Video Gamers Podcast - Sensational Super Mario Wonder - Video Games Podcast

Episode Date: October 23, 2023

Video Game hosts Josh and Paul are bringing you a special episode for Super Mario Bros Wonder. Just released, we played Mario Wonder all weekend and we’re here to tell you if its worth your hard earned gaming dollars. We dive into what makes Mario Wonder new, what sets it apart, what feels familiar and whether it’s a worthy entry into one of gaming's most iconic video game franchises.    Thanks to our LEGENDARY Supporters: Redletter, Gaius214, Nate and Kiitaclyzm Connect with the show: Support us on Patreon: patreon.com/videogamerspod Join our Gaming Discord: https://discord.gg/Dsx2rgEEbz Follow us on Instagram: instagram.com//videogamerspod Follow us on Twitter: twitter.com/videogamerspod Subscribe to us on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCU12YOMnAQwqFZEdfXv9c3Q   Visit us on the web: https://videogamerspod.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Paramount! Behold! My name is Maximus Intertanius, and I come to you with big stars in big dramas, like Gladiator 2, Dexter, Original Sin, and 1923. Stream Paramount Plus for $6.99 a month. Hello, fellow gaming fanatics. We are the Video Gamers Podcast, and this is a very special episode because Super Mario Bros. Wonder has finally released. We are here to give you our first impressions after playing this weekend. I am your host, Paul, and today we are just a two-man show. Ryan is on vacation right now, but we will have him back next week. And then joining me here today, his hatred of mushrooms is well-documented on the pod by this

point. I assume he's ecstatic to get out of the mushroom kingdom in favor of the flower kingdom. It's Josh. It's me, Prince Albert. What's the little caterpillar? That's not Albert. Never mind. Whoops. Scratch that. Go back. No, what's the little caterpillar that's not albert never mind whoops scratch that go back can we keep that on the show yeah we can there's an albert out there somewhere isn't he like you know oh just hi hi don't google that one all right you know i don't even know how to transition josh and now this before we start our informal deep dive of mario bros wonder josh tell the people a little bit about our socials and patreon oh boy okay i gotta recover from that terrible mistake okay so number one if you're not following us on social media make sure you do that we are always posting game reviews game

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All right, Josh, let's get started on Super Mario Bros. Wonder. I have a description of the game from the Nintendo website, just in case anyone doesn't know about this game. Mario and friends have been invited to visit the colorful Flower Kingdom just a short hop away from the Mushroom Kingdom. Unfortunately, King Bowser has transformed into a flying castle and is causing chaos across their peaceful land. Now our heroes must save the day and the Flower Kingdom in this wondrous new adventure.

I think I should also add on top of that that this is the first new 2D side-scrolling Mario game in over a decade. The last one was New Super Mario Bros. U for the Wii U, and this is also the first Mario game to feature voice actor Kevin Afgani after Charles Martinet held that title going all the way back to Super Mario Bros. Pinball in 1992. So new voice actor, first new side-scrolling in 12 years. Now, Josh, you have spoken pretty harshly about the Switch on this podcast. You are also not a huge Mario fan. I think you've said it's actually been quite a long time since you played one. I just want to know what happened that stole your joy and childhood wonder.

I like difficult games. Legitimately, it's one of those things where I absolutely loved Super Mario 64. I like Mario. I like the 3D Mario games. But the problem is that back in the old days, Mario used to have some difficulty to it. And then I don't know, Nintendo just decided like, hey, we want this to be accessible to literally everybody, including your three-year-old who might pick up the Switch and want to play. And it just kind of took something away for me because I like a challenge in my games. And so I've always enjoyed the Mario games, but I've never gone out of my way to play them. I don't seek them out because it's just too chill for me,

if that makes sense. Yeah, I hear what you're saying. I think for me, I get so excited about every new Mario release, and I think part of it is just nostalgia. My family did not allow us to own any video game consoles growing up. And so I always looked forward to spending the night at friends' homes where I could play Mario. Or if they were going to spend the night at my house, I would always beg them, bring your Nintendo. We got to play it. We have all this opportunity. So anytime I hear about a new Mario game that five to eight-year-old Paul just gets really excited again, and I can't wait to play

them um you know I mean I think there's always a ceiling on Mario games like they can be great it's you know they're simple platformers that are made for families what's the last great Mario game uh I loved Mario Odyssey okay Mario Odyssey I agree with you on that one mario odyssey what was the one before it though um odyssey was the space one right no you might be thinking mario galaxy oh that's mario galaxy one and two odyssey had cappy that's right that you would throw yeah i i honestly i love all of them i loved new super mario bros one and two i loved mario sunshine Mario 64. I like all of them, honestly. But I mean, obviously, you know, they are casual platformers. They're never going to be as grand or majestic as your Elden Rings or your Mass Effects or, you know, what have you. But I still always enjoy them.

Our family always picks them up. I loved Bowser's Fury. That one we talked about quite a bit on the show as well. Now, one thing that I do want to mention here before we start breaking down gameplay, just by way of background, I don't know if you remember, Josh, we covered when Nintendo first announced that this game was coming out. That was on June 21st of this year, and one day less than four months later, we got the game. I cannot overstate how much I love that timeline. Yes. We don't have the eight years of trickling out information.

