o it turns out Super Mario Maker isn’t that great at making Super Mario games.
Now that we’ve been creating and playing for a while, the main criticism you see being repeated is that it’s difficult to find levels that really feel like Super Mario. 1-ups and coins mean nothing, there are no real secrets, there’s no progression, and so on. For me, this is not a negative at all.
The 100 Mario Challenge — which, besides the actual creation, is undoubtedly the crux of the game — is like a direct, temporary insight into the gaming psyche of one random player in the world after another, using the common language of Super Mario.
No Super Mario game would feature a level in which a goomba action hero tries and fails to rescue his family, followed by an epic and original boss fight that fires cape feathers and bob-ombs constantly into your face, but Maker is not a Super Mario game.
This is a game that does for platforming gameplay what Twitter did for blogs or Instagram did for photo-sharing, serving up an endless stream of short-form ideas from the minds of people around the world in an easily-digestible format. Think of it as Super Millennial Bros.
Of course in the same way those social networks became popular by embracing limitation (with their character limits and little square photos respectively), Super Mario Maker’s core limitation and laser focus is what makes it strong, and a certain rejection of the Super Mario Bros meta-game is necessary for that.
“
This is a game that does for platforming gameplay what Twitter did for blogs or Instagram did for photo-sharing, serving up an endless stream of short-form ideas from the minds of people around the world in an easily-digestible format. Think of it as Super Millennial Bros.
The four-level structure of the original game and the sprawling secret-laden worlds of the later entries may be things we love about Super Mario but they simply wouldn’t fit here. Super Mario games have traditionally been showpieces for new hardware, or at the very least applied and explored a brand new set of power-ups or abilities. Maker is its own beast, and to be quite honest the game is least interesting when playing courses that try to stick too closely to the Super Mario playbook. There are brand new concepts in Maker, and those are the things we should be embracing.
A great example of this is the mystery mushroom, which bestows the Costume Mario power-up. This is entirely native to Super Mario Maker and adds a ton of personality and narrative potential to the creator’s toolbox.
During a 100 Mario Challenge I was delighted by a spooky level themed after tween witch Ashley from the WarioWare series. It’s another level that just would not have existed if the game set out to have users create traditional Super Mario experiences; it simply co-opts the language of the series to tell its own little tale. At the same time, although this was surely not the intention of the creator, the level served to remind me how much more in common the 100 Mario Challenge has in common with Wario’s zany microgame experiences than anything from the main platforming series.
Beyond the amiibo stuff, all of Mario Maker’s most interesting elements are completely its own. Like the reliably ridiculous sound effects. Like the big mushroom and weird mushroom which allow for levels like a wacky jailbreak featuring dry-bones-mounted Luigis, or a harrowing tale of Mario’s substance-induced lankiness.
Even the Super Mario staples that seem to have lost meaning in this endless barrage of one-off puzzles and strange vignettes have gradually been redefined. You see this in the way coins are used to telegraph design intentions, 1-ups are used to coax players away from the most direct path and, of course, in the totally emergent running joke of having Mario blocked from exiting the level somehow after running down the flagpole.
The stages aren’t all brilliant, as anybody who’s played the game will know. Immediately after the Ashley level I was treated to a brief stage in which goombas take an elevator to nowhere and all Mario has to do is climb a vine to reach the goalpost.
This one had me kind of bemused more than anything else, but that’s the way it goes with Mario Maker, and the diversity has a charm of its own. Particularly with friends around, it’s a blast to bounce from “whoa, this level is genius” to “who the hell is this person and why did they make this?!” and everything in between.
Of course no session goes by without a few levels that are just too obnoxious to play (automatic levels, musical levels, vast expanse of nothing with incredibly opaque solutions levels), and although there’s no real way around that issue, the levels are easy to swipe away.
As for what comes next for Mario Maker, the dominant requests online seem to be for Super Mario Bros 2 (USA) content, the ability to make entire cohesive worlds, or a Zelda Maker, but I’m not so sure.
Super Mario Bros 2 is a game about uprooting and throwing vegetables, stacking blocks and moving vertically, literally a Super Mario game in name only. Meanwhile the ability to link whole worlds together in a playlist or with a custom world map might bring user creations closer to what you see in a real Super Mario Bros game, but as outlined above I don't think that’s necessarily to the benefit of the game.
“
What Mario Maker cries out for most is... more opportunities for creativity and more of its own brand of weirdness. Let creators write short blurbs about their levels, or attach identifiers or tags. Allow Mario costumes across the board.
A Zelda Maker is an interesting concept, but like SMB2 it’s an entirely different style of game, and the simplicity and universality of the Super Mario language is what allows Maker to work.
More refinement of the discovery (which is close to useless with the top levels usually automatic stages or ‘as seen on YouTube’ creations) and discussion (currently powered by Miiverse) systems would be welcome, although as the hardcore community’s already proven Tumblr, Twitter, comments sections and bespoke websites are better places for level sharing than Nintendo could build.
What Mario Maker cries out for most of all is not more curation or more Super Mario, but more opportunities for creativity and more of its own brand of weirdness. Let creators write short blurbs about their levels, or attach identifiers or tags. Allow Mario costumes across the board. Give the community more rating tools, the ability to define preferences in the levels they’re served if that’s what they want, and give creators more weird and wonderful toys to play with.
Most of all, lose the 100 Mario Challenge branding and let the completely unhinged, unpredictable stream of random levels become the marquee feature and crazy half of the game it deserves to be, right there next to the ordered, methodical creation half.
source : ign.com
0 Response to "A SUPER MARIO MAKER POST-MORTEM"
Post a Comment