Super Mario Bros. Wonder review:

So, I played SMBW with a couple online friends and... it's alright. It's a good game. If you like Mario, then you will like this game, too. Hear me out though. What Nintendo did with Mario Wonder is THE BARE MINIMUM! Yes, you read that right! SMBW is everything New Super Mario Bros U on Wii U should have been, 10 years ago. Yes, the new graphics certainly look wonderful, but all these new expressions and animations should have been here a long time ago, to be honest. It's good that they changed up the graphics a bit, but I kinda hoped for something like Wario Land: Shake It!!, where it's 2D drawn graphics. Instead we get the New Super Mario Bros. style again, although with much-needed improvements. The Wonder Seed mechanic is pretty good, but also gets a little tiring after a while. There is one in literally every level, which kinda makes this whole thing not special anymore. What I find baffling is the level design. Without the Wonder Seeds which trip up everything, the level design is as bland, simple and generic as it can get. I can't really remember a single level that stood out. In that regard, it is actually much worse than even New Super Mario Bros.!! Too much emphasis on the Wonder Seeds, instead of making interesting levels. Heck, I even consider the talking flowers the BEST new introduction instead of the Wonder Seeds. It's all style and no substance, like the animated Mario movie. Mario's new voice actor (yes, quite surprisingly, Charles Martinet has been replaced) needs to do a little more work on his Mario impression. However, if you aren't a hardcore Mario fan like me, you will likely not notice a difference in Mario's voice. Yoshi and Nabbit are inexplicably locked behind "easy mode" as they take no damage (although this hasn't been bothering me too much). Still no playable Wario and Waluigi. The boss battles are very disappointing (it's just Bowser and Bowser Jr. all over again... how about we bring back Tatanga or some other villain who's not just Bowser)? I kinda wished for a lot more levels. There's enough content to justify your purchase, but... you know... a couple more levels or one or two more worlds wouldn't have hurt. There's no time limit anymore, so you have plenty of time to explore the levels, although as I've already mentioned, there isn't a lot to explore due to their basic design. The HUD has been reduced accordingly. I kinda wished the big purple flower coins would have been shown, as I have to pause the game in order to look if I missed any. Sadly there's no way to adjust the sound. The talking flowers were a bit low on volume sometimes. In multiplayer, there is no collision between players anymore, which is a welcome change. What isn't a welcome change is the fact that the screen is focused only on one player (the one with a crown symbol above their head). That makes it difficult for the other players to catch up if they are behind. Unlike New Super Mario Bros., the screen does not zoom out anymore when the other players are further behind, so they get pushed out of the screen and turn into ghosts. Not really fun if the player with the crown rushes through the game, while the other players want to explore the levels further. The music is alright. Only two tracks really stood out for me, the rest is just fine background music.

All in all, a step in the right direction, but Nintendo never goes all the way anymore, I feel. Everything in the Mario brand must be "safe" now for the Normies. This game is feels no different. It is fun, yes. But it also feels like it's lacking something. 7/10