap and easy to produce. And truth be told, this is a bit embarrassing, as Mario is Nintendo's most important character and their games should have a bit more ambition and love in them, even though I like this game, I completely understand where the hatred towards it comes from. I think that, if Nintendo had put a little more effort in renewing the presentation of this game, we would be in front of one of the most memorable Mario games, because in terms of level design is quite solid, but the fact that it feels, looks and plays the same as the previous 3 games really end up hurting this game.

And having said that... I admit I enjoyed it a ton haha, I don't love the "New" series to death, but they are games I enjoy quite a bit, and this one has possibly become my favorite of the bunch.

Divertido. Com certeza não supera o NSMBW, mas mesmo assim é um jogo bom e com um novo power-up bem legal de usar, as fases são nada de mais, a música é boa e é... eles poderiam ter espalhado mais baby yoshis pelo mapa, a variedade é muito baixa, ficam espalhadas em partes bem separadas do mapa (te forçando a usar o cano pra viajar mais rápido) sem tirar que tem um que é usado apenas pra UMA fase (se não me engano) que é o baby yoshi dourado, que somente BRILHA no escuro... Se ele faz algo além disso, eu não faço ideia...

Longtime Mario fans will find virtually nothing new in this game, which simply repeats the fairly tired New Super Mario Bros. formula for another go-around. However, the four player co-op gameplay still remains so solid and enjoyable that I had some fun going through another round of this series even if it definitely showed that it was time to shake things up.

There is only one new power-up in the game- the flying squirrel suit which is fairly fun to use but doesn’t feel particularly unique or memorable. There is also the option to have a player join in on the Gamepad and create blocks to help or hinder those jumping through the level, and while it can be fun to troll your friends this is a novelty at best.

New Super Mario Bros. U of course retains that classic charm of the series but we’ve seen this all so many times before.