13 Points on Super Mario 3D Land - Nintendo - 2011 [Nintendo 3DS]

1. When this came out, it was due to be the grand savior of the 3DS and the only game to fully use its 3D capability if early reviews were to be believed. Specifically, the notion that the 3D effect helps you judge jumps is brought up over and over. Boy howdy, is this ever not true! 3D platforming has just as many perspective problems here as it does on every other 3D platformer on the face of the planet.

2. Actually, they are worse here as there were no real camera controls on the 3DS. Nothing like randomly shifting and zooming cameras for a barrel of laughs!

3. The way I judge of the quality of a Mario game is by how long before I get sick replaying levels until I collect all the dragon coins or red coins or whatever on each level before moving on, which normally comes at world four or five. The collectables are called star coins here and I was tired of getting all of them by the second world. This is to say I don't exactly think this is the cream of the crop as far as Mario goes.

4. Not coincidentally, this is also the first time ever I've used the New Super Mario Brothers style invincibility leaves to cheese past levels like the rat that I am.

5. While I'm complaining: lots of these level are in side scrolling style where the third dimension still applies like a beat-em-up or Little Big Planet. Hooray for having to fiddle around to get lined up to hit a question block! This also adds my least favorite aspect of Little Big Planet: missing jumps because you held the analog stick at a slight diagonal rather than directly right. I wish they'd have just flattened those levels to pure 2D. Or the whole game.

6. I also wish Nintendo would go back to what they did w/ Super Mario Land on Game Boy and keep setting handheld games in non-Mushroom Kingdom locations w/ different villains. This Bowser shit is getting old.

7. Speaking of old, Nintendo decided to bring back the tanooki suit from Super Mario Bros. 3 in an obvious bid to cash in on nostalgia. It functions the same as the racoon tail or the cape in other Mario games but you turn into a statue upon doing a ground pound which is useful approximately zero times in game.

8. Tanuki are totally a real thing, by the way. Nintendo just changed the spelling. You can go to Japan and see a real, live tanukis walking around. If you like, you can kill and skin them to make a suit that briefly turns you to stone when you do a ground pound. They also have really large testicles.

9. For some reason, Mario games still have a lives system. Most levels have a checkpoint and all you lose is progress to that checkpoint if you get a game over so no big deal... So why have the system at all? Thankfully, there are plenty of opportunities to bounce on a turtle shell as per Mario tradition and earn effectively infinite lives... So why have the system at all?

10. After playing through the main levels, you are presented w/ a set of alternate versions of levels and these are honestly much better. They are much tougher and mostly in a good way. There's a few w/ blind jumps and artificial difficulty spikes but they very often reach into that "okay, one more try" level of difficulty which can draw you in for hours. I also found that quite of few or the areas I taht were most difficult for me were followed by an easier, more fun level which provided a much needed respite.

11. Unfortunately, these extra levels are not only walled off by having to beat the main game but by needing to collect star coins on other levels. You don't need every last one but you will definitely have to spend some extra time on some of your least favorite levels to play some of the best parts of the game.

12. For all my complaining about the 3D-ness of the game, I do like it better than New Super Mario Brothers 2 on the same system and that is pure 2D. This is likely the only thing you wanted to know from this review and I hid it all the way down in point 12. What a dick!

13. It is fair to say that Super Mario 3D Land does actually give you everything you want in a Mario game: there are levels that range from fast, fun gimmicks to white knuckle reflex tests; most of the levels are fun and it gave me an excuse to mention tanuki balls.