The simplest trope in the save-the-princess model of video gaming is the implied final boss battle followed the real final boss battle, followed closely by some half-assed cliffhanger that pretends to give meaning to a second playthrough of the initial game. Super Mario 3D Land, one of the greatest holistically designed video games I've ever played, baits you into thinking that's where it is headed. Yes, there is a princess-in-another-castle moment at the end. But it opens up into the real game, one honoring the task, creativity and joy for that your series is so loved.
By now you've likely heard that the very first eight worlds of Super Mario 3D Land are not, actually, the entire game. Let's proceed and confirm this. They still do a good job of maintaining that illusion, as a result of delightful layouts that produce the best usage of the 3DS's unique capabilities of any game so far released. Seamless camera rotations take you from sidescrolling elevation to isometric, top-down and traditional third-person platformer perspectives, all for purposeful reasons. Gatekeeping requirements, like locating a certain number of star coins before unlocking boss battles or bonus levels, give a reasonable heft to the first tour of duty, which is saving Peach, of course.
It's for the reason that alleged final stage with Bowser, once the crutch of the Super Tanooki suit goes missing, that Super Mario 3D Land game reveals its nature. The initial eight worlds are less pandering to weaker players because they are training up and encouraging them, because the following eight, where you will even play as Luigi, are borne of a demanding, tough love that can not be completed with such assistance, and will soon be satisfying, in their particular way, to people who do on their own.
First, about the Super Tanooki suit.This is exactly what most drives the early misunderstanding of Super Mario 3D Land as an easy game. Die enough in a level and you obtain a power-up box that offers you a shining, permanently invulnerable Tanooki suit, with tail-attack and air-walking, to hand-hold Mario to the end of the round. You are able to still die with it by falling into lava or perhaps a bottomless pit. Do this enough and you will be offered some wings that fly one to the flagpole ending the round.
For young children, its utility is self-evident. For older gamers, its appearance will do to make Super Mario 3D Land feel condescending to them. I saw it as a hand as much as someone who'd identified the jumping puzzle but lacked the dexterity to execute it, and just wanted to get on with the show. I'll confess to using Super Tanooki on a few boss battles, which is really a shame to admit considering how repetitive many are.
Yet looking back, I feel just like the game's opening act was not necessarily an exercise round, but an apprenticeship showing me what the true Super Mario Bros. would require in a 3D environment. You'll need to find out how exactly to wall-jump, bounce high off tightropes and springboards, swim, float and hop off an airborne enemy to the safety of the next platform. None of the moves are unique to longtime players of the series, but employing them in Super Mario 3D Land takes a little touch. The analog pad overcorrects a tad too much for a few directional jumps (especially those from a standing position within an isometric view). A shadow underneath Mario (or silhouette of him if he's behind a wall) helps you line up your landing point.
Though all worlds are ostensibly designed to be navigable with a standard-size Mario (unless the checkpoint is deliberately pointing one to a powerup) some are inordinately simpler if you've picked up a Tankooki suit or fire flower from a previous stage. Sometimes (especially where I am stuck now), only their capabilities can quickly bridge a specialized jump or sequence of foes placed right at the edge of one.
You can acquire these items via a visit to 1 of Toad's houses scattered through the first eight worlds. However, you're allowed only 1 visit per day. You are able to equip one item and keep another in reserve, providing for a powerful tanooki/boomerang suit/fire flower platoon. In the event that you die, you lose the energy up you've equipped. And if you've already visited the Toad house with it, you're stuck going back to earlier stages finding what you need and grinding through that world to completion grab the item. You can't pause and back out to the hub world and still keep it. In a nutshell, the tools you will need always feel just like they're found in several other part of the game, requiring you to go fetch them there before continuing.
Star coins represent the game's other grind mechanism. There are three per level, and you will need a minimum of 100 to play the last stage of the very first eight worlds. Fortunately, many are easily located, and others are acquired by visiting special challenge boxes located mid-world, where defeating a couple of foes against a time pops out a star coin. These, too, unlock only one time per day, even though the game's StreetPass capability recharges them if you meet others who've the game.
Super Mario 3D Land is most beneficial game incorporating the 3DS'unique visual capabilities into its design.
Notwithstanding gimmicks and requirements like these the overall game really shines by doing what the series has always done best: Pose a hearty challenge that utilizes the entire screen. Jumping puzzles, especially timed ones, always carry an oh-hell-what's-next sense of breakneck pacing. The surreal trips through haunted mansions were, appropriately enough, suspenseful to the conclusion, especially when I was trying to protect the star three coins I'd found (if you die, you lose any star coins found since the past checkpoint).
Super Mario 3D Land is easily the best Nintendo 3DS game to be released in the device's young lifespan, and certainly the one which makes the most effective and most deliberate usage of its visual capabilities. You'll feel it when you're dragging down on the circle pad to operate Mario directly into that person to escape some disappearing platform tiles. The game's gyrometer has novel applications as well, from aiming a cannon for the perfectly placed landing atop the stage-ending flagpole, to using binoculars to scope out the remaining level and see where Toad tossed a star coin.
A lot more than this, with the second stage of special levels, Super Mario 3D Land basically doubles its first-play value by surprise. Canonically, you reach them through a warp pipe back in the beginning of the hub world, but they're not alone remixes or speed-run levels. Each is tougher, to the stage of dying by the dozens, which explains why returning and stocking on that extra-life exploit became so key for me. Yet I really do feel as though I was prepared because of this by what I completed, despite having assistance, in top of the world. Regardless, this is a game that finally lives around Nintendo's promise a handheld game may be worth $40, especially on this platform.
Super Mario 3D Land is the very first 3DS game which makes me want to pick it up and play it over most of the other console gaming options I have right now. It may be the only handheld game to achieve that for me.
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