Entry #1:
SUMMARY
Super Mario 64 keeps many of its classic Mario elements: jumping, collecting coins, and stomping enemies. Each level has a set of objectives where the completion of each one rewards the user with a golden star. Collecting enough of these stars opens up new levels and areas in the game. Also as the player reaches new levels, Mario gains new skills which he can use to get previously unreachable stars.
GAMEPLAY
Super Mario 64 sticks to the usual plot where Mario has to save the princess from Bowser, jumping through levels to reach some goal. However, rather than just trying to reach the end of a level, like in the older games, Mario now has to collect stars. Each level has its own unique theme, which can range from a scorching desert to a frozen mountain. Since the game is of the platformer genre, nearly every level has some star that is in a very high location, requiring Mario to make a series of skilled jumps to reach it.
Mario doesn’t really have much of a personality and just listens to what other NPCs have to say and does what they tell him. He does however have a little phrase that he says when entering a level, and he gets very excited when he gets a new star. There are other characters that appear at various points throughout the game to give Mario guidance or give him a challenge where he can earn a star.
Overall the levels provide a nice amount of variety to keep the game interesting and the challenge progressing as a nice pace. With the addition of a new ability here and there the gameplay never gets boring. It can however get somewhat repetitive when trying to reach difficult stars, but this is a common occurrence in games anyway.
Entry #2:
GAMEPLAY
After collecting enough stars one of Bowser’s areas will become accessible. These areas tend to really focus on refined Mario maneuverability skills. There are many places that Mario can fall off the side of the level, often causing the player to have to restart from the last check point, or falling to a much lower platform. This can be frustrating, but these levels are intended to provide a challenge to the player and are not meant to be easy.
Throughout the levels, the player is introduced to new moves that Mario can use. Most of these moves are available to the player from the beginning of the game, but are not actually presented to the player until the first time they need to be used to reach a goal. Another element that is given to the player as they progress through the game is access to colored blocks which provide power-ups for Mario. I recognized this element from the original Super Mario World, where once the blocks had been unlocked, they gave Mario a way to access new areas. They have a similar effect in Super Mario 64.
DESIGN
The controls for Super Mario 64 take some getting used to as Mario has some interesting physical properties and has also moved from 2D to 3D. Mario can now move in all directions, including jumping. As the player progresses to new levels and gains new abilities, the player must learn new ways to control Mario. These abilities, in combination with the new levels that they come from, does a pretty good job of keeping the game interesting.
There are also other additional elements such as cannons. These cannons allow Mario to reach new areas in levels that he would not normally be able to jump to. He can also use the cannons as a new way to get around difficult jumping puzzles. Cannons also open up the amount of space that is accessible in a level; however, if a player tries to shoot Mario out of the level he will bounce off an invisible wall which can remove the player from the game experience.
Being that Super Mario 64 was one of Nintendo’s first major 3D games, there are a few graphical elements to the game that look slightly out of place. Many objects can be represented as 2D sprites which can save processing power. While these 2D objects don’t look terrible, they also don’t look great. Trees look especially bad; no matter what direction the player’s camera is facing, all trees have one view and appear to always be facing the camera.
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