It's just, here's the game. Get excited. We'll release a couple videos over the next few months. Boom. Now the game is here. It's really the way it should be done. I'm with you. I really don't like the, here's a game.

It's just a name. And then it's seven years out. And then, you know, then it's seven years out. And then, you know, when it's Ninja Turtles, Ronan. Yeah, exactly. Right. That's a perfect example. And then it's like, we've got no gameplay. We've got nothing. Yeah. And I just, I don't like that. Nintendo does it right. Here's a game. It'll be out in four months. Like you said, you know, you said, you'll get a new trailer every month and snippets of the game so that it doesn't feel like it's so far away. I'm for it. And it's doable because this is a complete game. I mean, I don't know why people do the five, six year hype thing.

I don't either. It always eventually backfires because every game has that shelf life where you get excited. And if you spend all those excitement points eight years before release, it's hard to get people reinvested down the road. Yeah. All right. So two decide scrolling Mario games. I think all of them play relatively similarly. If you had a Venn diagram, I think it's like 93% overlap. Even going back to Mario 3.

I mean, the games are all very similar, very simplistic buttons. You run to the right, you jump over or on top of stuff until you hit the flagpole at the end and you beat the level. All right. Now there are some changes. They always switch up the power ups. And I think Nintendo took some pretty big swings in Mario Wonder. We do have some new things. We've got unlockable badges, which give you a single ability that you get to activate, which changes up gameplay. We'll break those down in a minute. You earn coins while playing, which you can go spend in shops. And that allows you to buy things like extra lives or to add additional blocks onto levels that make things easier, things of that nature. And then you also have wonder flowers.

Now, Josh, how would you explain how Wonder Flowers work in this game? Oh, boy. I'll be honest. I love the Wonder Flowers. It's called Super Mario Brothers Wonder. This is what they are focusing on. And it worked for me because the Wonder Flowers, number one, you have to find them. They're not just there in a level. So you have to do some event, you know, go down a pipe that you didn't realize you could go down, hit an invisible block. I mean, sometimes it's very simple, but other times you kind of have to search for them. Once you make the Wonder Flower appear, you get the flower and then everything goes trippy. In one of 40 different ways. Yeah, like honestly,

there is a lot of different ways that things go weird. But I actually really enjoy this part of the game because so far I have not had any repeats. It's just bananas what happens. These are not spoilery either because these most of these are what they've shown in the trailer so you know you get a stampede of

yaks that you have to run on yeah but they move up and down through the stage so it's actually kind of like it messes with your perception in a way and then like if you don't run with them you'll fall behind and then you die because they go up into the sky you get star showers that that, you know, there's just stars everywhere. So you can just be invulnerable and cruise through the level. There was one water level where it swapped the water. So now the water is the sky and the sky is the ground. That one was weird. I died a few times on that one because I kept forgetting that gravity existed on the bottom half of the screen. Now that's the first one I wrote down because you're playing a water level the entire time. And then once you hit the wonder flower, you have to jump up into the water and then you can start swimming around. Yeah, that's like really trippy stuff like

that that really do switch up the gameplay and make it very different. I think it also just adds a lot of fun aesthetics to the game, whether it's like we all saw in the trailers the pipes that crawl like a caterpillar or something but there was also one where the birds that shoot those little platforms across the screen and then you hit the wonder seed and now they're all shooting color bubbles yeah yeah i had that one too but then if you touch the bubble it shoots you in the air so now you're like flying with all of these like psychedelic multicolored bubbles everywhere. It really does switch things up in a really fun way. I've never not been excited to unlock the Wonderflower and then see what it's going to do. It's my favorite part of the game.

In all honesty, that's like the second that we discover the Wonderflower because I've been playing with my wife uh it is a multiplayer game so we've been playing a good bit of multiplayer on it but we both get excited we both go like oh i wonder what this is gonna be and then you know it's something crazy like you said the balloons uh one of the things that i really like about this is there's a lot more verticality in the levels and i think the wonder flower plays into that a lot the yaks go up in the sky the you know the colored bubbles rocket you up in the levels and i think the wonder flower plays into that a lot the yaks go up in the sky the you know the colored bubbles rocket you up in the sky and things like that so this while it is your move from the left to the right mario i have found that there is a lot of verticality in it which i like because they do different things with that as well yeah absolutely

so let's talk a little bit about badges. This got me really excited when we first learned about them because the whole idea of having like an inventory system in Mario, that's always just been like your power-ups, right? Where like Mario 3, maybe you activate your frog suit or your hammer brother or whatever it might be. The badges is now like a secondary inventory slot where it unlocks some kind of special ability that's going to make certain levels easier or give you some kind of bonus. So like a couple early examples is that like the very first one you get, it allows you to slow float by holding onto your hat like a glider. So if you jump in the air and you hold the R button, you just slowly float down, kind of like Link when he's got his leaf out in the Zelda games. You also unlock a dolphin kick.

