Super Mario 3D World

[Deleted]

You don't need to resort to personal attacks against me and others, Steve, I would have disregarded the post had you not also made other points which made it worthwhile. Just use those next time and you'll crush me much more effectively.
After all, the idea is the enemy, not the person, plus you're in the right.

I'm slightly exasperated by the mario franchise at this point and I may have gotten a little over excited during the post.

Bear in mind you are on a forum primarily about Gotcha Force while making this post.

I don't need it to be RPG caliber (that would be stupid, the genres are utterly different), or even Mario RPG caliber, but it always exasperates me when Nintendo prove time and time again that they are capable of crafting games with entertaining stories (and even dark and emotional stories like the mother series and SPM) and simply choose not to when making a new game. Their gameplay is fine at this point and a good story is not necessary for a good or great game, but a classic game?
Yeah, they need good stories or resonant themes. Like how Ocarina of time may not have had the best story when all is said and done but did have a nice world with nice characters and story themes which while not heavily talked about, still left 'themes' which created the mood which makes it a classic.
Mario games became popular because of the, well, not themes but certainly the 'mood' they left. They were bright and colourful for all ages. As graphics became better however, in my opinion the mario series started feeling too much like 'games' for me to really get a good feel from them.
It's not even like themes and mood limit creativity in level design, galaxy and galaxy 2 felt huge and epic and could have any level they wanted.
I don't know how this game feels, but even if everything else was improved from land, if the aesthetics are similar then I don't know if it will be for me. Is it basically just like galaxy without the same amount of context?

So yeah, gotcha force had that. It has memorable characters, funny and quotable context and themes of friendship and trust which make it stand out. If story were not needed to create a good game, then games would simply have graphics with no textures besides gray, and no music or sound effects. Just a skeleton with no visuals.
Every element of a game should go into making it great. To simply say 'the story is unnecessary' is the same kind of attitude which makes atrocities like Paper mario sticker star, and it betrays what made the franchise good to begin with.

[Death Eye]

Nov 30, 2013 20:33:33 GMT @alberenza said:

I don't need it to be RPG caliber (that would be stupid, the genres are utterly different), or even Mario RPG caliber, but it always exasperates me when Nintendo prove time and time again that they are capable of crafting games with entertaining stories (and even dark and emotional stories like the mother series and SPM) and simply choose not to when making a new game. Their gameplay is fine at this point and a good story is not necessary for a good or great game, but a classic game?
Yeah, they need good stories or resonant themes. Like how Ocarina of time may not have had the best story when all is said and done but did have a nice world with nice characters and story themes which while not heavily talked about, still left 'themes' which created the mood which makes it a classic.
Mario games became popular because of the, well, not themes but certainly the 'mood' they left. They were bright and colourful for all ages. As graphics became better however, in my opinion the mario series started feeling too much like 'games' for me to really get a good feel from them.

I was always under the impression that they became popular by virtue of solid platforming gameplay, but admittedly that might just be me playing them too much at too young of an age to really get the whole bright and colorful mood thing.

So yeah, gotcha force had that. It has memorable characters, funny and quotable context and themes of friendship and trust which make it stand out. If story were not needed to create a good game, then games would simply have graphics with no textures besides gray, and no music or sound effects. Just a skeleton with no visuals.

That's a huge exaggeration. Also music, graphics, and sound effects create aesthetics, not story. Case in point, SMB2's final battle feels like a final battle. Does anyone remember the story of SMB2? Not really, just that it was a dream.

Every element of a game should go into making it great. To simply say 'the story is unnecessary' is the same kind of attitude which makes atrocities like Paper mario sticker star, and it betrays what made the franchise good to begin with.

Wasn't Sticker Star's problem that they oversimplified the gameplay, though? Admittedly I haven't played it and have no intention of doing so in the future, but I don't remember anyone complaining that the story wasn't there.

[Rikuseroth]

Is this game any good? I don't plan on getting it, because granted, I'd rather play a 2d Mario plat former.
I still wanna know if it's good or not, though

[Indigo]

Post by Steve on 19 hours ago
Yep, I bought it today.
It's fantastic, and even better with other people. The game has nintendo's signature amazing level design, and like SMG is willing to bring in a mechanic for one level and remove it after.
The diversity in the characters is very significant and makes choosing a character an actually tough descision. I go with Toad, I manage with his small jumping ability and his running speed is very nice.
All in all, a very good game, however, the camera with multiplayer is a bit odd. That's my only complaint.


Post by Admin on 9 hours ago
This is by far the best 3D Mario game ever. No contest. If you haven't bought it yet, do it now!
It stays modern but still retains a classic old-school feel about it. Just a crying shame there's no online multiplayer.
I don't think Nintendo can top this. I will have extremely high expectations for the next Mario game now.
10/10.

