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Thursday 24 January, 2008
GAMEPLAY:
After playing through a good bit of the early stages of the game, I can strongly say that this is my favorite Mario game. Each level is brilliantly designed and very unique. Some of the levels I have played include a classic lava level, sand level, ice level, and an under water level. Each of these levels feel very different in part because of the friction system in the game. All surfaces have their own friction rating that determines their "slipperiness". In the ice levels you will find Mario slides about 10 feet upon stopping, while on the sand level you will find it hard to even move on the quicksand. Slippery surfaces add a really interesting element to the gameplay that keeps you paying attention to what exactly Mario is standing on.
After playing a bit more I have found even more of Mario's new moves. It is amazing how much you can do with 3 buttons (A, B, Z). Mario now has a butt/stomach slide, butt-stomp, a dive ability, WALL JUMPS, along with some cool breakdance style attacks. I found the dive ability to be incredibly useful for taking out enemies. The slide ability is not so much useful, but more of a required part of the game in order to get to certain areas. Sliding is actually quite difficult to master and adds some difficulty to the levels. Now on to my personal favorite ability, which is wall jumping. This a another ability new to SM64, and it will make you wonder how you ever played a Mario game without it. Not only does the wall jump look awesome, but it can get you to areas unreachable any other way. Wall jumps can also be strung together into long combos that can get you to very cool places.
On a side note, i really like what the designers have done with the level select system. When you start the game, Mario is alone at Princess Peach's castle. When you enter the castle you will find many rooms with giant pictures inside of them. In order to enter a level you simply jump in its picture. As you complete more levels and collect more stars, new levels, and new areas of the castle, open up to you.
DESIGN:
The overall design of SM64 is amazing. I really like the idea of a main neutral world with no enemies that you select the levels in. The castle has a really cool feel to it, and ends up being much larger than you would expect. I also think the star idea was a great addition to the Mario series. In previous games there were worlds (usually 8) and levels in each of these worlds. IN SM64 there is one world with lots of levels in it. The levels have star requirements in order to enter them, so a hard level might require 70 stars in order to enter it while and easy level might only require 3 stars. The stars are also cool because it adds to the replay-ability of the levels, considering there are 7 stars in each level, but you don't need all 7 to advance to the next level. So many times you will find yourself going back to the beginning levels to get that star you couldn't get before.
There is also the addition of the hats in game. There is an invisibility cap that allows you to walk through some obstacles, a metal cap that makes you invincible and lets walk underwater rather than swim, and a flying cap that is pretty self explanatory. The way the game was designed, you unlock the ability to use the hat blocks in the worlds at certain points in the game. The cool thing is that the hat blocks appear on every level including the first one, so you wouldn't be able to get all 7 stars on the first level until you unlock that certain hat that you need. This makes you repeat the earlier levels if you want to collect all 120 stars.
I also like the fact that you technically complete the game at 70/120 stars. At 70 stars you can fight the 3rd and final Bowser battle and save peach, but you aren't nearly done with the fun of the game. Even after the main story of the game is complete you can collect all the stars from the 15 different levels.
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