3DS eShop Review: Dr. Mario Miracle Cure

Ever since Nintendo began offering downloadable titles, Dr. Mario has become a fixture of their various digital services.  Dr. Mario Online RX, an infectiously charming update of the classic puzzle game with several unique modes and online play, helped launch WiiWare in 2008.  Just one year later, a stripped down version called Dr. Mario Express, which contained only the standard single player puzzle mode and the ability to play against a CPU opponent, helped get the DSi's DSiWare service up and running in 2009.  Though he was a little late to the party, Dr. Luigi wrapped up the Year of Luigi celebrations on New Year's Eve of 2013 by bringing an updated version of Online RX to the Wii U's eShop that featured a new mode which used chaotic and cumbersome L-shaped pills.

Now, at last, Dr. Mario has come to the 3DS eShop in Dr. Mario Miracle Cure, and he's brought his brother with him!  Of course, Dr. Mario Express and the original GameBoy version of Dr. Mario also remain available on the eShop, but Dr. Mario Miracle Cure does plenty to justify its existence and provide a significantly more full-featured experience than it's handheld predecessors.

The game features three distinct ways to play.  Dr. Mario mode is the classic puzzle game we've been playing since 1990.  Colored capsules are thrown into a pill bottle, where they slowly drop to the bottom similar to Tetris.  Matching four like-colored pieces will the clear them from play.  The board is littered with viruses, and the goal is to clear them all out by matching them up in the colored chains and clearing them away.  Getting rid of all the viruses completes the level.  Not much has changed here since the NES days, though leftover garbage pieces now drop to the bottom of the play field much faster than in past iterations and in this version you can also still reverse the colors of a pill that doesn't have enough room to rotate.  It's a nice little change, as it means you can still change how a pill will land even if you don't have room to spin it around, but if you've trained your muscle memory on iterations that didn't allow this, such as Dr. Mario Express, it'll probably cause you to make a few mistakes, as you scramble to tuck a pill away into a certain space only to flip the colors accidentally once it's in there.

Dr. Luigi mode makes it's handheld debut.  This mode follows the same rules as the classic game, but instead of tossing in single capsules, Luigi chucks L-shaped pill pairs into play.   This can make clearing viruses pretty easy in early stages, but it does result in a lot of extra clutter on the play field.  In later stages, when the colors of the capsules get more jumbled, this mode gets super difficult and perhaps a little too frustrating for its own good.  It's novel, but much less fun than the standard game.

Finally, Virus Buster comes back home to the handheld.  Originally introduced in the Brain Age series for the DS, this touch-screen based mode offers a more relaxed variant on the classic game, played by holding the system sideways.  It still follows the same basic rules as Dr. Mario mode, but the touch controls do introduce some neat new mechanics, such as being able to drag leftover pill pieces to other parts of the board after clearing a match, that give this mode its own distinct flavor.  Given its origins as part of the Brain Age series, it's perfectly suited for play on the 3DS, and is a fantastic addition to the package, as it feels much more at home on the handheld than it does on the Wii or Wii U.

 

Also new to this game are the titular Miracle Cures.  These power-ups can be used in both Dr. Mario and Dr. Luigi mode, and they serve as fun little ways to mix up the gameplay a bit.  A test tube next to the play field fills up as you play, and once it's full, the doctors Mario will toss a Miracle Cure into play. Effects range from clearing all capsules or viruses of a certain color, to destroying everything within a small radius around where the powerup lands, to clearing an entire horizontal or vertical line of all viruses and capsules.  When playing in multiplayer, Miracle Cures can also hinder the other player by reversing their controls, causing pills to drop faster, or preventing pills from being rotated.  Miracle Cures can also be disabled, if you would prefer to play by classic rules.

Miracle Cures don't change up the original Dr. Mario mode a whole lot, other than making it a little more action-oriented.  However, they dramatically improve Dr. Luigi mode.  As that mode is inherently more difficult and cluttered, with lots of extra pill pieces crowding the play field, the powerups serve as a perfect antidote to keep the game fun.  It's supremely satisfying to feel like you're stuck in a game over situation only to get the perfect powerup to clear the board and give you a chance to make a comeback.  Miracles Cures were the missing ingredient needed to truly make Dr. Luigi mode shine, and you'll never want to play it without them again.

