I'm a huge Nintendo fan. At least, I have been since I was a kid. I owned everything except a GameCube/GBA. I never owned a gaming system by any other company until I got a 360 in 2010.

When the Wii U came out, I snapped it up day one. My wife, who does not play almost any video games, gladly played New Super Mario Bros U with me, as she had done with NSMB Wii. We had great fun and played through the game.

Then a few more games came out. Game & Wario was a huge disappointment. We expected a new game at least as fun as WarioWare Smooth Moves. What we got was... lackluster at best. They were right to give it a name other than Warioware. I don't believe they should have released that in the state it was in, lower price tag or not. My enthusiasm for Nintendo was certainly lessened.

Anyway, yadda yadda. I got a few other of the Wii U games (all while doing most of my Nintendo gaming on the 3DS) and enjoyed them just fine. I loved playing CoD on the gamepad screen so that my wife could watch TV and thus not be mad at me for using up the screen. I looked forward to SM3DW because everything claimed it was the best mario game since the NES days. This was going to be good. 4 player action - that's nice. I was very excited.

The game came out, I hungrily downloaded it. (I also bought an Xbox One that day, but that's outside the scope of this conversation). Ohboyohboyohboy, the new Mario! The game that all news outlets were praising as the second coming of sliced bread or whatever.

I thrust a wii remote into my wife's hands, and we began our adventure....

and...

We played two levels, then she wanted to stop. The thing is, so did I. The controls felt so imprecise for a Mario game. We were trying to go at angles and it just wasn't working right. It didn't feel as precise as, say, NSMB U or Mario 64. It was this gross inbetween area. The 8-direction instead of analog control really felt off to me. And, aside from that, the weird way in which it was 3D - narrow corridors or boxes of action - didn't really appeal to us either.

My wife said she wasn't really interested in playing it any more. I waited about a month before I even wanted to try it again, and we fired it up, played two more levels, and felt similarly disatisfied. A couple nights ago, I played it myself on the gamepad screen while my wife watched TV. I had a reasonable amount of fun in the first swimming dinosaur level. Okay, let me rephrase that: I greatly enjoyed the slide music from Mario 64 featured in the rather bland swimming dinosaur level.

I told my wife, after finishing the level, that it was kind of fun. "Do you want to play this level with me sometime?" She declined. My wife now has expressed that she no longer wishes to even attempt playing SM3DW. I, myself, feel only lukewarm at best and kind of sad at worst about it.

Hopefully DKC:TF is fun to play together, but I am pretty sad I missed out on this chance to play with my wife. Games like that only come along every few years and I am disappointed this game was so far from what we wanted in a new multiplayer Mario we aren't even going to try.

Beyond that, I'm disappointed that it's not anywhere near the level of quality I expected after it got such great reviews. It almost makes me wonder if Malstrom's insane foil-hat conspiracy theory that people give Nintendo amazing reviews when they make games that aren't going to sell well IS in fact true: people give bad reviews to 2D Mario because it sells amazing and steamrolls the industry and bad to 3D because it isn't as good. I mean I don't really believe that, and I think Malstrom has slid off the deep end, but it does make you wonder. People praised this game like it was the best thing to ever happen. I don't think it warrants such high levels of praise at all.

So, what's up? Am I the only person to feel this way? Let me know! I hope this doesn't offend anybody who likes the game. That's not my intention at all! I'm just relating my position and my shock at enjoying this so much less than I expected. Thanks a lot for reading.

Yes, you are the only one. But I have the right.


btw I should play until World 3, at least

Play some more. I personally don''t like playing it multiplayer. It does get better. Not as good as galaxy but still really creative and fun

You haven't even finished the first world. I'm sure other people have or will say it, (I opened this when the only post was the OP) but the game gets better the farther you get.

Well not everyone will like every game.

I'm waiting to reserve judgement until I've played more, but I'm sort of feeling the same way so far. I didn't like the direction they went with the game, but I really enjoyed Super Mario 3D Land, so I thought I would enjoy it at least as much as that. But I've only picked it up a few times and have never done so under any particularly great desire. I mostly just pick it up with friends so we can get that goofy multiplayer experience. It never really calls to me like a great game tends to.

But I guess I really just need to plow through it before I can make my final decision. I've heard of plenty of other people feeling a bit underwhelmed until they actually beat the thing.

i was really iffy about it at first but i had more and more fun with it as i kept playing.

the "co-op" is ridiculous tho, there's nothing cooperative about it. it's just dropping 4 players into the level.

The game is incredible. I can't stop playing it. It's not quite as flashy as Galaxy (was at the time) and the music isn't quite as good, but for me it's probably the best Mario since SMB3. And it gets better and better as it goes along (I'm on world 6 and I keep going back to re-play levels, which I never have done in Mario before).

If you are someone who likes Mario, I think your dislike is mostly because of your wife. I used to date - for a long time - a girl who had a decent interest in video games. We loved playing FFX together, and it really added to the experience for me. We would get off work, cook up some mac and cheese and journey through Spira and have sex. It was beautiful. When FFXII came out she tried it but the characters didn't inspire her and she was hooked on Everquest at the time so it became a solo experience for me. It was OK but the feeling wasn't the same.

I think your wife will have a hard time with any 3D Mario. Many women have a difficult time with 3D perception, it makes them frustrated and dizzy. That's why Nintendo has tried to make 3D world a little more "locked" in camera angles and controls, to make the control more precise and less dissorienting to people who find 3D unsettling. It sounds like it didn't help your wife, which is unfortunate.

But the game itself is beautiful and well-crafted. There are precision issues with any 3D platformer, but they are actually better in 3DW than M64 or Galaxy by nature of the more grid-like world and controls. I suspect that your woman didn't get into Galaxy either. This is gonna have to be one Mario adventure that you'll have to learn to appreciate solo. She's probably be more likely to put up with playing DKCTP with you since she can navigate the 2D plane.

I'm about to post my review of this game in a few hours, but I wanted to tell you that there is analog support for the analog sticks. However, they purposely "auto-aim" you a little to coincide with the isometric camera angles, but if you try to move in-between the 8 primary D-pad directions with an analog stick, you'll see it's possible.

Also, people who are accustomed to "cinematic" experiences will find SM3DW very hard to enjoy. However, like people have said, stick with it. If you play through this game and all its secret worlds and don't have an entirely changed opinion by then, well... I'd question if you were human, lol

Maelstrom is partially true but he has some sort of irrational hate against 3D mario. It may not be the system seller that a 2D mario and Nintendo shouldn't spend so many good ideas on 3D mario only but... they are not bad games!

It's okay if you don't like it. Not everyone has to like the game! As for me I thought the game was incredible!