I think I might have to bend the knee here. Not all the way, but..
New Super Mario Bros. 2 is, metaphysically, a lot of things, and also not much. It's Super Mario at its most ad nauseum. I never bothered with it at launch because, like you, I was feeling the fatigue of the New. I let it pass me by as I did most of Nintendo's catalogue of this era, but a decade later, in this day and age where It's Actually Really Easy To Hack Your 3DS, what's the harm in trying?
I'll get the obvious out of the way, NSMB2 is nothing New. It's a tepid celebration of the passé, a slideshow of the been-theres and done-thats. You've seen it before. At the time, when you didn't even know it, you were gonna see it again (but if you wanna be pedantic, sure, you did know). New Super Mario Bros. 2, like most of Nintendo's exports of the early 2010s, is and was perfectly content being vehemently washed of purpose.
But NSMB2 represents a stubborn truth here, one I think many fellow gamer internetizens who utterly disdain it for its blandness feel obligated to gloss over: it's not bad.
I tend to enter games of this kind of reviled category without any expectations if I can manage that. I don’t go in looking to redeem the perceived unredeemable and vice versa, and my groundbreaking, earth-shatteringly contrarian take here - is that it's fine.
I've gone through the obvious; you've seen this before, but would you deny it was ever bad? More of the same is certainly fatiguing, but is New Super Mario Bros. 2 actually a substantial drop in quality from its formers? I don't really think so. You go through Grass Land, Sand Land, Beach Land, Swamp Land, Sky Land, and Lava Land pretty much in the same order as you've done twice before by this point. Actual new stage gimmicks are few and far between. The new “coin rush” ethos here isn't the most convention-flipping as Nintendo wanted you to believe, sure, but I'd argue some identity is better than none (looking at New Super Mario Bros. U here).
It wasn't until the very end of the game that I realized I was never really disengaged. Even at Super Mario's universally-perceived worst, I can think of plenty of other platformers with much worse level design. My engagement never flatlined, and that goes double for the challenges in going for the Star Coins this time around - they're actually fun, more than I think they've ever been in this series.
All of this text is to just overly extend what was probably my only thought playing this: “This is it? This is the worst Super Mario game?" I can't say it's anything more than good at best, but at its worst (and I'm just preaching to the choir here) it's uninspired. It certainly isn't New, but I don't think that makes it bad.
New Super Mario Bros. 2 is, metaphysically, a lot of things, and also not much. It's Super Mario at its most ad nauseum. I never bothered with it at launch because, like you, I was feeling the fatigue of the New. I let it pass me by as I did most of Nintendo's catalogue of this era, but a decade later, in this day and age where It's Actually Really Easy To Hack Your 3DS, what's the harm in trying?
I'll get the obvious out of the way, NSMB2 is nothing New. It's a tepid celebration of the passé, a slideshow of the been-theres and done-thats. You've seen it before. At the time, when you didn't even know it, you were gonna see it again (but if you wanna be pedantic, sure, you did know). New Super Mario Bros. 2, like most of Nintendo's exports of the early 2010s, is and was perfectly content being vehemently washed of purpose.
But NSMB2 represents a stubborn truth here, one I think many fellow gamer internetizens who utterly disdain it for its blandness feel obligated to gloss over: it's not bad.
I tend to enter games of this kind of reviled category without any expectations if I can manage that. I don’t go in looking to redeem the perceived unredeemable and vice versa, and my groundbreaking, earth-shatteringly contrarian take here - is that it's fine.
I've gone through the obvious; you've seen this before, but would you deny it was ever bad? More of the same is certainly fatiguing, but is New Super Mario Bros. 2 actually a substantial drop in quality from its formers? I don't really think so. You go through Grass Land, Sand Land, Beach Land, Swamp Land, Sky Land, and Lava Land pretty much in the same order as you've done twice before by this point. Actual new stage gimmicks are few and far between. The new “coin rush” ethos here isn't the most convention-flipping as Nintendo wanted you to believe, sure, but I'd argue some identity is better than none (looking at New Super Mario Bros. U here).
It wasn't until the very end of the game that I realized I was never really disengaged. Even at Super Mario's universally-perceived worst, I can think of plenty of other platformers with much worse level design. My engagement never flatlined, and that goes double for the challenges in going for the Star Coins this time around - they're actually fun, more than I think they've ever been in this series.
All of this text is to just overly extend what was probably my only thought playing this: “This is it? This is the worst Super Mario game?" I can't say it's anything more than good at best, but at its worst (and I'm just preaching to the choir here) it's uninspired. It certainly isn't New, but I don't think that makes it bad.