So when you're underwater, you can press R and you do a very quick dash. It lets you get through water a lot faster, which honestly I love. How many times have we complained about water levels on this show? But this makes them a little bit easier to get through. There's also things like being able to do a double jump straight up the same wall. So instead of having to bounce back and forth across walls, it lets you kind of vertically climb a single wall, which might give you access to secret or hidden areas you otherwise couldn't reach. Are there any other badges that

kind of stuck out to you or anything you wanted to cover? Yeah, it's weird because they have the active ability badges. Like you mentioned, the wall jump, the dolphin kick. And I'll be honest, I have not unlocked. I think I've only unlocked like five badges so far. And there are a lot. I mean, off the top of my head, I want to say there's 30 badges or so that you can unlock in this game. But then what's neat is there's kind of like passive badges where it's like so you can have this one where it's just called block and i was like is this

gonna let me block like creatures like i'm thinking like an elden ring again like and then no what it does is it will randomly in certain levels put an exclamation block instead of the you know standard question mark block. And if you hit that, maybe it gives you an extra life or, you know, the elephant power up or something. So there are passive badges as well that will just kind of affect the levels, how you play on top of the active ability ones. I like the active ability ones because I want to feel like I'm getting more powerful in that regard. Well, and let's talk about how you unlock the badges, because I want to feel like I'm getting more powerful in that regard. Well, and let's talk about how you unlock the badges, because I think these are some of the funnest levels where you do the challenges.

Oh, absolutely. Yeah. So the way that you get new badges is you will see as you're walking, because this does utilize the overworld, which has become popular in Mario games, and you will see an area where it just says badge challenge. And then you go, oh, cool. Okay. And you will see an area where it just says badge challenge. And then you go, oh, cool. Okay. And you do that and it will say, hey, here's a new badge, a la wall jump. And then here's the level that you have to beat using wall jump. So I like the fact that it says, here's a new ability. Here's how you use it. Now get to the end of the

level. And the first time you use it, it's cake. It's really just to familiarize yourself with this. There's nothing challenging. But I'll tell you what I absolutely love is I mentioned difficulty and I like challenges. Where Mario Wonder actually shines for me in one way is you can get to like wall jump badge challenge two. So the first time you learned how to use it, now you're doing the second challenge. And this bad boy is hard. So it is like ultra timing. You have to like, you know, there's these big bars that are spinning around and you have to catch them while, you know, while they're vertical wall, jump up, jump to the other one before it finishes spinning and basically continue to do that all the way up until you get to like a safe zone. And then it gets harder, dude. I, I, my wife and I tried this level for like 30 minutes last night. And I was like, this is hard. Like, I don't know that we can beat this. And I don't give up on

very much when it comes to video games, but this is where I really like what they're doing because they're saying here are abilities here are badges sure you know the basics now show us what you got and i love it and they're totally optional you don't have to do them right so it's a little bit in that sense you know i don't think we're going to be comparing this game to elden ring very often but we always said like in elden ring if you're hitting the wall just leave go do something else you don't have to do whatever that is and then go back to it later if you want you can do that exactly in this as well uh i know that one that you're talking about josh i think that's probably the level i died on or not died on the most but took the most amount of time to beat that was hard dude because all

those spinning platforms are going in different directions and so it's different if you start on the left side or the right side and as those things spin you'd have to like wall jump off the spinning platform but then land on the little skinny top edge because it would stop for a brief moment vertical. And yeah, they're very challenging. It's an apt name. Yeah. All right. So let's talk a little bit about the power-ups in Mario Bros. Wonder.

This one has a couple power-ups, like you can become an elephant where you use your trunk to hit projectiles or swipe at enemies. There's a bubble flower that lets you shoot a bubble. If it touches an enemy, they turn into a coin and they disappear. There's also a mushroom that gives you a drill hat. You still have some of your old

favorites, of course, like flower power to shoot fireballs, all that jazz. They also let you bank abilities on the top left, so you can call them down. Of course, we've seen those all the way since the Super Nintendo days. But is there anything that stands out in regards to the power-ups for you? The elephant is cool. I like the elephant. It is what they have made the claim to fame.

He's on every cover. He's on every cover he's on every screenshot mario elephant to me is neat but he's not like this end all be all for like new mario skins like i mean i'm not trying to sound like a nice hair because i think it's neat and i'm glad that they at least added something but like when you get the raccoon tail you could fly man the elephant you can just swipe things with your trunk, and then you can spray water. And it's like, okay. I mean, he's cute. It's neat.

One of the really neat touches in the game is the sounds. We'll get to audio stuff in just a little bit. But he feels chunky. Oh, absolutely. When you jump, instead of the boing, it's like, boing. You hear it. You hear it. You feel it. Yeah.

