Super Mario USA! This review might be a bit scatterbrained, as I wasn't really thinking about how I was gonna properly rank this game coming out of it.. it feels like it's one of the first Mario titles where they really heightened the complexity overall and tried to experiment with something more mechanically rich and less straight forward..Literally, considering the fact this is the first title in the series that included both horizontal AND vertical sections. It's a good thing then, that the sense of character control truly starts to resemble something we'd consider 'modern' by today's standards, making these picturesque skyscrapers a breeze to navigate.. well, at least if your character has a high enough jump, that is.
Along with the addition of multiple playable characters comes stats unique to them, as well as a base move set that is a smidge more diverse from the standard run and jump Mario had before this point... sporting a high jump each character can use by holding crouch, or the iconic ability to unearth and toss both vegetables and oncoming enemies! It definitely feels a bit more complex with all the brand new variables to take account of, whether it be your character's stats, or the way enemys interact.. and this isn't an inherently bad change, nor directly preferable to what came before. It's just Different.
The worlds can be a bit of a struggle to survive in with only a handful of lives and continues, especially when you jumped around characters as much as I did, but once you stock up as many coins as you can from the Subspace areas it's not too hard amass a large amount of lives from the Bonus Slots... And even so, the secret warps also help if you don't wanna keep running through the same levels that are whittling away at you.
I honestly struggled with this game a lot until I started abusing the subspace zones. I kept getting my lives drained and having to run through the same levels over and over, but I truly did feel myself improving with each run, learning the best places to get mushrooms, exploit the Subspace zones, etc. The game is never quite unfair, just fairly bare knuckled. The only honest frustrations come from some Old Game Jank™ and some of the early levels feeling a tad repetitive... I dislike the removal of the Save feature from Doki Doki Panic, as well as the fact you do not have unlimited continues upon game over ala Super Mario Bros. and it's sequel for Super Players. The inability to switch characters after losing a life to try a new strategy for certain levels was also a bit of a frustration at times, though I eventually settled on just using Mario as my 'contributor', feeling his balanced stats and lack of any particularly glaring downsides best suited my playstyle.
After I got to grips with my character of choice, I felt this game's creativity and strong design really start to shine in the latter worlds, where it presents fair and interesting challenges for the player... which are also much easier to appreciate when you're a character that is fairly equipped to deal with pretty anything the game throws at them. I found other characters like Toad, Peach and even Luigi far too volatile and undesirable in certain situations due to things like their digging speed, throwing speed, and ESPECIALLY jump height. As they say in Goldilocks, Mario was like the porridge that was "just right!", and I found myself much more successful and less grumpy upon sticking to him.
Some of the highlights of the playthrough for me were how they iterated on each consecutive Birdetta fight... creating a new arena to tussle in each time, and forcing you to wrangle her in a different way than you would normally expect. They get a surprising amount of mileage out of this seemingly simple enemy type.
The final clash with Wart I also found especially cool, as it truly felt like a battle that rewarded bravery and skill with how not only the arena was laid out, but how Wart's bubbles deflect vegetables; making it difficult to hit him from the higher area of the room, which can feel 'safer' when you first start the fight. Rather than slinking away and trying to cheap out Wart from a distance, the best strategy is to weave around his bubbles on the lower stage and hit him where it's hurts. It's a really simple, but well designed encounter!
All in all, I enjoyed my time with Super Mario USA, but early on I felt myself getting a bit frustrated when I was struggling to get to grips with certain quirks of the game. It's also certainly a bit different from it's more standard brethren... but it still has enough of the platforming goodness that Mario is known for that fans of the series shouldn't feel alienated.
For any additional crumbs you might want about this game, check out the Doki Doki Panic review on my profile!
Along with the addition of multiple playable characters comes stats unique to them, as well as a base move set that is a smidge more diverse from the standard run and jump Mario had before this point... sporting a high jump each character can use by holding crouch, or the iconic ability to unearth and toss both vegetables and oncoming enemies! It definitely feels a bit more complex with all the brand new variables to take account of, whether it be your character's stats, or the way enemys interact.. and this isn't an inherently bad change, nor directly preferable to what came before. It's just Different.
The worlds can be a bit of a struggle to survive in with only a handful of lives and continues, especially when you jumped around characters as much as I did, but once you stock up as many coins as you can from the Subspace areas it's not too hard amass a large amount of lives from the Bonus Slots... And even so, the secret warps also help if you don't wanna keep running through the same levels that are whittling away at you.
I honestly struggled with this game a lot until I started abusing the subspace zones. I kept getting my lives drained and having to run through the same levels over and over, but I truly did feel myself improving with each run, learning the best places to get mushrooms, exploit the Subspace zones, etc. The game is never quite unfair, just fairly bare knuckled. The only honest frustrations come from some Old Game Jank™ and some of the early levels feeling a tad repetitive... I dislike the removal of the Save feature from Doki Doki Panic, as well as the fact you do not have unlimited continues upon game over ala Super Mario Bros. and it's sequel for Super Players. The inability to switch characters after losing a life to try a new strategy for certain levels was also a bit of a frustration at times, though I eventually settled on just using Mario as my 'contributor', feeling his balanced stats and lack of any particularly glaring downsides best suited my playstyle.
After I got to grips with my character of choice, I felt this game's creativity and strong design really start to shine in the latter worlds, where it presents fair and interesting challenges for the player... which are also much easier to appreciate when you're a character that is fairly equipped to deal with pretty anything the game throws at them. I found other characters like Toad, Peach and even Luigi far too volatile and undesirable in certain situations due to things like their digging speed, throwing speed, and ESPECIALLY jump height. As they say in Goldilocks, Mario was like the porridge that was "just right!", and I found myself much more successful and less grumpy upon sticking to him.
Some of the highlights of the playthrough for me were how they iterated on each consecutive Birdetta fight... creating a new arena to tussle in each time, and forcing you to wrangle her in a different way than you would normally expect. They get a surprising amount of mileage out of this seemingly simple enemy type.
The final clash with Wart I also found especially cool, as it truly felt like a battle that rewarded bravery and skill with how not only the arena was laid out, but how Wart's bubbles deflect vegetables; making it difficult to hit him from the higher area of the room, which can feel 'safer' when you first start the fight. Rather than slinking away and trying to cheap out Wart from a distance, the best strategy is to weave around his bubbles on the lower stage and hit him where it's hurts. It's a really simple, but well designed encounter!
All in all, I enjoyed my time with Super Mario USA, but early on I felt myself getting a bit frustrated when I was struggling to get to grips with certain quirks of the game. It's also certainly a bit different from it's more standard brethren... but it still has enough of the platforming goodness that Mario is known for that fans of the series shouldn't feel alienated.
For any additional crumbs you might want about this game, check out the Doki Doki Panic review on my profile!