I honestly don't do enough of these. Then again, it's not like I'm one of the big shots with their kind of budget. Then again, I don't think I could handle their time schedule in putting a review on some big movie, game, etc every week either. That said, I could maybe bear to do something a bit more frequently, considering I got people moving into the local territories... -sheer colds Reno-. Some joking aside, regardless, I did find the need to do another one, and I figure why not do one that was practically on the massive Hype train practically world wide.
Back before E3 of 2014, Takashi Tezuka, one of the senior game designers at Nintendo, wanted to make what was essentially Mario Paint, just like back in 1992, using the Wii U gamepad. That said, however, the development team pitched the idea to the senior designer that the Mario Paint tools could in turn be useful for other things. Namely the creation of Mario levels. I suppose that Tezuka thought a level editor was more marketable than a drawing program.
Because it wasn't like the world had plenty of those...
Moving on the level editor idea, the dev team eventually created what was initially called just simply "Mario Maker". When it was brought to light during E3 2004, it apparently caught a great deal of people's attention. Eventually, Nintendo would announce that the game would come with various things, such as being able to create levels in four different fashions: completely old-school with the 8-bit Super Mario Bros courtesy of the NES era, Super Mario Bros 3 style, also from the NES, a 16-bit coat of paint with the Super Mario World style, or completely new looking with the New Super Mario Bros. U style. From E3 2014, the hype started to go full force, reaching a massive peak during the 2015 Nintendo World Championships where players played the most ludicrous levels made by the Nintendo Treehouse crew.
As of September 11, 2015, the game was launched for North America, and yours truly actually got his hands on a digital copy. How does the game actually hold up in the hands of the Cold one? Find out.
A bit of info here and there:
So let me go on ahead and get this out of the way. I'm going to have to go about this a bit differently than what I usually would do for a game review. Frankly, I...never played anything like this. For that matter, I never thought in a million years where Nintendo would actually come up with something like this, especially when there's whole communities dominating the internet with RomHacks like "Kaizo Mario World" or "Item Abuse" and so on. The point is, I'm going to have to actually judge this game rather differently, because the games in question usually have...well...me actually playing a game. There's no story going on, there's no clear definition of difficulty, there's no clear definition of control beyond making the levels. Or really, in essence, with that in mind, no clear definition of immersion. In this review I want to try to answer one main, underlying question. That question being is this game worth the price tag ($59.99 + tax as of this post) as it is right now. And I want to answer this question with well beyond a obligatory "its matter of preference" answer. Its going to be something that I don't think I can give my usual "number out of 10" score. I want to convey just what a person is getting into, more so than I usually would in past reviews. Now with that out of the way...
How deep does the rabbit hole go?
It's really the matter of how deep you dig it, and even then, it will take some time, and EVEN THEN, the proverbial bottom is really freakin' deep. Each stage can hold a massive amount of assets, allowing you to make the most massive of levels. That said, the stuff you get to put in these stages will be in gradual, rather it be for better or worse. The game actually received a day 1 patch. Before, as the reviewers who got their reviewer copies found out, they would have to play the game for at least five minutes to get the next set of items. The items in question would not come until next day. Now, you should be able to get the items in question in 15 minute intervals. For some reason, despite getting the patch, it still took at least a couple of hours at a time.
Apart from that, once you do have all of your tools at your disposal, the (Mario) world is your oyster. You can experiment with every last asset that the game provides to you to see just how far you can push it. Bullet Bill Launchers mounted on the backs of Koopa Troopas? Not a problem. Chain chomps off their post spawning from warp pipes? Just another Tuesday. Want a Hammer Bro with wings? There's an app for that. Want to be a total douche and place a trap of some sort in a Question Mark box? Go for it.
Scary part...that's the tamer scenarios...