And there's also neat stuff like animations change. So when he goes down a pipe, he's too big. And you'll see him like suck in and he's got to squeeze himself down in the pipes. And there's nothing funnier than seeing Elephant Mario jump up into a pipe that you can go in and you have to see him like pull himself up. It's very funny i'm kind of with you i don't think the power-ups are terribly exciting i think when you combine it with the badges and the wonder flower it makes for a great product but the actual power-ups themselves they're fine i i don't think that they're uh the the bubble gun is pretty underwhelming

if you ask me. It's pretty boring. I don't know what they were going for on that one. To be honest, it's like you can shoot enemies with the bubbles. And it goes so slow. The little bubble floats at one mile an hour across the screen. I mean, you can jump on the bubbles, but they don't act like springboards. That would be really cool if they did, because then that would at least add a new mechanic to the game yeah i found the bubble thing to be underwhelming when i very first got

it i was like oh what's this and then we kind of played with it for a little bit and i kind of went okay i'd rather have the fire flower or the elephant or you know basically anything else yeah i totally agree with you all right well let's go ahead and take a short break and we'll be right back are you crushing your bills defeating your monthly payments sounds like you're at the top of your financial game rise to it with the bmo eclipse rise visa card the credit card that rewards your good financial habits earn points for paying your credit card bill in full and on time every month level up All right, Josh. One thing I did want to mention about Elephant Mario that made me laugh. When I first played the game, I was playing with my wife and my two sons.

We played for about two hours. And they all picked non- non Mario and Luigi characters. They were like Toadstool, Peach. I picked Mario. So when we all got elephants for the first time, I was the only one that had a mustache, which made me laugh. So I like that even when you get those power-ups, you can still tell who it is and they still maintain some of their uniqueness.

And I just thought that was kind of like a nice little touch. While talking about like graphics and animation animation let's talk a little bit about animation style because i feel like this this game definitely shakes things up for animation mario for a while was feeling very similar this one they have added some touches that i absolutely love i love that every time you go into a pipe that's horizontal, you'll see Mario dash inside, leaving the hat. He sticks his hand back out, grabs the hat, and then he emerges on the other side. There's little flourishes like that all over this game that I think make everything look much more interesting and kind of keeps things fresh. Since you haven't really played

Mario in a long time, I don't know how different this actually felt for you, but I definitely noticed huge changes in the animations. This was the best looking Mario game that I've seen in a while, to be honest with you. For a 2D game, I should say. I mean, it's kind of hard to compare like a 3D Mario, like Mario Sunshine or something like that. But there's a saying, the devil is in the details, and Nintendo nailed it with Mario Wonder. I have to give them kudos on this because it is everything. And not only is it everything in the game, but it is individual to the characters as well, which is really cool. So I've been playing Toad because my wife and I get confused on who's who. So I've tried to go

as opposite as her as possible so that we're not getting confused on which character is who's who so i've tried to go like as opposite as her as possible so that we're not like getting confused on which character is who's on the screen at the same time and like if you jump with toad if you do the running like jump and then jump again he literally does like the flying chest bump pose yeah like and like that's such a toad thing to do like you said mario grabbing his hat the elephant if, the elephant squeezing himself down. They have the little chipmunk guys that are running, and their faces do this super funny, like, oh, as they're running away. I mean, everything in this game just oozes charm. It oozes really good animations and character. To me, this is the best-lookingio game that i have seen in i i maybe ever and it's not that it is you know running hdr or 120 frames a second or any of that stuff

it's just what they've done with the animations in the game and sometimes you have to look for them but once you start to notice them it is awesome man and you're constantly being assaulted by color in a good way oh yeah like this game is one of the most colorful games i've ever played everything is bright everything's fun to look at like you hit those wonder flowers and you see like a little shimmer where you see every color of the rainbow and then things start to change but whatever you end up seeing in this game everything has like i think about like hogwarts legacy right loved that game the whole game is has muted colors nothing is bright nothing stands out mario is almost the opposite where they max out like color contrast or whatever saturation

but it's not too much it's just fun to play and fun to look at which i think is great um sound we already mentioned you know a little bit i i do love that they add again you know being in the details when your character does a ground pound like you jump in the air and press down you hear like drums and a little bit of percussion like you hear like hitting like a symbol every time you hit the ground that stuff's really fun. Running over the music notes will never not be fun where it sounds like you're literally running on a piano. All that stuff I love in this game, too. It's funny what you notice that you haven't been paying attention to.

I initially started off playing as... Who did I play as initially? I don't know. Maybe it was mario right but then i i switched to toad and when you jump as toad his jump sound is very high pitched because he's just a little dude yeah whereas if you're playing mario it's it's a deeper tone to it so it's like the game actually is playing into the weight of the characters. If you become the elephant, now it's like I said, it's a chunky sound as you're jumping around and things like that. Really just top-notch again. It's something that you don't notice immediately, but when you start to pay attention, you kind

of just nod your head and go like, well done, Nintendo. I like what you're doing with this. All right. I am going to levy one of my biggest complaints about this game, and it is in regards to audio. How do you feel about the talking flowers? Because they drive me nuts. Initially, we kind of giggled, my wife and I. And then now it is just like, no, not another one.

