New Super Mario Bros 2 review

by Dr_Worm on Nov 17th, 2012

Say what you will about Super Mario games being rehashed over and over just so Nintendo can make a quick buck, but I think the classic gameplay is still enough to provide me guaranteed entertainment with each “new” iteration. New Super Mario Bros 2 is the latest handheld offering in the series, and while the console iterations stay focused on providing new concepts for co-op gameplay, New Super Mario Bros 2 continues to stay true to the series’ roots.

This is where I would talk about the story if everyone and their grandparents didn’t already know what was going to happen. Bowser kidnaps the princess, Mario sets out to save her, and everything in between is pure gameplay concentrate. Unlike previous Mario outings, New Super Mario Bros 2 doesn’t go out of its way to introduce an assortment of new power-ups. The most common are the trademark mushroom, fire flower and the reintroduced super leaf, granting Mario a raccoon tail and the ability to fly. More recent power-ups including the mini-mushroom and giant mushroom do appear, but rarely, making this Mario feel a bit more classic.

The only real new power-up in New Super Mario 2 is the golden flower, giving Mario the ability to shoot gold fireballs that turn blocks into coins, and give you a huge coin bonus for killing enemies. In fact, in case you didn’t know from promotional artwork, the main catch of the game is collecting as many coins as possible. It can be pretty satisfying getting tons and tons of coins at a time, but it still doesn’t serve much of a purpose, nor contribute to any overall goal. Vicariously, getting so many coins makes 1-ups even more superfluous. When I finished the first world, I had 42 extra lives, and when I beat the game, I had 364.

All the coins you get are counted and tallied as you play. No matter if you’re replaying a level or playing the coin rush mode (which I’ll get to in a bit), whether you beat the level or die, all the coins you collect are counted. During E3, Nintendo gave players a clear goal of getting 1 million coins, but trust me, it’s absolutely not worth it. After I completed the game, I only had 31,678 coins, so even though you collect way more coins in New Mario 2 than usual, it’s still not enough to get up to the 1 million mark without an unreasonable amount of grinding.

Aside from all the coin collecting, it’s still just like any other Mario game. New Super Mario Bros 2 is perhaps the most refined of any 2D Mario game. It’s accessible enough for new (or not very good) players, while providing a very solid degree of challenge. Like the previous New games, there are 3 star coins to get in each level, usually well hidden or off the beaten path, giving veteran players more to do during levels, which you can then use to open new paths on the map screen. There are 8 worlds, with a few hidden worlds as well. Sometimes it takes a bit of ingenuity to figure out how to get to those extra worlds, possibly too puzzling for inexperienced gamers. It took me just about 8 hours to complete New Super Mario Bros 2, which seems to be the magic number for games these days. For a handheld game, I’m not complaining.

The more you play through the game, the more levels you unlock for the new coin rush mode, the goal of which being collecting as many coins as possible in a very limited amount of time. Each course consists of three random levels, and you only get one life – you can try again as many times as you want, but you have to start over from the first level. It can be pretty addicting, and even adds a lot to replayability. Coin rush makes use of the 3DS’s street pass feature. After completing a course, you can set your score as the high score, which is then sent to other people, encouraging them to beat your high score on the same course you played.

I wish I could say more about the 2-player co-op, but I don’t have enough friends to actually play it with. From my understanding, one player is Mario and the other is Luigi, you both play through the main campaign simultaneously, and there are certain abilities unique to co-op. However, the co-op is local only, and you can’t play coin rush co-op, which would have probably been a lot of fun.

Even though there isn’t much to say about the core gameplay that hasn’t already been said about other games in the series, New Super Mario Bros 2 is certainly no pushover. My only real complaint is that even though collecting coins is fun, there’s no real reason to accumlate a million of them. It’s a fantastic game and one of the best platformers on any handheld. It’s the same old Mario, and to me, that’s just fine.

4 out of 5

Categories: Reviews