Super Mario 3D World is fine. It is a completely adequate game, that I believe is a bit overhyped if anything. The gameplay is largely fun, with mostly good levels (there are a bunch of gigatoxic levels in World 4). It bothers me a bit that several of the world's themes are basically given up on after the first level in that world is completed, but that's fine I guess. The cat powerup is okay, tanuki being there is great, I like boomerang, and fire flower is a classic. It's a good time, falling just shy of a great one, at least in the singleplayer campaign, and I'd probably rate this a 3.5* if it were packaged alone.

However, Bowser's Fury exists. And honestly, Bowser's Fury kind of rules. It may be somewhat packaged as "hey, here's bonus content so that this isn't just a port", but honestly, there's a ton of content here. 100 cat shines falls just short of the star count in Super Mario 64, and most of them are spread across sub-zones in a larger hub world. The best part is that the hub zones evolve as you collect cat shines, so the world is very dynamic. I don't really love the fury blocks and having to time out Bowser, but honestly this part of the game rules and very much merits that extra half star bump. I hope more 3D mario games go in its type of direction in the future - I unironically like type of world this more than Odyssey's.

I had been putting off playing Super Mario Bros 3D World + Bowser's Fury for a long time. I played the first level a while back while waiting for a game to download just to see what it was like. Several other games came and went before I finally committed to this game and I am so glad I did.

The game is bright, vibrant and looks fantastic for a Nintendo Switch title. I’m not much of a fan of 2D platformers as you need the reaction time of someone on speed but Super Mario Bros 3D World as the title suggests adds the 3D element, well 2.5D kinda as the camera is quite limited. The new Z axis can either be your friend or your enemy. It can either give you more directions to move to avoid enemy attacks or it can fuck you over because you didn’t place your character correctly while jumping and now your tumbling down the back of the level with Mario’s irritating “obo nobo” before he dies. That phrase quickly becomes salt in the wound of your mistakes.

Like other more modern Mario games it is lenient when it comes to you making mistakes, lives are not hard to come by but when you run out of lives you’re given a “Game Over” and kicked out the level losing any collectables you may have picked up on that run. It’s a pain but not as much of a pain as retro Mario titles that just put you to the very start of the game again. If you do die a certain amount of times you’re given the White Tanooki suit which gives you partial invulnerability and the ability to prolong your jumps. I have no shame in saying this but I used this whenever it was presented to me.

Each course you enter is almost completely different to each other which is great, nothing gets too samey. Another benefit of that is that frustrating courses with really hard obstacles are unlikely to pop up again in future levels. The variety keeps things fresh and exciting. The collectables such as the Green Stars and Stamps are fun to collect, most of them are not too frustrating to get, they feel like a nice wee bonus for you exploring or taking the chance at a slightly more difficult manoeuvre. One type of course I found frustrating were the ones that slowly scrolled and you needed to keep your character on screen at all times. It was very easy to go ahead of the camera and jump out of view and you had no idea if they were safe, are they going to get hit with something? What if I jump? Most of the time you will die before you come into view again. The courses themselves can easily be completed in under 5 minutes meaning this game is great for those who want to pick up and play a game for 15 minutes or so when time is short.

I particularly enjoyed the Captain Toad levels, the 360 puzzle solving was fun. This has brought the “Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker” up higher in my “Games to play” list.

The music is really fun in this game. I do have this thing however that I dislike songs that sound very much like other songs because when those songs play all I can hear is the other song. The reason I bring this up is that the trumpets in the music of the World 1 (I think it’s World 1) play it reminds me so much of the “You’ve Been Framed” intro music. All I could hear was that any time it played.

During my playthrough I only ever used Mario because the game didn’t give me good enough reason to want to play as anyone else. Once the main story was completed and I was gathering remaining green stars and stamps I did alternate between the different characters for a short while. I know that the different characters are for those who want to play co-op but 95% of the time I play games solo so that wasn’t going to be an option for me.

I really had so much fun with this game and I wish I had picked it up sooner, hence the 4.5 stars.

Super Mario Bros 3D World + Bowser's Fury was the first time I had played Super Mario Bros 3D World so went straight from my first experience there to my first experience with Bowser’s fury. Going from a great looking vibrant game with limited camera controls, starting up Bowser’s Fury with 360 camera and updated visuals was like Dorothy walking from the sepia tone Kanas house into the colourful land of Oz. I was taken aback with how Bowser’s fury looked and how it played as it had a full 360 camera in an open world. I had no idea what to expect.

Each section of this open world has 3 islands each with 5 shines to collect. Each shine you pretty much need to start from the bottom and work your way back up to the top. This may sound repetitive but the way the game avoids it getting boring is after you collect each shine the island rejigs itself with new enemies and obstacles. The islands also offer the helicopter powerup which makes scaling the towers a lot faster meaning you don’t need to do the same frustrating climb over and over. I genuinely had a lot of run with this idea, the fact you can cut about willy nilly doing what you want when you want rather than being confined to courses was great.

Bowser will attack every 5 minutes or so which turns the scenery into a fiery hellscape, this does add a bit more tension and keeps things exciting. Not so exciting when you’ve been working your arse off to climb a tower and this big bugger turns up and the screen change of light to dark can make you mess up a jump or menouvere making you start all over again. Unlike the first game there are no checkpoints. This can be especially frustrating on Roiling Roller Isle.

Bowser’s fury was short and sweet, a lovely dessert to finish up my experience with this game and both courses didn’t leave me too full either, just nicely satisfied. I know Super Mario Odyssey had a similar style of open-ish worlds like Bowser’s fury and long may it continue. Personally I much prefer this method of being able to move around in a 3D open world space.

If I played this game when it first came out it would have easily been in my top 3 of that year. If you have not played it yet and you have the ability to, then get it done!