Truth be told, you could potentially lose yourself in your own creation, coming up with some of the most profound things in your levels if you're really on a roll. That said, there is a cap as to how much you can put, but the cap is rather generous. It REALLY took some time, for example, before I actually managed to find the upper echelon of where I can't even put in any more walk-able ground. Even if you run out of that, that isn't stopping you from stuffing in more things, namely enemies and items. Speaking of such items, you do have a fairly large list of what you can play with...
So...how can I torment the world today...
What you see in the picture above, however, is a bit deceiving. Some of these assets can actually be changed. By selecting the item and dragging it out into your editing field and shaking said object on-screen with your gamepad, you can change the behavior or out right change the enemy itself. Bob-ombs become short-fuse ones. Chain Chomps lose their posts and roam free. Green Koopa Troopas turn Red shelled. It actually takes a fair bit of time to actually find out what is available to you and for that matter, how will the asset in question react to the scene that you have. Speaking of the scenes, as mentioned before, you got four different video game styles, and within the four styles you have six different scenes: Classic Overworld, Airship, Castle, Underwater, Ghost House, and the Underground, and they work in all styles. So if you wanted that Ghost House in 8-bit NES Mario, you're good to go. Wanted that Airship in Super Mario World? That's a non-issue. And enemies within these scenes will react or just outright change to adapt to the scene. For instance, Goombas can actually swim and Dry Bones will turn into Fish Bones underwater. Its all the matter of experimentation and the tools your given are pretty flexible. There are SOME exceptions however. For example, some assets can't be used and are replaced when transitioning styles. For example, Yoshi can't be on a Super Mario Bros or SMB3 style, but yet can be in World or New U. The same goes for a good number of items. Leaf from SMB 3 gets replaced by the Cape Feather in World, which then gets replaced by the Propeller Mushroom in the New U scene. Same goes for enemies for that matter. The classic stomp-flat Goombas are replaced by the Galoomba which you can temporarily carry.
Mario himself is generally susceptible to what style the game is in. For example in the New U style, he has access to his Ground Pound and wall kick moves, and the small spin jump to bounce on more hazardous enemies, such as spinies, but loses those traits in other styles. For instance, in the World style instead, he gets his spin jump that can actually break bricks. The Mario 3 and original Mario styles, Mario has no such luxuries.
The editor map is all grid based and you can place the assets on the grid however you see fit, following the physics that provided for it. Transitions between picking the item from the toolbox and placing them on the grid, transitioning between main and sub-world, moving from one spot on the large map to another is seamless. Any mistakes you made? You got yourself a eraser and a undo button for you to use as well, just like you did back in Mario Paint (for those people who are old enough to even remember it). And then, finally, if you want to test run that segment of the level, you can tap on the Play button on the bottom left hand corner of the touchpad screen to start at the segment where you left Mario in the editor and give the stage a test run.
So say I made the level to my liking...then what?
Apart from starting over again from square one and make ANOTHER stage, for starters, you, like a lot of other people who owns the Wii U and this game, can upload their levels onto the Nintendo servers for others to play. To give a bit of quality control about what goes on the servers, however, players are required to actually CLEAR their own stages themselves, start to finish as it is. If they can't, then they'll have to edit their own stage to actually make it work. In short, the stage HAS TO BE POSSIBLE TO BEAT.
Once doing that, the stage then will be uploaded, giving you one more prompt about your level's name if you want to change it (it runs off of your level save name) then finally upload it. Then its all the matter of waiting on players to play your level and see how well they do.
COME ON! My stage isn't that hard! Um...is it?
At the start, you are able to upload up to ten stages for the world to try their hand at. Getting approval from the players, as such, the players giving a stage of yours a star, will go towards of enabling you to being able to upload more stages. I've researched into it and if all goes well for you, you can have as many as 100 stages uploaded at once, providing that you have that kind of approval from the masses. Your cap will go up gradually upon reaching certain benchmarks with stars, the first being 50 stars from random people to up the upload cap to 20.
