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Today's game is the recently released NSMB:W. Ok it was released in November, but considering half the games I talk about were released before MasterFunk was born, it's recent enough. NSMBW is a modern take on the classic Mario Bros games, and a sequel to NSMB on the DS. This game added new features, such as a propellor hat and the ability to play with 4 players at once. Was this a good idea? Read on and find out.
The story in this game is... fuck it, you already know. This time two toads join Mario and Luigi in their quest to save the princess. Neither of them are Toad, the character from game such as Mario Bros 2, Mario RPG and Mario Kart, they're just a couple of nameless mushroom heads. Now with all the characters in the Mario universe, why the hell did they choose two lame ass generic toads? No one wants to play as them either, four player sessions end in a fight over who gets to be Mario or Luigi and who's stuck with the crappy toads. With that said, the gameplay is classic Mario, with some new innovations to keep it fresh. The game also makes good use of the wiimote for things such as spin jumping and the propellor hat. Yoshi also makes a return, but you can only use him on a few levels. Yoshi's overrated anyway.
The biggest addition - 4 players at once - is good and bad. It's fun to play with friends and fight over who gets the powerups and throwing each other around. It's bad if you want to actually beat the first level. You can run into each other at any time, so jumps often lead to crashes and falls into pits. Followed by profanity and punching. A weak player will really fuck your game up and it just becomes frustrating. The game isn't super hard, but it's damn near impossible playing 4 player mode.
The graphics are nice, the music is good, and there are some fun levels. A lot of them feel kind of repetitive though, especially if you've played the DS NSMB already. The "secret" star world has some cool levels, but there's no reward for beating them all. Overall this is a good game, but I think the DS version was more fun. And stay the fuck away from 4 player mode if you want to actually win.
8/10