Oh, look up here. How do you get up there? It's those kinds of hints that do get annoying over time and i wish you i don't think there's a setting for it but i would totally just turn off the flower hints if i there was one area where we were looking for something um but we didn't know where and then there was a flower right there going ever get that feeling like you've missed something and and then so then we're like what did we miss we're jumping everywhere man like yeah i mean we're covering scouring everything we could not find anything come to find out that we had missed

the wonder flower and if you have the wonder flower where that flower is is is like one of the 10 flower coin things or whatever one of the big coins and it's like we couldn't see it in the normal world so the stupid little flower guys driving us bananas, telling us that we missed something. I mean, technically, I guess we did, but we only saw it once we had the wonder flower. But yeah, I'm with you. I thought they were cute at first,

but now I'm just starting to find them a little annoying. I found it a little distracting for sure. It kind of breaks immersion a little bit. I mean, I guess it's better than a pop-up window, which you kind of get in like all the other mario games so i mean i guess either way i'm i'd probably complain about it but that's one thing i don't really care for all right so what about what about the difficulty of this game because when you're dealing with a game that's somewhat casual you want it to be fun and exciting not too, but you also can't make it so hard that

kids can't play. So how do you feel about the difficulty curve of this one? So this is my biggest complaint with most Mario games. Mario is an absolutely beloved franchise. I get it. I was super excited to pick up Mario Wonder. I'm going to keep playing it. We're having a good time with it, but the stages range from

one star to four stars so far. I don't know if there's a five star. I kind of hope there is, but I don't know yet because we haven't made it. We're not at the end of the game yet. One star is an absolute cakewalk. I feel like I could do these levels with my eyes closed. If I just hold right and just keep mashing jump, I'm going to make it to the end of the level, you know, until I hit the flagpole, honestly. And then I've played two four-star levels so far. One of the ones is the one we talked about with the jump, the wall jump challenge. That was hard. And I loved every second of it. Even though it took me 30 minutes to beat it, I was enjoying it. I'm like, I've got this challenge in front of me. I'm going to overcome it. The other one was a yak stampede

level where you had to run and be flawless because if you missed a jump, the yaks would pass you by and you'd fall to your death. And so we tried that level probably 10 to 12 times before we beat it. I loved every second of it. So for me, I really enjoyed the more difficult levels, the one-star levels levels which there have been a lot of so far i find to just be kind of boring it's like why is this here there's nothing for me there's no challenge like what am i getting out of this i think what they're trying to do is every time you go into a new world they'll hit you with one or two one star levels and it's just like introduce you to enemy types like oh now you're now you're going to start seeing these guys,

so be on the lookout. Like I mentioned the birds earlier, so they'll shoot a little dart, and then once it hits a wall, it turns into a platform. I think that's all it's trying to do. I guess the positive way to look at it is you're going to beat it in 45 seconds, and then you're going to move on,

so at least you're not stuck playing it a long time. But have you played solo at all? Or are you only playing multiplayer with your wife? I've only played multiplayer with my wife so far. I do plan on playing solo as well. And she does too, because she really is just going to play this game probably four or five times because she absolutely loves it. But I've only played multiplayer. And multiplayer is tough, man. It kind of adds its own difficulty level in a, in a way. I mean,

you can res the other person, they turn into a ghost. And if you touch them, they're back. But at the same time, like if she is jumping up some platforms and I'm trying to do something down below the camera moves with her and now I can't see. And then I just die.

Yeah. Yeah. It, I think the game personally i've played a lot with just me i've played with just me and my wife i've played with me and my wife and our two kids i think this game plays terribly with three or four it's just too chaotic it's too much going on at once people inevitably get left behind i think you lose a lot of the challenge and the fun factor. In a lot of ways, I think the game actually plays best one player. Because you make a mistake, you die. And it does play harder. When you play with one other person, especially if you're both actually paying attention and trying to play it,

I think it just comes across a lot easier. And so it's kind of tough to figure out how you want to play it because it's mario you want to be able to play it co-op with somebody else but in some weird ways i actually like the difficulty more when it's one player i get that i mean it's there's more risk to it when you're it's if you fall you die like in two player if you fall you turn into a ghost you float back up and as long as your teammate touches you within five seconds, you come back without even using a life. Yeah, I do feel like with two player, it does offset that a little bit, because of the challenge that you both have to be on the screen at the same time. And if one person goes off, the camera follows that person,

now the other person's off screen, you can't tell what the heck you're doing. And there's like a 90% chance that you're going to die, or at least turn into a ghost at that point. So it kind of balances the scales a little bit. But I do feel like this game is probably at its peak if you're playing solo. Yeah, I would agree with that. All right. Now, before you and I started recording, we did share some talking points so that way we can make our outline. I'm just going to read this verbatim from you, Josh, because it made me laugh when I read it.

How come the story always blows for Mario? You think Nintendo could get creative here. So walk me through this. Tell me what you mean. It's just always the same, man. I mean, I get it. You're playing Mario to just jump and for the cutesiness of it and to run from left to right. I get it. You're playing Mario to just jump and for the cutesiness of it, you know, and to run from left to right. Like, I get it. You're not playing Mario for a story. But guess what happens in the beginning of this one? Bowser shows up, gobbles up a Wonder Flower, turns into a giant castle, and now he's Castle Bowser. And you have to go just, you know, save the world again. Yeah. I mean, it's always the same. Are people really going to get upset if you mix it up a little bit?

Like, this is why Bowser's Fury was so good, right? Because Bowser wasn't just this little annoying guy. He turned into this mega... He was Godzilla. Yeah, like mega Godzilla Bowser and was raining down fiery meteors at this point. Like, you can do it, Nintendo. Make a story. Make me care about any of the people or the characters or why I'm even doing what I'm doing.

