so i've finished S1 (with all the star coins but the last one on 8-8 which i'll go back and get at some point. all tops of flag poles hit so far too) and it seems a good point to throw out my impressions.
i suck at the game, long gave up on getting the shiny stars
not sure how far into completion i'll try to go, but i'll probably try to beat all the special worlds (without the super secret final level) as a minimum.
i have a 3DTV and the 3DS is something where most games on it i find myself thinking that they would be better played in 3D on that, but this game, nope. it's hard to explain, but Mario has always been a little guy to me. he's jumping on mushrooms and fitting down pipes. coins are almost as big as him.
he's tiny, and on the 3DS he looks it more than ever before. the scale of these little worlds is something to behold. after getting a 3DTV i did wonder what value i'd see in the 3DS beyond some good exclusives, but now i think i get it. the 3DS is going to be great for feeling like you have a little world in the palm of your hand, rather than a projector or 3DTV which is great for making you feel 'there'.
Luigi's Mansion 2, Animal Crossing 3DS... those games are going to shine for that very reason.
so, to the game itself... it's my favourite mario game now. hands down. Galaxy i got bored of halfway through, so i never picked up Galaxy 2... and i'd been so excited about Galaxy. there wasn't anything wrong with it... it just ended up boring me.
harvest stars to unlock the next world... i don't know, it just feels padded out. i'd rather a succession of esoteric and suprising levels that have reasons to revisit but that i can move on from once i hit the end.
it feels like much more of a platformer too than Galaxy did. Galaxy had a lot of object evasion and searching for multiple pieces of stuff, and it didn't have many pitfalls. 3D land is about running and jumping more than its about anything else.
it sings in 3D and is just a joy to control. love that analogue nub. its hard to believe how much better than the PSP nub it is. i can't see the sticks on the PSVita being noticeably better, because i don't find the slider noticeably worse than a 360 controller (actually even prefer it to the Dual Shock analogues).
the artstyle hides the crosstalk issues of the 3DS screen very nicely, the default depth, with a good amount of stuff coming out of the screen is part of what makes it feel like a world in your hands rather than a window into another world too... i expect that they'll use this kind of depth from now on, and will be disapointed if they don't.
even the boss fights are platforming experiences more than anything else.
that 8-8 was epic.
all in all it's a contender for game of the year for me. given that i'm yet to finish Zelda (which is a contender) Batman and Uncharted 3, that's saying a lot. but right now it's nudged ahead of Portal 2 and Alice for me.
it's a game. it doesn't try to be anything other than that. it's a tightly controlling, pure platformer with a large amount of content and huge replayability. it might not have orchestrated music or an epic storyline or any of the things that make so many people love Galaxy, but i'd rather jump my way through these worlds than those.
best Mario game yet.
