Super mario 3d land logo
I wanted to interact with environments, use powerups and be generally surprised by the bosses. At one point you'll even face them both, but this fight is even easier than the one before it. We meet Boom Boomer and his sister Pm Pom again and again, under only slightly tweaked circumstances. He was easy to beat then and he is easy to beat now. You'll fight the same bosses again and again, thanks to the inclusion of the long lost "Boom Boom," that Koopa Kid-like creature that you would butt heads with in mid-level Mario Bros 3 castles. Still, I miss the maps with the all-desert-worlds and the all-ice-worlds of the Mushroom Kingdom.īoss fights, save for the final one that is as good as any Nintendo has ever offered, lack a little creativity as well. This is not entirely unprecedented: Mario Galaxy would group different "planets" into one galaxy and it allows the developers to build the difficultly of the game up based on design rather than trying to shoe horn themed levels together. In world 8 - a land depicted as a stormy, volcanic battleground - you'll find yourself playing through multiple levels that feature bright green grass and sunny skies. Character dialogue is nonexistent, the stages lack the fun level names we've come to expect with "Galaxy" and, worst of all, each world lacks a theme. The story here is as barebones as it gets. Keep that in mind while playing and you'll enjoy the entire experience a bit more. Super Mario 3D Land leaves zero allusion to the dozens of additional, challenging levels the game provides after initial completion.
![super mario 3d land logo super mario 3d land logo](http://oyster.ignimgs.com/mediawiki/apis.ign.com/super-mario-3d-land/0/02/BanzaiBill.png)
But not here, as you pass World 8, there no hints of additional levels. Mario games typically love to tease secrets, leaving pipes and islands inaccessible on the world map until late in the game. I tore through the eight main worlds faster than I would have liked, finding the star coin collection challenges much easier than they were in the "New Super Mario Bros" games. It's easy to get deeply discouraged in the first hours of game play.
![super mario 3d land logo super mario 3d land logo](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/zRirNjXI760/maxresdefault.jpg)
With depth perception finally added to my leaps, I felt like I had been playing previous Mario installations with one eye closed. I might be wrong, but the 3-D also seemed to help me hone my jump accuracy. The 3-D looks stunning as the camera moves overhead as you drop down huge distances and flips in front of you as you run from boulders. Some of the game's best puzzles depend on 3-D to create a forced perspective, forcing you to either crank up the 3-D or change the camera angle to understand how best to move forward. The game strives to fake the player out, replacing warp pipes and enemies with flat, 2-D facades that only stand out if the system's 3-D slider is switched on. The biggest accomplishment SM3DL makes is turning the 3-D effect into an active part of the game play. You won't believe how much better the 3-D is in Super Mario Land it proved for me that the whole system has legs and can still offer an experience far beyond that which an iPhone can provide.