New Super Mario Bros 2 is like vanilla pudding. Nobody hates vanilla pudding because there really is no content to hate. Nobody loves vanilla pudding because there is no content to truly enjoy. Vanilla pudding is just the baseline and your enjoyment of it really comes down to if you find it tolerable enough to eat for the time being. That is New Super Mario Bros 2 and I do not think I have to explain why, but I am going to anyways.
Well I suppose what makes up the sugar content of this vanilla pudding should be up first. The stuff that's actually truly enjoyable about this game makes up a good 1% of it. New Super Mario Bros 2 fixes one of my biggest problems with New Super Mario Bros Wii, the star coins. In this outing, the game's main collectibles are actually useful again and are not hidden in invisible walls the way they were in the Wii game. The star coins are always hidden in just the right places to give you enough of a feeling of satisfaction without making it a chore for the player.However, some levels do not hide their star conis at all. Not even early game levels, I am talking about the last levels in the game I would collect all three of them in one run. Of course, all of that collecting is made easier by the power-ups which in my experience actually felt useful and unique compared to the game's predecessors. In DS and Wii, the unique power-ups to those games were really only ever used to find secrets and in the case of the propellor mushroom, actually provided a slight advantage, despite only being in like 5 levels. In New Super Mario Bros 2, you are actually forced to pick which power-up you think is best for solving a problem, which really only boils down to your choice of the tanooki leaf or the fire flower. Both are quite underwhelming and better implemented in other games but you will find that's a theme as we delve deeper into the game.
Speaking of game, how is it? It's bland and uninteresting, unsurprisingly. The art style and music lack uniqueness as both are essentially a blend of the previous two games, but mostly taking heavy inspiration from Wii. In the case of the music, it actually is the exact same as Wii and has no identity of it's own as far as I could tell. You find that a trend throughout most of the game, as boss battles include the koopalings, level themes and even the multiplayer are all ripped straight from Wii. Coin Rush, while admittedly one of my favorite things about the game, is just a single player coin battle from the Wii version. From red coins and checkpoint flags to secret cannons and hidden blocks, this game is just a rehash of everything that it's predecessors did with no added input. There really is nothing you can say about this game because it is not bad, it's just bland and the least interesting choice, yet you still find yourself coming back to it every once and a while.
Ask anyone who has played this game if they have fond memories of it and most of them will say yes. People who played this game liked it and still like it to this day, it's just when you compare this game to every other game in it's series, it is the literal definition of a middle child. But rating a game in context of others is not how I like to think about games. I always try my hardest to come to a conclusion about a game without thinking about what was done in other games, and only judge a game based on what it did right. Remembering that promise I made to myself, I just have to say that New Super Mario Bros 2 is a fine game. It's incredibly easy and it has no appeal to it whatsoever but it being a comfortable romp on it's own merits a good review.
With all of that being said, I come back to my vanilla ice cream analysis. Because if you ask someone who has never had a sugary treat before in their life to sit down and judge vanilla ice cream, they would tell you it's delicious and likely the best thing they have ever had. That will always be this game's legacy to me, something I wish I could have experienced as my first platformer so I could just appreciate it with ignorance.
Well I suppose what makes up the sugar content of this vanilla pudding should be up first. The stuff that's actually truly enjoyable about this game makes up a good 1% of it. New Super Mario Bros 2 fixes one of my biggest problems with New Super Mario Bros Wii, the star coins. In this outing, the game's main collectibles are actually useful again and are not hidden in invisible walls the way they were in the Wii game. The star coins are always hidden in just the right places to give you enough of a feeling of satisfaction without making it a chore for the player.However, some levels do not hide their star conis at all. Not even early game levels, I am talking about the last levels in the game I would collect all three of them in one run. Of course, all of that collecting is made easier by the power-ups which in my experience actually felt useful and unique compared to the game's predecessors. In DS and Wii, the unique power-ups to those games were really only ever used to find secrets and in the case of the propellor mushroom, actually provided a slight advantage, despite only being in like 5 levels. In New Super Mario Bros 2, you are actually forced to pick which power-up you think is best for solving a problem, which really only boils down to your choice of the tanooki leaf or the fire flower. Both are quite underwhelming and better implemented in other games but you will find that's a theme as we delve deeper into the game.
Speaking of game, how is it? It's bland and uninteresting, unsurprisingly. The art style and music lack uniqueness as both are essentially a blend of the previous two games, but mostly taking heavy inspiration from Wii. In the case of the music, it actually is the exact same as Wii and has no identity of it's own as far as I could tell. You find that a trend throughout most of the game, as boss battles include the koopalings, level themes and even the multiplayer are all ripped straight from Wii. Coin Rush, while admittedly one of my favorite things about the game, is just a single player coin battle from the Wii version. From red coins and checkpoint flags to secret cannons and hidden blocks, this game is just a rehash of everything that it's predecessors did with no added input. There really is nothing you can say about this game because it is not bad, it's just bland and the least interesting choice, yet you still find yourself coming back to it every once and a while.
Ask anyone who has played this game if they have fond memories of it and most of them will say yes. People who played this game liked it and still like it to this day, it's just when you compare this game to every other game in it's series, it is the literal definition of a middle child. But rating a game in context of others is not how I like to think about games. I always try my hardest to come to a conclusion about a game without thinking about what was done in other games, and only judge a game based on what it did right. Remembering that promise I made to myself, I just have to say that New Super Mario Bros 2 is a fine game. It's incredibly easy and it has no appeal to it whatsoever but it being a comfortable romp on it's own merits a good review.
With all of that being said, I come back to my vanilla ice cream analysis. Because if you ask someone who has never had a sugary treat before in their life to sit down and judge vanilla ice cream, they would tell you it's delicious and likely the best thing they have ever had. That will always be this game's legacy to me, something I wish I could have experienced as my first platformer so I could just appreciate it with ignorance.