It would just add a little bit. I know you don't have to do it. At this point, it just seems lazy to me. See, this, and to maybe share a little bit of inside baseball, I think this also kind of highlights a little bit of how you and I are very different. Josh always wants to switch everything up. Josh is always like, we've done it twice. You got to do something different. I'm like, I'm a creature of habit. I like to know what to expect. I think a lot of our listeners like to know what to expect. Let's keep the same structure. And I think that's where you're seeing that difference, where Mario has basically been

the same since 1988 or whatever, right? It's a while now. The stories are always the same. The gameplay is 93% the same. I really appreciate that. I think it's fine. I did think it was funny because I've never heard anyone say, you know what? I love Mario, but man, the story sucks.

Or like Doodle Jump. It does, though. Doodle Jump was like the biggest game in the world for like three years. And I never heard anyone say, you know, why am I jumping on these platforms? If only I had a better story. Like, I don't know. You play platformer games for the gameplay. The story is so in the background that I just don't care. I'll't know. You play platformer games for the gameplay. The story is so in the background that

I just don't care. I'll be honest. I completely tune out every cutscene in Mario. I don't care. Sure, Bowser's now a castle and it's moving across the land. I'm looking at my phone until the next level starts. But then why do they even put it in there? That's the thing. There are little talking points, right? You make it to a new world. Little Prince Flower guy talks to one of the other flower people and it's like, oh, no, there's cloud piranhas. What are we going to do? And it's like, if you don't care about the story, then why have any of that? Just let me play the game at that point.

And you know my favorite saying, Paul, just let me play the game. That is your catchphrase yeah i think in part they want it to be simple enough that even young kids will understand you know three and four year olds are gonna sit and play with you or watch you play it has to be relatively simple so the whole idea of just bowser's threatening these cute little things and we gotta rescue them is about as much story as you're gonna get it's not like mario's ever to give you a choice like are you going to kill bowser or spare him like you're never gonna see choices matter in a mario game although maybe maybe somewhere down the road i'd love to see some kind of like hardcore you know take on like an open world rpg game or something with mario i

mean not to get in the weeds on this one but real real quick, when they went to the first 3D Mario, it was revolutionary. Yeah. And honestly, with Mario Odyssey and Sunshine or whatever, those were tweaking that formula, and those games were great. So I do think that there is room to change up that formula and take some risks and say, okay, let's see what happens. I mean, Mario Rabbids, not my favorite game, but at least again, they tried another route with the turn-based combat. Paper Mario, that was unique. And that went over like gangbusters. So it's just one of like, they've nailed it so many times and saying, okay, we're going to mix up the formula.

And it turns out great that there's a little part of me that goes, well, you're just using the exact same formula for the ninth time. You know, this is, I'm being critical, but there is a nice balance in this because of the wonder flowers. And because of the difference in the stages and stuff like that, I do think that they've got a nice little mix going on there. So I have to be fair in that regard and say they're,

they, I think they've split the difference on with this game in particular to give people a little bit of both. Yeah. I mean, the story in any Mario game at best is going to be a 3 out of 10. Yeah. I mean, I don't remember the story of Mario RPG. That might be one of the more story forward. We got to go find Princess Peach, right?

Because Bowser kidnapped her. If memory serves, I think you can actually play as Peach. like take a guess more story let me we gotta go find princess peach right because bowser kidnapped her i think if memory serves i think you can actually play as peach so i think you're maybe chasing down someone else but i don't remember that that one's going back a long way although that one is you know being remade by nintendo that's also another thing like nintendo's a business and if the formula works and if every mario game is gonna sell 20 million copies i can't fault them for it. Yeah. I mean, clearly it's doing something well for them.

All right. So let's talk a little bit about the Metacritic score and maybe even some reviews. I think you grabbed a couple of reviews, Josh. I wrote down my guess for the user score. I don't know if you looked that up or not, but I do have that available if we need it. Why don't you read a couple of reviews that you pulled? So, I mean, if you've been anywhere except for Under a Rock, you know that the reception to Mario Wonder has been pretty darn good so far. What I did is I pulled two reviews, one really good one and one bad one, because again, we

always like to give a little bit of why do some people love it and why do some people not? So the first off of Metacritic, this person gave it a perfect 10 and said super mario wonder is the most innovative game of the decade one of the best 2d mario games in history and one of the best 2d games of all time stunning graphics no koopalings, beautiful worlds, clever phases, new enemies, and more. A game that is 100% replayable with different skills that transform the game. It's an amazing game with friends and online that encourage helping people even though you can't interact with them. The list of pros goes on. And to me, there are only two cons. The first one being that for a game with so many

different possibilities, one save per account is really nothing. And then also having four different Yoshis as characters, and all of them are easy mode characters. Outside of that, it's a perfect game. One of the best Nintendo has ever made. All right. I love Mario Wonder. That review is, I think, overstating things quite a bit,

as much as I love this game. What, you don't think it's the best game ever made in the history of gaming, Paul? Come on. That review is, I think, overstating things quite a bit, as much as I love this game. You don't think it's the best game ever made in the history of gaming, Paul? Come on. Look, I was saying how much I love Mario because they stay pretty similar. I would not say anything is really all that terribly innovative here. It's innovative for a Mario game. It is not innovative for the industry.