Dr. Mario and Dr. Luigi can both be played in versus mode, either against other players or CPU opponents.  Online play is even supported, and it's smooth and lag free.  Dr. Mario mode and Dr. Luigi mode can both be played online, with or without Miracle Cures activated.  Virus Buster mode features a rather nifty co-op mode as well, in which two players work together to clear the board of viruses.  The game also supports download play, so only one player needs to own it for local multiplayer sessions. It's a surprisingly robust suite of multiplayer options, considering that Dr. Mario Express didn't even support multiplayer.

Finally, there's the Miracle Cure Laboratory, which presents around fifty preset challenges to clear.  Acting something like a mission mode, these challenges serve up specific conditions in Dr. Mario or Dr. Luigi mode for you to clear, and even throw in a few versus matches to mix things up.  All in all, Dr. Mario Miracle Cure presents a large and diverse selection of ways to play, both alone and with others, and could easily be the definitive version of the classic puzzle game.

Unfortunately, that's not quite the case in practice.  While tons of content is included, there are almost as many puzzling exclusions.  The Miracle Cure Laboratory mode is fun, but there's no ranking system for the missions.  Once you clear them, you're done with them.  There's no incentive to play them again to improve your score, and no real reason to revisit the mode once you've finished every level, which won't take much more than an hour.  Online play is excellent, but it can only be played against random matches, and not against friends.  Flash mode is no longer a versus mode option.  When playing the classic game modes, the game uses level-based progression.  However, when Miracle Cures are turned on, the game switches to an endless mode, with more viruses progressively added to play until you get a game over.  Strangely, it's not possible to play endless mode without Miracle Cures activated, nor it is possible to use them for the more tradition level-based gameplay.  Some modes still let you play beyond Level 20, but others don't anymore for no apparent reason.

The presentation of the game also feels a little slapdash.  Most of the sounds and visuals are pulled directly from Dr. Luigi, which works well enough.  However, Dr. Mario's character model looks a little rough, with some strange animations and a disconcertingly dead facial expression.  The game's menus are cluttered and use a bizarre mixture of button and touch based navigation that makes them a little tricky to get through at times.  The game doesn't even have a title screen, launching directly to the main menu, which is also the only part of the game to support the 3DS's 3D effects.  The viruses no longer make any squirming noises as you clear them from play, making the game sound a little empty.  The congratulatory intermissions that used to play after clearing certain levels no longer appear, and you can no longer choose what music you want to hear while playing.  The game simply cycles between two different tracks for each mode, all pulled directly from previous games, with no option to turn off the music either.

As a result, Dr. Mario Miracle Cure feels a little haphazard and unpolished.  It boasts tons of gameplay, but it's rough presentation and inexplicable lack of certain modes and options gives off the impression that it was put together and released rather hastily, with some content being left out for no obvious reason.  That's a shame, too, as all the potential is here for Miracle Cure to be the most full-featured and fleshed out version of Dr. Mario ever released.

As is, it's still the definitive handheld version of Dr. Mario.  It absolutely trounces Dr. Mario Express and the original GameBoy game when it comes to the amount of content and modes included, especially with so many multiplayer modes to choose from.  Virus Buster is best when played on a handheld, and the mission mode is fun while it lasts.  However, the lackluster presentation and removal of many features means that it still doesn't shine quite as brightly as Dr. Mario Online RX or Dr. Luigi.  If you want the most polished and well made version of the game, stick with the home console titles.  However, if you want classic pill-based puzzle action on the go, Dr. Mario Miracle Cure is the game to get.

Dr. Mario Miracle Cure can be purchased for $8.99 on the Nintendo 3DS eShop.

3DS Review: "Luigi's Mansion: Dark Moon"

Luigi is the most overrated underrated character ever.  Seriously, all I ever hear about him is how neglected he is.  How Luigi never gets any love and all that.  Are kidding me?  Luigi gets all the love!  You know who is really neglected?  Mario.  Luigi is always stealing his brother's thunder!  Luigi is everyone's favorite character.  Every person ever prefers playing as Luigi over Mario.  Since New Super Mario Bros, it has almost become a tradition for Luigi to be your reward for completing a main series Mario game.  He always steals the show in the RPGs.  Seriously, I have never seen a "neglected" character receive so much love.

