This game annoys me to no end.
It seems every review for this game as well as several posts on the front page praises this game which is clearly the best game ever made. What makes them immediately say this? I downloaded the .swf and extensively played this game just to see what all the fuss was about, maybe for a few hours, just trying to get Shine Sprites and Star Coins.
Then I realized I simply was not having fun.
Some of the features of true Mario games were changed in such a way that was entirely unnecessary in this game (such as Metal Mario being vulnerable to attacks). Features like the FLUDD and the Wing Cap were made fairly well, but they also had some issues. Sometimes, if you're in a level with a FLUDD and you die someplace, you return to the same area and you still have the water pump with you. Other times, it's suddenly gone from your back and there's no getting it again. Then there are those stars that give you invincibility, invisibility, the Wing Cap, along with the Silver Stars that can get you Shine Sprites. All of these stars look exactly the same. There's almost no way of knowing what you're getting next, which of course helps a WHOLE lot in the slapped-together level designs. Most of the levels are just a barrage of platforms that move in circles, followed by enemies that are so ridiculously inconveniently placed, you MUST get hurt before continuing a part of the stage--no option. There are "secrets" all through the castle that for the most part you just have to find by accident, and they just lead to more shoddily-designed levels. You can't possibly expect someone to get half of those Star Coins without Mario committing suicide in the process seeing as they're usually at the bottom of death cliffs.
There are too many glitches in this game for me to even name, and some of them I can't even tell if they were really 'intended' to be viewed as glitches or not. Any time I lose some life, I find myself collecting coins and nothing happens. It's like there's a certain number of coins, or maybe a time limit, before you can refill any of your health. I had to restart the beginning of the game multiple times because one of the flying Goonies was randomly placed directly underneath Mario, which moved him aside and ended up freezing Mario's movements completely, since it wasn't intended for him to move until he went to read the first sign. I also experienced a crazy glitch on the first Bowser where he got thrown BACKWARDS into a spike-bomb and his 'hurt' sequence looped off the edge of the screen over and over. I had to kill poor Mario to continue. Then there is a level with an invisibility star that does not end. I couldn't tell if that was supposed to happen or not, but it took a very long time to beat the level. Musical fanfares such as those when you exit a painting or activate some switch don't always stop the music playing in the background, which makes all the sound clash together.
Another thing that irks me is the storyline twist after the second Bowser battle. It's enough to have a cliche "the whole world will be destroyed by an item of power", but you even made up some out-of-place Japanese thing CALLED "The Orb of Power," and of course everything will be destroyed except Bowser's castle, which has a happy force field around it. Bowser is not the type to destroy an entire universe. He'd take it over like he tried to do in Super Mario Galaxy.
Other things, like the techno Bowser stage music, the total lack of clarity in the way things are explained, the many problems with the basic controls, how much the World Maps don't help, the 4chan memes and references mentioned by all the Toads in a game that's already a giant parody... I could go on and on simply with the 13 Shine Sprites I obtained. But I seem to be running out of room for much more of a rant.
So, why do so many people like this game?
This game is big. It has Mario in it. He can triple jump. But everything else is a jumbled mess. This game could have been infinitely better.
People think this is a useless review.