Shenanigans & Tomfoolery

I got a chance to play New Super Mario Bros. Wii with two friends a few months ago. I played it for about an hour or two and soon came to realize that, while stupid fun at times, the Mario Bros. franchise just isn’t tailored for anything other than one player action.

Let me expand on this.

I’m assuming that whoever is reading this is familiar with Super Mario Bros. mechanics so I won’t spend time explaining those and I’ll be focusing specifically in multiplayer. Basically, you and up to three other friends enter a level and have a limited number of lives to complete it. If you die and have at least one life left, you’ll respawn in a bubble and when another player touches it you’re back in the game. You can jump on top of your partners or grab and throw them and there are a couple of multiplayer specific elements as well but they are irrelevant to the point I’m trying to get across here. New Super Mario Bros. Wii is interesting in that it can simultaneously be played both competitively and cooperatively so, in addressing the multiplayer aspect of this game, it’s important to address both of these areas.

In competitive multiplayer, you’ll jump, grab and do whatever possible to impede the other players’ progress and cause their untimely deaths. Since the goal is always to reach the end of the level, winning, i.e. causing the rest of the players’ deaths, means that you’ll be playing alone for the remainder of that stage or until you die. If playing alone is the reward for winning, why not just play the single player mode? There is no reward for taking the other players out. You don’t get whichever power-up they had when they fell in that lava pit. You don’t get an extra life. No temporary invulnerability. Nothing. Basically, causing your friends’ deaths grants you absolutely nothing and makes it harder for your group to complete the level because if you happen to die with extra lives, nobody will be there to rescue you from your bubble. OK then, this game wasn’t built around competitive play and you’d think playing cooperatively would be the way to go. Unfortunately, doing so brings another set of potentially bigger problems.

To be blunt, playing cooperatively means you’re going to be held back. Even if all your friends are at similar skill levels in the game, somebody (it might even be you) is eventually going to screw something up and cause the rest of the team to fail and restart the level. Being able to turn yourself into a bubble at will is the only cooperative specific element in the game. If you turn into a bubble at the right time, you can save yourself from a bottomless pits until another player rescues you. Aside from that, nothing in the game encourages cooperative play. Platforms in the game are sometimes so small that they can barely hold two players and you’ll throw your controller in frustration when one of your partners innocently jumps in your way and completely screws up that perfect jump you had. I mean, I played with only two other people and it was driving me insane, I can’t imagine how it is with four players. Maybe Super Mario Bros. would work cooperatively if TVs had an aspect ratio of 32:9 so that the screen wouldn’t be so cramped with more than one player but I digress. When you play a cooperative game, your friends are supposed to aid you and provide support and vice versa. Cooperative play in New Super Mario Bros. Wii just makes it more difficult to complete the game. The fact that Nintendo had to throw in some 5 lives per player per level as opposed to the one live you usually get in Mario games to complete a level is proof of this.

The fact of the matter is that if you want to complete the game (which is your goal in multiplayer too) you’re better off playing by yourself because, whether you’re playing competitively or cooperatively, the other players will make it needlessly more difficult to do so.

Related posts:

1. Mario vs. Sonic
2. Mario vs. Bowser: Redux
3. Wants No More Heroes: Heroes Paradise.
4. In regards to PixelJunk Shooter and the DLC model.