[Deleted]

Sticker star was mostly fine when it came to gameplay, I guess, below average but not awful since it did have some ok puzzles and I like turn based gameplay. People complain about the lack of partners, a gameplay element easily filled in by the game since Mario can take more than one action per turn. In other words, they were missing a story element.
Speaking for myself, it felt too much like the mainstream mario platformers in aesthetics and structure, even putting bowser as not only the main villain, but a mute main villain. Peach also lost a lot of what made her a good character in previous games and other dialogue was present and not bad, but certainly not memorable. The only line I really remember is when a toad says 'that really crimps my corners!'
Other than that the visual effects were nice, really doing creative things with the paper visuals. The world designs themselves however were fairly boring, and the game was split into levels rather than an over world. There are no levels as good as the underwhere or count bleck's castle, or anything from the first two games, or even super mario RPG on the SNES and the mario and luigi series. Plus, no new characters or character designs, at least not any that I remember.
One of the major problems however is a gameplay one, and that is that the game requires a lot of pre requisites. Puzzles are usually 'find x item from a different level to proceed' and the same goes for bosses, in that they're almost impossible or incredibly long to beat without one arbitrary sticker which they're incredibly weak to.

Everything with sticker star was basically worse, with the possible exception of the combat which I personally preferred over SPM. But... I'm sorry, when I play a mario RPG I expect something with enough imagination to go beyond the main series mario.

And then, yeah, aesthetics isn't improved by story but story IS improved by aesthetics, that was the point of my post. And when I say story, I don't necessarily refer to the dialogue, characters and text, for a story encompasses emotions and aesthetics lend a lot to creating an emotional context for any work of art. That's what a story is, an exploration or invocation of emotions. Usually both. Text simply adds detail, which is necessary if your going to create something that is more complex or if you're going to use text to set the mood (read: A book, RPG with lower emphasis on aesthetics or a visual novel) but it certainly isn't required to invoke emotions within the players/readers. Nintendo are proof of this, and they're generally masters of this. Even if the least they do is evoke 'fun' or 'wacky' as an emotion, which was where they origionally started out.
Then they started expanding those emotions to their logical conclusions in the RPGs, started exploring concepts like 'Sorrow' 'Death' 'destruction' and 'friendship' and even in sunshine a desire to prove oneself (due to mario's framing) which simply created an environment which evoked huge amounts of emotions.
Nintendo seems to have been dialing back on that lately. Mario galaxy was 'epic' and 'fun' with not much else, besides maybe melancholy with the whole Rosalina thing, but it seems to be becoming merely 'fun' again as the environments from recent haven't evoked any feelings within me. It's not like it's impossible to do either, even with their current selection of levels.
Like a desert could have 'loneliness' as an aesthetic, boo houses 'fear' (though they seem to be going for confusion with those) I guess 'dread' is a thing in bowser's castle and 'excitement' in the first world stages but otherwise... I dunno. It just feels like the different worlds are there for level gimmicks and to make it feel like less of a grind.
Pah, what do I know. What changes in emotion did you guys feel when playing this game? Or was it simply very good at keeping up 'fun' or 'wackiness' the whole way, using new levels and gimmicks to make you excited for the new world? Keeping up one persistent emotion on an upward or level curve the entire game is rather impressive, actually, but a mix emotions is what creates some of the greatest art for me, and if I may be so bold, I'd reckon that all of your favorite games do the same thing, too, like how gotcha force can go from funny to over the top to hopeless like when you fight Orochi and Sho, and also providing many different characters who feel lots of different emotions themselves. Does story seriously have to exist in some sort of vacuum independent of gameplay? That's what creates the worst of all games, like the majority of final fantasy games or other bad RPGs from recent years.

[Stove]

Sticker Star was bad because of the way they ruined Paper Mario's RPG format, performed the bosses incorrectly, and treated it like a standard Mario Game.
RPGs are the most story-reliant genre out there, as a pure RPG consists of many, many, many random encounters that can get monotonous and turn a player away from a game.

[Deleted]

Nov 30, 2013 23:53:40 GMT Stove said:

Sticker Star was bad because of the way they ruined Paper Mario's RPG format, performed the bosses incorrectly, and treated it like a standard Mario Game.
RPGs are the most story-reliant genre out there, as a pure RPG consists of many, many, many random encounters that can get monotonous and turn a player away from a game.

God when you right posts like that it makes me lament the fact that I'm finding it more and more difficult to sum up my thoughts in such simple sentences. I envy you.

RPG can do pacing and random encounters right, and when they do, they're masterpieces that I think even the more impatient among us can enjoy.
But when they fail... they fail hard...
What immediately comes to mind is lost Odyssey, I hate that game, it was one of the first games that made me realize that bad RPGs can actually exist.
Heck, it was worse than final fantasy 13.
Wait this isn't relevant...
I'm going to stop posting here now.

[Stove]

So, Champion's Road. Anyone else gotten there yet?
If not, when you do, you're in for a treat. It follows the trend of other modern 3D Mario Games by making one last brutal level.

[Admin]

The one and only thing that irritates me greatly about this game is that your file shows you how many times you've died. It may sound like a pet-peeve to others, but when a game includes negative stats like that, my annoyance nerves are firing away big time. Show positive stats! Not negative ones!


- Admin