05 - Super Mario 3D Land

Man, Maine is cold. Like really cold. It's also far away from my consoles, but traveling opens up a bunch of opportunities to play something oft-forgotten about: mobile games. This post is late. I was in a depression-cocoon because the Pats lost a very winnable Super Bowl against a very beatable Nick Foles led Eagles. I guess my first game of the week was not dying from alcohol poisoning. 

But after that, I jumped back onto something I haven't given enough love recently: my 3DS. I grabbed the cart for Super Mario 3D Land I was blown away by how good the game was, all these years after its release. 

While it eschews the main hub world of my favorite Mario game, Super Mario 64, 3D Land takes a lot of its design philosophy from that seminal 64 bit platformer. Even though the game came out within this decade, I was getting flashbacks to third grade and had a smile on my face the entire time. 

If you've played one Mario game, you've played them all. Kind of. Peach gets kidnapped. You look for her. You jump on enemies. You hit question blocks and chase power ups. You collect yellow coins, you collect red coins - you know the drill.

But the levels. Man, the levels

I'd never accuse any Mario level of being too long, but 3D Land more than any other game in the series really takes advantage of the platform it's on and makes every level easily digestible. Taking a cue from Angry Birds, there are three stars hidden throughout each level that reward the player for carefully and thoughtfully exploring the environment. Also, this game brought back the flagpoles that you finish the level on and dammit it was nice to get back to that style of Mario.

There's just something so magical about Mario games. Design and technology has advanced so much since the platformer was created, that in terms of movie comparisons it's silent film of games. Mario is Buster Keaton of games, and he doesn't just find a way to stay relevant with each release, but finds a way to redefine the genre. 

It's more than a game, it's a time machine. The series takes you back to a simpler time of games - you don't yell about lag, you don't worry about your K/D radio, you just jump and enjoy the creative puzzles the designers have made into a navigable environment. They're testing to see how clever and courageous you are through pure gameplay in an almost minimalistic environment. It looks like you're jumping through the dioramas you made in grade school but there's a gauntlet being thrown at your feet with every level getting increasingly more difficult to navigate. The aforementioned stars don't just serve as challenges for curious players, but unlock later game levels. 

There's usually a gimme-star in each level. In around 40 levels I haven't, if my memory serves me, finished any of them without a single star. They're metered out throughout the level, and marked as to whether it's the first, second, or third - letting you know where you should go and look for any that you've missed. 

There are 8 worlds with about 5 levels in each and there's no Ice World, Desert World, nothing like that - every level is a completely new design not based off what's come before. At times it can feel like there isn't cohesion, like everything was poured into a blender and served up to the player. You'll go from a water based level to the insides of a clock to a series of floating platforms suspended in the sky. You get a feel that the developers didn't feel constrained to one up previous levels and go for broke on a theme, but were rather allowed to make a statement with each level and then go on to the next part of their creative agenda. It's some pretty masterful work that never overstays its welcome. 

Also, let's say you're struggling in a level, and you think it'd be easier if you had a specific power up, like the fire flower, or the boomerang, or the Tanooki suit - you can go to previous levels, get the power up, exit to the level selection screen, and then head back to the level in question. I don't think this was intended to break the game (and I don't think it does, necessarily), but the fact that there are small manipulations you can do to make the game a hair easier if you need it, is pretty awesome. It shows a flexibility in design that's most definitely appreciated. 

Especially by someone like me, who's still drunk from that fucking Super Bowl loss and not great at precision platforming that challenges your ability to calculate time and space. 

Since beating the main story of 3D Land, I can't stop thinking about it. It's just such an inviting game that's takes every opportunity to be user friendly and occasionally offers moments of white-knuckled panic. I think my favorite part of it is its design - not just the level design which is masterful and a cut above other platforming games out there, but the design of the game itself. There's no pressure to succeed, just to be wondered and humbled. It's a game that first and foremost asks you to have fun and shows just enough of the underlying challenge that it tricks you into going for it even if you're not a compulsive type of gamer. 

Good god, I can't believe I waited so long to play this game.