That said, it is pretty uncommon for Luigi to take star billing all for himself.  Outside of everyone's favorite obscure edutainment title Mario is Missing, Luigi has only ever had one game to call his own.  That game was Luigi's Mansion for the Nintendo GameCube.  The 2001 launch title saw Luigi entering a decrepit old mansion and vacuuming up ghosts in search of his brother who was, as it happens, missing again.  The quirky little adventure wasn't all that scary, but it was memorable, and served as a very unique introduction to the GameCube and paved the way for numerous other games that challenged the normal conventions of Nintendo's beloved franchises.  The GCN era featured many games that offered distinct takes on Nintendo tradition, such as Super Mario Sunshine and Zelda: Wind Waker.  And, right from the beginning, Luigi was there leading the pack.

It didn't last.  These days, the Mario series has come down with a bad case of what I call "New Super-itis," resulting in nearly all Mario series games having no unique identity and having the same plastic visuals.  Now, twelve years later, Luigi is at it again, once again providing a breath of fresh air.  A spooky, hilarious, and thoroughly enjoyable breath of fresh air.

Luigi's Mansion: Dark Moon for the Nintendo 3DS shows absolutely no symptoms of "New Super-itis" and instead has an identity all of its own.  The basic mechanics are still largely similar to the original game.  Luigi, armed with a ghost-capturing vacuum cleaner called the "Poltergust 5000," creeps his way around various dark and dusty locals looking for ghosts, sucking up treasure, and solving some basic puzzles.  Like the original game, Luigi is unable to jump, so the focus is more on exploration rather than on platforming.  It's a slower, more deliberate style of gameplay compared to the traditional Mario romp.

Though the basic gameplay is much like the original, Dark Moon takes the formula of the GameCube original and mixes it up considerably.  Luigi's ghost vacuuming mechanics are similar to the original, though Luigi must now stun ghosts with a strobe light before sucking them up.  While the original game utilized two analog sticks for the controls, Dark Moon gets by with just one.  It takes a little getting used to, since you can't adjust Luigi's aim independently from his movement, but the controls are expertly designed to work within the limitations.  Once you get used to the changes, you'll be sweeping up ghoulies like it's second-nature.

Dark Moon also places a strong emphasis on examining your surroundings.  Ghost fights are actually fairly sporadic, so most of the game revolves around exploring your environment and doing some light puzzle solving to proceed to the next area.  Now, I use the term "puzzle" lightly.  The complexity never really exceeds looking around a room for a new button to press.  What keeps the game from getting monotonous is the fact that you never really know what will happen when you do press said button.  Secret panels will slide into place, extra rooms will open up, and all sorts of outlandish events may occur as you work your way through each mansion.  A lot of the game effectively boils down to activating a series of incredibly complex Rube Goldberg machines, often with unexpected results.  The sense of discovery in Dark Moon is immensely satisfying, as you never really know what is going to happen next.

Money is also stuffed into every nook and cranny of the game's five mansions, further encouraging you to mess around with every object you come across.  The more cash you stash, the more you can upgrade your Poltergust.  In addition to the traditional coins, you'll also find extra valuable dollar bills and gold bars.  Health-restoring hearts, Golden dog bones that revive you should you lose all your health, secret shiny gems, and all sorts of other collectables are tucked away in the creepy corridors you'll be exploring, so it definitely pays to poke around any suspicious looking areas you may find.  A new game mechanic, called the Dark Light Device, lets you scan rooms for secret clues and invisible objects.  In addition to helping you gather even more goodies and solving puzzles, the Dark Light Device is also used to help sniff out those dastardly Boos, who are once again hidden all around each mansion.  And, once again, they all have terrible puns for names.

Unfortunately, despite the emphasis on exploration, the game's structure often gets in the way of your sleuthing.  Though the original game was broken up into four sections, you were pretty much free to explore any part of the mansion whenever you pleased as they opened up.  This time around, the game adopts a mission based structure for exploring each of the game's five mansions.  In one mission you might be searching for a specific item.  Then in the next you'll be taking the item to a specific room.  Then you'll explore an area you unlocked with the item.  Then you'll fight a boss, and so on. 