Apart from that, just as the players can play your stages and give your stage a star, you can play their stages and give them stars if you liked it. You can play the stages individually, or challenge yourself in the 10 or 100 Mario challenges, where you are given lives (10 and 100 lives respectively) and you go through a series of user-created levels. Of course, just as your levels more than likely will be, the quality let alone difficulty, all over the place. Fortunately, during your run of the gauntlet, you can choose to skip the level at the cost of one of your lives and go on to the next. You can regain extra lives for that matter providing that the user-created levels are merciful enough to give them to you.
Also, speaking of the user created levels in general, keep in mind one thing. Mario Maker is a game that essentially has no end. Unless the users quit playing, making, and uploading levels in the entire world, you have a game that will keep on providing levels for you to enjoy (or torture) yourself with.
Course World...it is your playground. It is your Hell.
That's a lot to do.
Ah yea...um...let me stop you there. It only LOOKS that way, and as such, that may be the major hitch to Super Mario Maker. When you get by the experimentation of every last asset, which at best is probably a couple of hours tops if you consistently do it, how much you do will depend on how much of an attention deficit disorder you have. If you go in with a plan, like I said, you could lose yourself in it. If not...you're only looking at a few minutes at a time to maybe simply just to kill time. For that matter, once you get done experimenting, you'll find that while you do have stuff to work with, and for that matter COMBINE into each other in one light or another, in the end, you'll probably find just as I did that it really isn't. When I experimented, I tried to come up with every last thing that I known to be in a Mario game at least before coming up with some mashup of various things like Chain Chomps in Koopa Clown cars. Take for instance...Fire Bros, which were around in Super Mario Bros 3 and in New Super Mario Bros U. You'd imagine that "Maybe if I combine a Fire Flower to a Hammer Bros, I'd get that." Fact of the matter, you won't, and they're not in there. In fact, the more that you dig, you'll find that a lot of things that you may remember that was in a 2-D mario game, even if they were severely prominent, rather they be enemy or item, they're a no-show, regardless of the style of game you're playing. The styles and scenes within each style also fall victim of this too. While there's no helping the style of game, there should be helping some in regards to the scenes? No beach level with a water bottom? What about a lava level that's not restricted to the castle scene? Why not a sky level? Or an snow level? Incidentally, why not take more artistic liberties? Why not allow the player to put Airship floor pieces underwater for a wrecked ship look, for instance? And is there some reason why I can't have a sloped ground where I can press down and slide down said slope?
Perhaps we needed Mario Paint's music maker?
Not to mention, admittingly, while the game TECHNICALLY has no end, there is only so much that one is willing to bear in trying to overcome some user-created levels that make the likes of Kaizo Mario look like a tea party, because in looking around, there are pretty sadistic ones out there. Playing the 100 Mario Challenge, especially on Expert, you're for certain to find these en-mass, potentially easily robbing you of your 100 lives. It's probably what one should expect when Nintendo leaves level creation to their user base.
So back to the original question...
Is this game worth the price tag it is now. In all honesty, I'm having a very hard time saying "Yes". Yes, you have a fair bit to play with and yes you got levels among levels among levels thanks to the user base. That said, as much freedom that the toolbox gives, when you really get down to looking at it, there's not as much as one might think, and the user-created levels, at the moment, are extremely volatile. Am I implying that this is a bad game? Hell no, by no means. In fact, I find that this game has untold amounts of potential that hasn't been quite realized as of yet and I can very well see Nintendo take this and actually expand on it for other installments. Maybe a Legend of Zelda maker? For now, at the very least, wait for DLC, rather it be free or on the very cheap, hopefully no more than $2.00 at best for a set of more assets to tinker with. Otherwise, wait for at least a slight price drop or catch it on sale somewhere. The bright side, however, I can at least say that Nintendo is still on the right track with Mario...well...providing that he can avoid hosting any more parties.
30 Years...God, I feel old...