No, and that's like, we've had this debate with Tears of the Kingdom, where I will fully say- Way more innovative. That is one of the most innovative games I have seen in a very long time, in regards to Ultra Hand and some of the abilities there. I'm not sure what this guy's smoking, because calling Mario Wonder one of the most innovative games ever is a bit of a stretch for me. But hey, to each their own. Sure. I'm glad he loves it. Yeah. I mean, that's good, right? Okay. So this person gave it a three and said, Super Mario Bros. Wonder manages to disappoint on multiple fronts as its glaring flaws lies in its

startling lack of difficulty throughout the entire gameplay experience. From start to finish, the game offers little more than a tedious and uninspiring journey, failing to engage players who crave the thrill of overcoming challenging obstacles. While the game attempts to showcase a variety of creative ideas, the absence of a substantial difficulty curve renders these concepts feeble at best. Okay,

Josh, that, that review ruffles my feathers a little bit um first of all mario is a family casual game like if you want hardcore platforming there are a million options for you out there go play super meat boy you're gonna die 340 times on some levels before you beat it you can go play Celeste. You can play those games where one millisecond in any direction you die. All right.

Those are out there. Like this is Mario. I don't know. Like what do you think you're buying when you get Mario that you're complaining that it's too easy? This is this is this. That's dumb. Hey, Paul, I just I bought Elden Ring. And by the way, this game's hard and I don't like it.

Oh, my gosh. This Elden Ring, and by the way, this game's hard and I don't like it. Oh, oh my gosh, this Elden Ring game. It's so hard. Like, I don't know. What are you going to do? Buy Dragon Age and complain there's dragons? Like, I don't know. This is what it is. It's Mario. You know what you're buying? Everyone's played Mario. You're not getting a tough-as-nails game. That's not a secret.

I have to agree with you on this one. If you're looking for that ultra-challenging Mario, go do the Mario Maker levels that we've all seen that gives everybody in the world anxiety watching these people try to get through them. That's what you want. I did not go into Mario Wonder thinking that this is going to be a difficult game. I will say I wish it was more difficult, but I'm not going to fault the game for that. Like, that's just my taste. But I knew what I was getting into at the same time. So I get what his thinking is, because, yes, I, too, would like more difficult levels more often. But I didn't expect that when I bought this.

Dude, the game has a D-pad, run, jump, and R for whatever your badge is. Like, what do you expect? This game is five buttons. What I love, and just to give you an idea, and this is not to pick on my wife, but it does tell you that there is a majority of people out there. When we got the hat thing, there's a couple things you can do with the R button in the game. And my wife was just like, I'm not doing that. And I went like what just push r and she was like one button too many and then yeah and that was exactly it she did not like that it was on the top of the controller and so she was like i'm just not going to use it guess what you don't have to use it like you can get

through the whole game without ever pushing r so i was like baby don't push it if you don't want to but i think there's a lot of people out there like that that i just want the two buttons and the in the d-pad and that's it and you can do that with mario wonder yeah for mario being a lowest common denominator kind of game the fact that they still manage to make that fun even for seasoned gamers like us is really saying something it's really hard to make a game that accessible and still make it fun for most people who play it. It's pretty remarkable, honestly.

All right. So as far as guessing the Metacritic score, we always play this little game of who can be closest since this game's not on Steam. Obviously, we did the user score on Metacritic, which goes from 0.0 to 10.0. Josh, what's your guess for this one here? I will be completely honest, Paul. A few days ago, I think it was Thursday or Wednesday even, I did post the Metacritic score on social media because, hey, we want people to know about this new game and what are the critics thinking about it and stuff like that um that i believe at

the time was a 9.3 but that was critics only we're going with user score yeah yeah so the critic score was a 93 as far as i know it still is um but for users yeah that that that's what we'll guess here will people like it more or less than critics? Critics, I feel like, are always going to be favorable because who wants to slander a Mario or a Zelda or something like that? So I'm going to say... What's to criticize? If you don't, like, there's personal preference and there's criticism. Like, Mario might not be for everybody, but when you play a game this polished and this well-made, it's kind of hard to, like, pick it apart. I'm going to say 9.0. I think users are more persnickety than critics would be you and i guessed very close i said 8.9

and the actual is 8.7 really that's lower than i would think but i I will say that was only 78 ratings because the scheme's only been out for like 48 hours. Yeah, that's true. So at the time of this recording, that's a pretty small sample size, 78 people. I think a vast majority of people who are liking it aren't leaving reviews yet. They're probably still busy playing. Yeah, they're busy playing. You're going to have a little bit more of the complainers. I think over time that'll creep up a little bit.

I bet it probably finishes somewhere pretty close to like an 8.9. I think it'll finish in the 90s, to be honest. Yeah, you think so? I do. That's really high for Metacritic. Well, here's why. I am critical of, you said it at the very top of the show, like I'm pretty critical of Nintendo Switch games.