Between each mission, Luigi is whisked away to the ghost-proof bunker of Professor E. Gadd, before returning to the mansion for the next task.  Though E. Gadd's dialogue is absolutely hysterical, and a highlight of the game, the mission structure does often break the pacing and the sense of exploration.  You may find yourself wanting to backtrack to a previous area your missed, or explore a new area you've just uncovered, only to be pulled out of the mansion for some silly dialogue, and then plopped back down in an entirely different starting location, with the area you wanted to explore now inaccessible.  The later missions have longer and more open-ended goals, which alleviates this issue considerably.  However, for the first two-thirds of the game the mission structure can feel a little restrictive.

Visually, Dark Moon is a sight to behold.  It uses a stylized, angular sort of visual style not unlike that of Paper Mario Sticker Star.  At first the visuals might appear a bit disappointing, as they lack the intricate details and moody atmospheric impact of the GameCube original's.  However, the visuals are still among the finest on the 3DS, and each mansion has a strong sense of place, making every location feel distinct from one another.  It's a simpler and brighter overall look than the first game, but there are still some incredibly good looking set pieces sprinkled throughout, and it's hard to fault the game for having such a strong style of its own.  The bland, plastic visuals of other recent Mario games are nowhere to be found here!

The sound design is more of a mixed bag.  The music tends to sound rather generic and flat.  While the original game made excellent use of dynamic music to craft an eery atmosphere, Dark Moon's soundtrack sounds more like a Scooby-Doo cartoon.  It's not bad, but it's also not very memorable and falls short of the first game's spectacularly spooky soundtrack.

On the other side of the coin, there's not a bad word that can be said about the voice work and sound effects.  Luigi mumbles incoherently all throughout the adventure, and he's hilarious to listen to.  A ton of personality is conveyed through his various yelps and grunts, making Luigi out to be a very lovable, if not the most courageous hero.  The mansions have a lot of life to them, as well.  All the machines and gadgets you'll be interacting with make all sorts of grinding, creaking, and rattling sounds.  Similarly, there are lots of spooky ambient effects, like howling wind and ghostly laughter.  The sound design is incredibly rich, and some of the best moments come when the music cuts away to let the sound effects establish the tone.

Dark Moon also contains a handful of multiplayer modes, though I have not personally had a chance to try them.  I rather doubt they are worth the price of admission alone, as the single player campaign is really the reason to play Dark Moon.  That said, I'm sure they provide a nice icing to an already excellent cake.  More ways to play is never a bad thing!

In the end, Luigi's Mansion: Dark Moon is a very easy to game to recommend.  It's not without some faults, but they never really get in the way of the fun.  The gameplay is incredibly creative and the adventure is hilarious and captivating, if not particularly scary.  The mission structure does present some pacing issues, but once things ramp up toward the end of the game, Dark Moon hits its stride.  And, perhaps most significantly, Dark Moon at last revives the experimental nature and originality that has long been absent from the Mario series.  If you're looking for an expertly crafted and incredibly creative little adventure, Luigi's Mansion: Dark Moon should fit the bill.  Even with its shortcomings, it's a must-play.

Review: New Super Mario Bros. 2

Welcome to New Super Mario Bros. 2!  The game where everything is recycled and the coins don't matter!

New Super Mario Bros. 2 for the 3DS marks the third release for the "New" series of Mario titles.  First, we had New Super Mario Bros. for the DS, a very fun if not overly simplified revival of classic Mario sidescrolling gameplay.  Then came New Super Mario Bros. Wii, which did little to change the formula but did increase the scope of the game dramatically and added the hilariously chaotic 4-person multiplayer mode.  It felt a little stale if you had already played the DS original since it reused the same level themes and most of the same gimmicks, but it felt like a more full-featured fleshed out version of the concept.

New Super Mario Bros. 2, so named because evidently the Wii game doesn't count, continues to do very little to update the formula from the previous two games, but with a new gimmick thrown in here and there.  The primary new gimmick this time?  COINS!  COINS EVERYWHERE!  This game throws more coins at you than you know what to do with.  They spew out of pipes.  They drift around on parachutes.  They trail behind enemies.  Sometimes they just rain from the sky!  The goal is to grab as much money as possible to eventually reach the game's overarching goal:  collecting 1,000,000 coins.  The game keeps a running total of all the coins you've ever earned in the game so you can track your progress.

