Nintendo’s mustachioed plumber has been making children and adults dream for years. Today’s adults are yesterday’s children. Mario has accompanied a large number of us, from childhood to adolescence, until this moment. It is a license that is more than cult, it is definitely anchored in modern culture and has risen to the rank of historical legend to the point of having the right to its own amusement park. But as loved and adored as Mario may be, the plumber and his little family often rest on what they have acquired.
We rarely talk about it, or we quickly forget it, but the formula of the “main” games of the franchise has difficulty getting off the beaten track when it simply does not take one of its adventures to modernize it on the platforms recent Big N. That doesn’t take away from the effectiveness of the franchise, but it’s an observation. And it’s when we think that Mario will no longer surprise us that he finds a way to knock us out. This is what Super Mario Bros Wonder brings. A fresh breath of new things, a big dose of modernity, a ton of excellent ideas and endless surprises. And yet here I’m only talking to you about the start of the game, nothing more.
Something new at Mario
Super Mario Bros. Wonder made everyone agree when he presented himself to us with his pretty incredible trailer. Returning to his first love, 2D or at worst 2.5D, Mario has enlisted his little friends (Luigi, Peach, Yoshi, Toad…) for this new, completely new escapade on Nintendo Switch. Exit the mushroom kingdom, which we will have scoured extensively all these years, and head for the Kingdom of Flowers, a neighboring region never before visited by the plumber. Everything is beautiful, everything is flowery, when suddenly, just once, good old Bowser shows up, destroys everything and escapes with a power capable of changing the world forever. Mario and his comrades then set off in pursuit.
Playable alone or in multiplayer, Super Mario Wonder offers no less than eight characters. We find in particular Mario, Luigi or even Peach and Daisy, but also Toad and Yoshi. Besides, the little colorful lizards that lay eggs serve as “very easy” fashion. By playing them, you do not suffer any damage and therefore the adventure will be greatly facilitated. It’s not any worse since from the outset, the difficulty is a bit higher than the average of other titles in the franchise. Yes yes. Moreover, when we walk around the world map, modeled in isometric 3D, we can see that all the levels now have a difficulty rank represented by a number of stars.
A real breath of fresh air
To help us along the way, Super Mario Wonder gives us access to skills to equip on the fly when we launch a course or fail, for example. These skills are presented in the form of badges that we unlock as we progress. So far, I have only been able to see a handful, such as a skill allowing us to use our headgear to glide, another which gives us the possibility of bouncing more against walls, etc… We also note badges with passive effects which can alter the stages by allowing us to earn bonus coins by eliminating enemies or by offering us a mushroom from the start of the level for example. There are several dozen of these badges, although I was not able to see everything, it is certain that they are anything but accessories. For the few that I was able to use in any case, they have their usefulness, and are sometimes even almost obligatory for discovering secrets. In any case, they make life much easier when the internships are tough.
This little light RPG aspect brings a real breath of fresh air to the formula and at the same time offers replayability. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that you completely rediscover the levels by changing skills, but you certainly discover new ways of approaching them. It remains to be seen how far the game will go next. In addition to regular courses, we now have the right to small secondary tests. Challenges that put our talents to the test and at the same time serve as training for the use of badges. A very nice little extra which also allows players less accustomed to this type of gameplay to gently get their hands on it before tackling the slightly more difficult levels.
Superb, fun… Super Mario Bros Wonder sells dreams
Super Mario Wonder remains hyper accessible, that won’t change, it’s just a bit more elevated. In the first levels, it is not uncommon for our reflexes to be put to the test during certain platform sequences for example. Especially since the level design and staging regularly amaze us. ” Amazing ! » some people will think, but it’s very true. Super Mario Wonder is a visual must-have, an artistic juggernaut that instantly takes us into a rich and colorful world. Foreground, background, animations, everything is teeming with details that we absolutely did not expect. The animations, in fact, are numerous and lots of little surprises await you, during a jump, when going through a pipe… whatever.
It’s often subtle, but put together, the little good ideas help to give new impetus to the franchise. This is even more true when you activate the Prodigy Flowers. These are flowers to find in the levels which, once activated, completely transform the world around us and give birth to a real spectacle of sound and light, it is often even nonsense but it is always enjoyable. We smile, we have fun, we even marvel at these passages which clearly do not lack spice. The pipes meander, the Piranha plants dance and sing in choreography, a herd of creatures rushes at us and takes us into a frenzied race against time… It’s a festival and if the game manages to surprise us until the end, we we would be facing a real must-have, clearly.
The icing on the cake is that it is possible to play multiplayer and take advantage of a multitude of online game mechanics. At the time of writing these lines, I have not had the opportunity to touch it, but the promises are there. We’ll save that for the final test.
We wait for it… like big children!
Mario has been modernized and improved. In just a few hours, Super Mario Bros. Wonder is already selling us a dream, and clearly makes us want to delve into it more. Basically, the recipe remains the same, and it’s not any worse, but in form, everything has changed. New kingdom to visit, new enemies, new skill… everything smells new. On top of that, the game has a blast with a staging worthy of a true hallucinatory and mind-blowing blockbuster. He takes us into incredible dreamlike sequences which often go full blast. Finally, we will note a very present difficulty for once, great accessibility and well-felt new features like these famous badges, which act as light RPG. Impossible to give a definitive verdict as there is still much to discover, but it smells very, very good.