They're just not my style of game. I like difficulty. And so, you know, most Nintendo games don't offer that to me. So even knowing my criticalness, I think this game deserves to be in that 90 plus range, to be honest. Okay. Yeah. I'll be curious to kind of track it over time. Now, we always rate a game, make love, marry, or murder. Now, this is a first impression episode, so we only have a limited amount of time. We have day jobs. We have families.

We've played as much as we could. But at this stage, what are you most likely to rank this as? I'm having a lot of fun. I'm enjoying playing with my wife. My wife is absolutely loving this game. I mean, honestly, from 10 minutes in, she was like saying, Oh,

I'm going to play this like three or four times, you know, and it's the perfect game for her and what she loves for me. I'm having a lot of fun playing it. I can see what the game is. I can see why people love it. I think for me, it's just a strong make love.

I mean, that is not to take anything away from the game whatsoever. I think it is an absolute's just a strong make love. I mean, that is not to take anything away from the game whatsoever. I think it is an absolute quality game, a quality product. I would recommend it, I mean, honestly, 10 out of 10 times to people. Like if somebody's like, I have an Nintendo Switch,

I'm like, you'll probably love Mario Wonder then. It's just, it doesn't resonate with me the same way, but I'm having a good time, which also is credit to the game itself. So I don't think it's a Mary for me, like personally, where I'll ever go back and play after I beat it kind of thing. But again, that's nothing against the game. That's just me. So I'll give it a very – I'll give it like an engage if we're cheating a little bit.

Sure. Betrothed to Mario Wonder. Yeah, I'm definitely going gonna say it's a mary i mean to me every flagship mario title is a must buy the price tag is a little high you know for for the bang for your buck you know you can beat this game in about 10 hours if you're a completionist there's a lot of other stuff to do i love replaying old mario games i i i can sit down right now and i can speed run mario 1 and mario 3 in a couple minutes i have all that stuff memorized i've played them a million times this is the kind of game i would love to go back and replay once every year or two until we get

the next 2d mario game um kind of like you said josh if you own a switch and you don't buy mario wonder then i don't know why you have a switch and you don't buy Mario Wonder then I don't know why you have a switch yeah honestly that's it's a must buy it is a must buy and again don't take my make love to say like there's flaws with this game because honestly I don't think there are it's just not my personal kind of game but if you have a Nintendo switch and you're on the fence and going like oh man I don't know if I'm going to... You should be playing this game. Yeah. And honestly, if you're worried about the money,

just buy a physical copy, beat it in a couple of days. You can sell it at this point. That's exactly what we did. Yeah. Post it on Reddit, post it on Facebook Marketplace, whatever. You're going to be able to sell it.

And ultimately, the game is going to cost you 15, 20 bucks. Yep. That's exactly what we did because my wife will play it for the next two months. We'll turn around. We'll sell it for $45. Two months later, it cost us 15 bucks to play it as long as we wanted. Mario games hold that value really well. Yeah.

So any closing thoughts before we close up shop? Anything that we left out that you wanted to cover? No, I mean, I got to give Nintendo credit. They did it again. I love that they added the little details to this game. I think that actually does make a difference. And to me, that shows that they're passionate about the game itself because they could have just kind of taken the lazy route in that regard. I mean, I know I pick on them for story and stuff, but again, I don't really expect story and all that. So I mean, good job, Nintendo.

You gave me a Nintendo Switch game that I am really having a lot of fun playing. I'm glad that I can play it with my wife, even if we do blame each other for killing the other person and all that either. But they've tried to make it to where you can play online with just random people or friends. And they've really tried to simplify it and make it accessible. And that's not something we see Nintendo do very often. So I like what I'm seeing there as well. Yeah, it's an interesting take. I wonder what they'll be able to do with more multiplayer stuff in the future. Oh, you know what? There is one thing I wanted to mention. In all the different level types, there's one that I thought was kind of clever, and I thought it was actually pretty fun. It was, I don't remember exactly what they call it. It's like the search levels where you have to get the five coins, but you don't know where they are. And sometimes there's hidden blocks that you have to find. But if you play as different characters,

certain characters can see certain things that other ones can't and i thought that was actually really clever where you have a little bit of like a relatively enclosed level but you have to go find these five hidden coins and so it's almost a little bit of like a single player mario hide and seek if you will and i actually thought that was pretty clever some of them are hard to find too man they are we had one i mean very very tiny spoiler we had one we could not find the last one at all i mean was it where you have to push the pipe yes yeah and i was like i didn't know yeah oh did you look it up i did i looked we found it by accident i was running back to like my wife's like let's go back to the right. And I managed. I accidentally like bumped into the pipe and I noticed my character put his hands on it.

And I went, wait a minute. And then sure enough, and we were it was like light bulb moment. But yeah, I'm with you. I thought that was another very creative level. That's a way to get super creative when you have such limited buttons and a pretty simplistic game. They still managed to work in, you know, like that kind of Mario innovation. All right. Well, I think that wraps up our first impressions on Mario Bros. Wonder. Please remember to follow our podcast, leave us a five-star rating, leave a written review.

You can join our Discord community. There's a link in the episode description. And like Josh had mentioned, you know, come support us on Patreon. You can do that at MultiplayerSquad.com, along with getting all those sweet perks. And until next time, happy gaming. All right. See you, everybody.