The result of this coin-grabbin' gimmick is pretty simple:  coins and lives are worthless now.  The game throws them at you so fast and furiously that you'll rack up hundreds of lives without even trying.  Plus, the game really doesn't reward you in any way for going out of your way to collect coins other than occasionally popping up a message to let you know that you've collected lots of coins.  The coins don't even unlock secret levels or anything, since series staple Star Coins remain hidden about the levels and are still used as the currency for unlocking secrets, like always.  The only goal to strive for is that 1,000,000 coin mark.  After playing through the main story and a few of the secret levels, I observed that I was at about 15,000 coins.

Only 985,000 to go...

So yeah, the coin grabbing mechanic is ultimately shallow and pointless.  But what about the rest of the game?  Underneath the gold-tinted facade is still a game of classic Mario platforming, correct?  And that is true.  But the result is sort of a mixed bag.  On one hand, I would be willing to say that NSMB2 probably has the best levels in the "New" series thus far.  While previous games in the series mostly presented Super Mario Bros. 3 inspired levels that provided short sprints to the flagpole, the levels in NSMB2 are much larger and open.  There are lots of secret little nooks and crannies to stumble upon in the levels, and while many of these do simply hold more useless coins, some contain the ever elusive Star Coins and some also house secret exits that lead to alternate paths.

The Raccoon Tail from Mario 3 makes it's return here.  But while the Tanooki suit in Super Mario 3D Land mostly felt like Nintendo forcing some heavy handed nostalgia into the game by sticking tails everywhere,  New Super Mario Bros. 2 is much more subtle.  Grabbing a tail simply serves to better allow Mario to explore the levels, as there are often hidden areas way up high.  Beyond the use of the tail, it definitely feels like the development team was actually looking at Super Mario World for most of their inspiration this time around.  Some levels even feature World's trademark slanted geometric hills in the background, and long-missing mid-boss character Reznor makes his triumphant return here.  That the game does not lean too heavily on Mario 3 for inspiration is quite refreshing!  It's nice to see that Nintendo remembered that there are other good games in the Mario series to draw influence from.

On the other hand...

As much as I enjoy the Super Mario World influences, that's part of the problem with New Super Mario Bros. 2.  Everything about it is pulled from previous Mario games.  Most notably, almost everything about this game's presentation is pulled directly from New Super Mario Bros. Wii.  The graphics, the voice clips, the level gimmicks, the enemies, and most notably, the music.  There's barely a new composition to be heard this time around.  Which is not to say that the soundtrack is poor.  It's quite good.  And I don't have a problem with reusing a few specific tracks in situations where it makes sense for old themes to return.  But lifting the entire soundtrack from a previous game and using it again with only a tiny number of new compositions and alterations comes across as extraordinarily cheap, even if the songs themselves are still decent.

Likewise, it's hard to appreciate the handful of new elements NSMB2 does bring to the table when visually it looks exactly like the previous two games in the series.  We've seen this exact same set of grassland, desert, beach, forest, volcano and other worlds in two games already, plus the fact that Nintendo seems to insist on using these same themes in all other Mario games now too, such as Mario Party 9.  The result is that this game looks tired and stale.  You've seen everything in this game already, so even when it does try to do something legitimately different, it's still impossible the shake the feeling that you've played this game before.  At least twice.  The only slightly clever thing I observed was combining the beach and forest themes into one world this time.  But that mostly just seems to be because there are fewer normal worlds in NSMB2.  (Six instead of the standard eight, though there are several secret worlds to make up for it.)

New Super Mario Bros. 2 is not completely devoid of new ideas.  The problem is that most of them are simply slight extensions or variations of what previous Mario games have done repeatedly.  So even when playing a level with a "new" feature it still feels incredibly familiar because you've probably seen something like it in a previous game before.  The result is a Mario game that is definitely fun to play, has everything that makes Mario games fun, but ultimately feels shallow and redundant.  In a series known for reinventing itself with each sequel, NSMB2 feels uncharacteristically safe.  Never before has a game with the word "New" in the title felt so stale.

I'm almost willing to give Nintendo a free pass here, because they have gone on record to say that they plan to make only one Mario sidescroller per console.  So once the equally stale looking New Super Mario Bros. U comes out later this year, it could be at least five or six years until we see another sequel in the series.  Hopefully that will provide Nintendo enough time to come up with some legitimately fresh new ideas for the series because as it stands, New Super Mario Bros. 2 is an overly-cautious retread on what has already been done repeatedly in its two predecessors.  It's still fun, but there's nothing really "new" about it.