Topic: Super Mario Bros Wonder

I'm not sure how I feel about the new VAs. I imagined them closer to the original, but they are more different than I thought..
Hope they improve in later games.

Almost completed world 1. When the piranha plants started to sing, I fell in love with this game. It really does feel alot more unique, than the New Super Mario Bros. series. The atmosphere is cool.

Finally 100% on world 1; one of the secret exits took me forever to find. Well, at least 100% in terms of wonder seeds, big coins, and flagpoles — I wouldn't swear to not missing a captain toad since he seems to be everywhere. 😝

What characters are everyone playing? I played Peach for awhile, but I've swapped to mostly Toadette and Daisy; I feel like Daisy is the cutest elephant.

"Finished" World 1 (although I know there are a few more secrets to uncover)
And yes, it's fantastic. It almost seems as if there were several 'Wonder' games before this and this was the one that hit all the right marks...if that makes sense.
I'm sure this was the case internally but yeah.

So much stuff to love about this game, but I do want to give a shout-out to the sound design. Particularly the little jingle that plays through the HD rumble when riding grind rails.
It felt like a more paired-down Wiimote speaker, it was a wonderful suprise!

As much as I hate being the wet blanket, I'm generally enjoying Wonder so far but not feeling the hype... like, at all.

I guess I wanted something more consistently experimental. The levels, while aesthetically quite nice (leagues above the plastic sterile look of NSMB) feel like they gate off all the 'wacky' stuff behind the Wonder flowers, so you've got fairly standard (but solid!) platforming with designated "now we can get weird" segments.

Of course I still have like 90% of the game to go through but those are just my first impressions. I do have the feeling it'll get better.

Also, while I am not willing to humor Nintendo on the talking flowers - if this influences other games I'll be a very unhappy camper - but in practice it could be much worse. I'm going text off with voices set to Mandarin Chinese or Spanish depending on my mood. Mr. Worldwide over here.

But hey, I'm glad others are enjoying it. It does feel like a massive flex for Nintendo to release a fourth high profile exclusive in a single year when the Switch is so long in the tooth. Engage, TotK, Pikmin 4, AND a new 2D Mario. That's a victory lap if I ever saw one.

I do agree with people who are saying this is the best 2D Mario since Super Mario World. But also I'm fairly confident I would have rated New SMB higher than this when it released. A lot of what made me disinterested in New SMB over the years is the way that it didn't really change. And sure, the art style was fairly simplistic but the first game launched on the DS. I wouldn't have expected that much more on DS. Especially for what was, at the time, a bit of a gamble from Nintendo

New SMB and Mario Kart DS were my two go-to games on the DS. I was at UNI at the time so when we wanted to kill some time doing a bit of multiplayer between lectures? We landed on New SMB vs a lot. If I wanted to chew up a bit of time on the bus, re-play a level of New SMB. New SMB on the DS was FAR more than just a 2D Mario game. For me it was THE DS game. At the time of its release it was like Wii Sports on the Wii combined with Smash Bros for 3DS

Of course Wonder is comfortably a better game in hindsight. But it's certainly not as critical a game for Switch as New SMB was for DS. I reckon if I took my Switch to work for some impromptu Switch during my lunch break.... as great as Wonder is I wouldn't be playing it. Once I've gone through the levels, assuming we're not on Switch 2 with something else entirely to play, I'm probably not coming back to Wonder

........ but it is still comfortably the best 2D Mario game since Super Mario World

Interestingly, the only metacritic review below 8/10 had the exact opposite complaint as you — that there was too much wackiness and not enough standard platforming.

I can understand both complaints — I think Nintendo tried very hard to walk the fine line between what makes Mario Mario and adding new weird things. Inevitably there will be some people who prefer one of the two extremes. Outside of the Wonder seeds and the basic weirdness of the elephant power-up, most of the zaniness is more just adorable — the weird new enemies, the constant subtle animations, the character-dependent hilarious sound effects for things like ground-pounds, just the general background art, some of the dialogue (like bowser junior, not the annoying flowers), the weird but cute multiplayer aspect.

When I first saw the game announcement I worried there would be too many gimmicks with the wonder seeds, but personally I feel like they made a great balance. I hope you enjoy it more, but no game is perfect for everyone.

@moomin I'm just as far into the game as you and I think that all of your points are valid. It's nice to see some reasonable criticism. However, I honestly think the general audience is going to love the talking flowers and the only occasional wackiness that infrequently disrupts the familiar Mario feel. Just like @FishyS said, Nintendo had to walk a fine line. Trying something dramatically new in a 2D Mario title is risky business for them! Thanks for sharing.

@NinChocolate I'm right there with you. I'm a big fan of the NSMB series, but I'm glad to see that naming scheme finally get dropped!

A bit off topic but one thing that kinda struck me with this game being basically locked to 1080p/60fps. It's not a surprise that it is, it's still a 2D platformer even with the shiny effects and such. But I feel like when people are talking about "Switch 2" there's always someone who chimes in saying "people saying it'll do 4K are optimistic" yada, yada, yada.....

When I say these people are wrong and that there will definitely be support for 4K and maybe even 4K/120Hz. Games like Super Mario Wonder are the sort of games I'm thinking about. Do I think it particular matters that it isn't on Switch? I mean no, I think the difference is kinda immaterial. I think for a game like this HDR would help FAR more than any increase in resolution or framerate. But if you had the headroom and the output..... 100% you would run this game at a higher resolution and framerate, no question

I heard there was no time limit in the game, but there was still multiple lives on the screen that indicated I can get Game Over screen if I got zero lives.
And what was with that points that have decimal during Wonder Flower time ?

@Anti-Matter there's no time limit on the levels. Each of the small purple coins is worth 0.1, hence the decimal.

They all look great but I stuck with Mario for now 😊

I believe the only thing that happens if you game over is you lose some flower coins and get 5 new lives and lose no other progress. And apparently you also get access to a special bonus level where you can earn lots of flower coins and lives to replace what you lost. Sounds kinda fun tbh, but there are so many lives everywhere normally it's kind of hard to game over.

As for the decimals, during wonder Flower time, they scatter small fragments of flower coins all over the place so you can optionally try to collect some bonus coins. Since they are pieces of flower coins you have to collect multiple to get a full flower coin. Since the pieces only exist during Wonder time they only show the decimal at those times.

@skywake it is very likely to upscale to 4K output using DLSS.

@FishyS
So there is No Game Over even when I have Zero multiple lives on the left screen ?

@TotalTonix
Ah...
That's pretty relief to hear, so I can finish one level as long as I want.

Yeah, nah. The entire "magic" of AI up scaling techniques is that there's a fixed "cost" to output a frame at a given resolution. Regardless of the complexity or resolution of the of the incoming frame. If for arguments sake it takes an additional 10ms to output a frame at 4K through DLSS? It's 10ms regardless of whether the input image was rendered at 480p or 1440p. DLSS isn't a "make render go faster" button, DLSS is a "I'll take this amount of additional time but the output resolution will always be fixed"

Basically, if the hard limit for DLSS for the amount of hardware acceleration they put into it lands at something like 4K/30fps? If you can render the game natively at 4K/30fps or better.... you don't use DLSS. I think games like Super Mario Wonder are going to appear on "Switch 2" that render at 4K native. Not a doubt in my mind. DLSS will certainly be useful for more graphically intensive titles that have no hope of hitting those kinds of performance targets. But for the games that can? DLSS is utterly useless

Those wonderseed passages are fun. I am playing World 2 now and I felt a little bit, like I was playing Kirby's Epic Yarn.

Only have got to play a couple of levels so far due to working but man this game is wonderful!