Starting from the first generation of “Super Mario Bros”, this series has been around for 38 years until today. Although “Mario Bros.” has always shown everyone that they can pass the 2D level by jumping, each generation of “Mario Bros.” can create many unexpected new elements within the framework of platform jumping.
Just like this “Super Mario Bros. Wonder”, it vividly interprets the “surprise” in its name.
The plot has always been the “least important” part of the Ma Liou series, but even so, “Super Mario Bros. Wonder” has made some changes compared to the past – at least it did not let everyone continue to save the princess.
Ma Liou and his team came to the Flower Kingdom to visit. During their meeting with Prince Lorian, the Cool Overlord suddenly arrived and combined himself, the spaceship, and the castle with the “Amazing Flower” of the Flower Kingdom, gaining even stronger power. The entire game process is self-evident, and the ultimate goal is to use various powers to solve the “Cool Overlord of the Castle”…
Let’s bring our attention back to the game content itself. I believe that the vast majority of players, like me, will notice the huge difference between this work and traditional 2D Mario Bros. Wonder when entering the first level: the setting of level timing has been cancelled.
To be honest, this is the most comfortable change in “Super Mario Bros. Wonder” for me. After all, in the early 2D Mario works, timing settings can greatly increase players’ sense of urgency in the game, and everyone needs to complete the game as quickly as possible within the specified time. But now even 2D Mario works have hidden content and collectible items that are not inferior to 3D Mario works.
After canceling the slightly outdated mechanism of timing, players can have more time for exploration, trial and error, and try to achieve one pass and full collection in different levels as much as possible.
Not only that, there is no time limit, and more game content can be added to each level without worrying about players ignoring the creator’s many ideas due to “rushing” to complete the game.
It is precisely for this reason that the setting of “Amazing Flower” has become the most anticipated part for me in every level. Whenever I eat “Amazing Flower” in a level, the surrounding environment will undergo significant changes.
For example, in the level of “Beware, the wheel shoes slowly turtle”, after eating the surprise flower, the whole world will instantly darken, and only the surroundings of the character can shine, reflecting the non-existent path. While avoiding monsters coming from all directions, find the right path among many forks.
Or what everyone has already seen in the trailer, the water pipes that come to life and wriggle like insects, as well as the “man-eating flower army” that appears in groups. During the time when triggering the surprise flower changes the level, players can also rely on exploring the entire area to harvest a surprise flower seed, which serves as an important resource to unlock subsequent levels.
In addition to the new setting of “Wonder Flower” that fits the theme of “Wonder”, the new elements of “Super Mario Bros. Wonder” are still overwhelming.
The elephant fruit that has been seen in the demonstration can give Ma Liou and other protagonists strong melee abilities. If you choose to play as the Peach Blossom Princess, after eating the elephant fruit, the appearance of the character will look more show-like than Ma Liou in the demonstration.
In addition, “Super Mario Bros. Wonder” also features a large number of new enemies and props that have never been seen before. Compared to old acquaintances such as “Chestnut Boy”, new friends such as Escape Carl and Rolling Bells may be more attractive to players. The appearance of many new enemies also makes the gaming experience of “Super Mario Bros. Wonder” very different from previous 2D Mario works.
However, it is well known that the difficulty of completing the Mario series has always been quite “gentle”. Even with the addition of many new enemies and elements, the threshold for completing the game has not increased too much. Many times, only a little obstacle is encountered in the process of pursuing full collection. On this basis, perhaps to allow everyone to experience more diverse ways of completing the game, “Super Mario Bros. Wonder” chose to incorporate a badge system that had never appeared in 2D Mario before.
Each time you enter a level, you can change to a different badge, but you can only wear one. Some special levels will also give players corresponding prompts, telling you which badge to wear is more effective for clearing the level – of course, you can rebel once and stubbornly choose to use other badges to add an extra difficulty to your clearance journey.
For example, in most levels, I insist on carrying the “money fan” badge that takes gold coins to eliminate enemies. Only when I am really powerless, will I consider following the prompts when entering the level and honestly replace the corresponding auxiliary badge.
However, what surprised me the most in “Super Mario Bros. Wonder” is definitely its online part.
In fact, as a lone wolf player, when choosing a game, one should not only consider the quality of the game itself, but also whether “one person can have fun playing” is a very important factor. “Super Mario Bros. Wonder” is still quite fun to play alone under the premise of supporting up to 4 local players online, and even more rare is that it is also very enjoyable to play with other players online.
After entering the online game, players can choose to place standing cards in the level. These different forms of standing cards can serve as everyone’s resurrection point. At the same time, each player exists in the form of “ghosts” between each other, and will not interfere with each other like local online games. This design is quite considerate of the player’s own gaming experience.
But obviously, players’ imagination is not limited to this. At least after experiencing online gaming for a period of time, I have developed such a brain circuit: if the standing card is placed in a relatively easy-to-make-mistakes location, then it must be a simple resurrection point. If the standing card appears in a relatively safe and flat area, then it is more of a prompt from other players: there are hidden areas around and corresponding rewards.
With these tips, I myself discovered a lot of content and rewards that I didn’t find when playing alone. Playing like this actually gave this simple standing card a bit of the “advice” design in soul-like games – of course, I don’t know when everyone will start to play pranks, put down standing cards in various places, and let other players explore for a long time, but still can’t find where the hidden content is…
As an orthodox 2D Mario sequel after many years, “Super Mario Bros. Wonder” still shows players a lot of fresh gameplay and game elements within the basic gameplay framework of side-scrolling jumps.
Whether it’s single player, local multiplayer, or online, the rich variety of enemies and Game Props can provide players with a high-quality gaming experience. Therefore, there is no doubt that it is definitely the best 2D Mario currently available.
