I finally got a chance to play this..
I know a lot of people won't like the music, I do think older Mario music is better than a lot of this synthy sounding stuff, but is anyone finding it quite infectious all the same? I find myself humming the title screen theme, and the main "bwa-bwa" theme song. The main castle theme is really good: shades of the Mario World castle theme, and Zelda LTTP music.
The game shows quite a lot of invention at times. A few examples I can think of:
- freezing fish makes them float to the top of the water and become platforms, freezing a puffer fish will cause it to sink. You can use an unconscious puffer to block a pipe spewing out a stream of bubbles that would otherwise block you. Have Mario games ever played with physics / logic puzzles before? Because this one seems to
- some coins are devilishly placed so you have to have a copter power-up in a level that doesn't necessarily give you one... you have to leap almost to your death and then spin up to safety
- the game hands out 1-ups like candy, but the levels begin to get challenging and begin to take a few back as early as World 2 onwards.
- I loved the castle at the end of World 2. A true homage to the SMB castles that required a specific route
- some of the on-your-toes, wall-kicking platforming from World 2 onwards is more challenging than anything in SMW and SMB3, except maybe the likes of the World 8 airship levels or the Butter Bridge / Soda Lake type stuff. There's lots of moving platforms in this game, everything is moving, and moving in new ways. Lots of tricky jumps and bottomless pits. The enemies on the world-map can be more challenging than the Hammer Bros challenges from SMB3 too.
I'm only at the end of World 3 so far but highlights include: lift to the top of a castle that gradually gets full of Dry Bones and spiked balls, windy level + copter suit, every level that involves sliding on your belly as a penguin.
I watched that video of the final battle that was posted on NeoGAF and it looks awesome. It reminds me of Metroid or something
spoiler (click to show/hide)
running away from bowser as he destroys the castle walls ahead of you, running away as everything collapses rather than fighting him