Greetings my fellow human beings. It's been a while since I've updated and you may have noticed that all the old posts are no longer viewable. This is part of my learning process as when I look back at the older blogs I just want to crawl under a duna and never come out again. So it's back to the drawing board. Firstly and probably most importantly I had to buy a drawing board. Now that that's been taken care of, I'd like to relaunch the Psykotic Gamer with a special tribute to a personal hero of mine, Jirad "Dragonrider" Khalil aka The Completionist. For those who've never seen the show, look him up on Youtube. His is a show that focuses on 100% completion of video games and he's covered everything from Skyrim to Sonic 06. Inspired by this crazy, crazy man I set out to complete a game of my own: Super Mario 3D Land. Why this game? Because it's my blog and I do what I want.
Story:
Say what you want about Nintendo (and most people do) they don't change what works. With such a heavy focus by other game companies on dark serious narratives in games nowadays, I always find it super refreshing to turn on a Mario game and get straight to business by jumping on things. That being said I doubt a game about a dwarf Italian plumber chomping on mushrooms and fighting dragon-turtles would make it past many marketing exceutives these days.
Presentation:
This game being on the 3DS means that of course it will be playable in 3D. In my books 3D doesn't nessacarily make a game (or movie) any better, though there are 3 or 4 little puzzles that take advantage of the system capabilities. Good luck using a 2DS though. The colours are very vibrant and level design impeccable, Nintendo having perfected this in the Galaxy series. That being said, the game overall feels very safe and doesn't really push the envelope to make this game stand out from its bigger brothers on the consoles.
Gameplay:
Super Mario 3D Land has been described by Shigeru Miyamoto as a blend of 2D and 3D Mario level design. That being said, the game plays very much like a 3D platformer with Mario having all his old jumping abilities like the wall kick, long jump and even a new move: rolling. While rolling doesn't shake things up much, it will allow you to perform an even longer jump (patent pending). Each level has a time limit for you to traverse the obstacle course and reach the flagpole at the end of the level - mechanics carried over from the 2D games. This game also sees the return of the Tanooki suit, last seen in Super Mario Bros. 3 for the NES but that came out before I was born so there was no nostalgia trip for me. You can also grab the upgraded suit which is gold and lets you be invinsible for the duration of the level. If that sounds a little game breaking to you it should. The powered up suit will only appear when you die a certain amount of times on a level and you don't have to use it if you don't want to. It's more for unexperienced players who Nintendo has been catering more for in the recent years.
Final Level:
So you guide Mario through 8 worlds stomping on Goombas and Koopas alike to reach Bowser. Oops, should have put a spoiler warning there, but really if you play a Mario game you already know how it ends. The final boss battle is actually pretty exciting as it does away with the 3 hits and your dead idea and instead we get a fast paced platforming section as the King of Koopas breathes fire and throws barrels at you. When I first played this game I felt like a proper badass for beating Bowser and the fight is actually pretty difficult. I'd say it would be a contender for number 1 in my favourite Bowser fights.
In the end I feel like this is actually an incredibly easy game. Maybe all my years of gaming just means that some games are now beneath me... unless...
Completion Bonus:
For me this is where the real game starts. After beating the final level, you will unlock the special course - 8 more worlds filled with even harder levels. The difficulty here is turned up to 11 and the game is actually better for it. Without these levels this game would hardly deserve a recommendation to the more avid gamers out there. The special world is also where you unlock Luigi who can jump higher than Mario, but has less traction that his plumper older brother. For completionists you have to beat all the levels with both brothers while also collecting three hidden star coins. And after all that you have to make sure to touch the top of all the flagpoles. Once you're done, you have to redo your final fight with Bowser to 100% your game. On your game start screen your save will have 5 twinkling stars to prove to your friends that you're the best.
HOWEVER, if during your travels the golden Tanooki suit appears it will be impossible to get the twinkling stars. That's right, even if you never use the suit you lose the chance for twinkles. Sad face. One way to remedy this is to do a soft reset. If you see the suit, close your game and restart it. The game saves once you finish a level so you'll be put back right where you were. Unfortunatly, I didn't know about this rule until too late, so even though I did everything in the game and never used the suit once my stars will never twinkle. I mean, I guess I could just start the whole game over again but that's just too much wasted time.
Wrapping up this game is really, really, really great. Don't let that hiccup of a completionist bonus put you off because this is the best handheld Mario to date and well worth the time of any 3DS owner. While it does seem like that one design issue could have been avoided this is nevertheless a solid game. For those of you interested, there was a quasi-sequel to this game for the Wii U called Super Mario 3D World which fixes that one problem and also has better level design in general, if only because 3D Land was so cautious. You can also play as Peach and Toad in that one which is neat too. If you want, you can head over the the Completionist channel and watch his review of that here.
With that in mind guys, this game get my Psykotic rating of FINIPETE it (Finish it or Complete it).
And if you're still here I cannot stress enough how cool Jirard is. Seriously check out his channel. Plus he actually completes games fully, even if there is stupid shit in the way like a bloody system where you can't beat the game if you die more than 5 times on a level.
